Emerald Dream (Mecha/IC)

[Imperialisium]

IC

Democratic Republic of Khalib, Fallmorah City
March 22nd, 2387

<<Devil 2-0, this is Kronos-One, we're go for Azure over>>

<<Code Azure received, Devil flights inbound to marked targets, ETA mike forty>>

<<Affirmative Devil 2-0, TF 2-7 how copy>>

<<TF 2-7 copies on all. Ground assets are Azure>>

<<This is Darkstar, in position for Phase 1, enemy AA assets acquired. Transmitting to Kronos Actual>>

<<This is Kronos Actual. All assets are Azure. Commence Operation Geist>>

<<Copies on all>>

0230 Hours, Local Time

Khalib's three moons hung high in the sky like a glowing sharp crescent. Forming a rough angular arrow in the sky. The stars obscured by the light pollution of Fallmorah City, which despite most of its residences being dark, still cast enough light from its urban sprawl to ruin any chance stargazer's view. The city was the second largest on the world, home to some one hundred and ten thousand people, or at least it once was. Leaflets littered the streets asking civilians to vacate fluttered in the breeze. While to the North-West and South-West the lakes of Habanyya and Therthyyar cast dull matte textured reflections. Dark clouds shifted overhead. No ground cars on the streets, it was eerily silent.

Four bright flashes lit up the South-Eastern quarter of the city as objects traveling at hypersonic speeds made impact. Another flash lit up a large squat complex a click north. Orange-yellow glows cast sickly hues across the brown and off-white buildings of the city. Sirens flared briefly to life then silence as the main energy station fifteen clicks to the East in the direction of the capital city of Khalidad cut power to the Fallmorah grid. Casting the entire city in darkness.

Seven more orange flashes along the inner districts of the city. Met with intermittent streams of fast-moving lights. Tracers. Reaching up into the night sky. 20mm and 37mm autocannons chunking their ordinance high into the night sky before they too met with orange-yellow glows of bursting death.

Along the South-Western edges of the city, on a slight plateau overlooking the Habanyya lake, sounds of rotary engines broke the silence. Moving across the water rapidly at low altitude. A pair of squats four engined VTOLs swung in low. Black figures silhouetted by moonlight fast roping onto the ground before moving off to secure the buildings on the plateau.

Their communication to elsewhere was simple: <<Eagle Eye on site, Eagles Nest active. Stand by for fire corrections>>

<<0247 Local Time, Just South of Fallmorah on Highway 11

The inside of squad box like military vehicles were lit by the harsh blue glows of screens and the dull stark multi-color lay outs of LEDs. Squat Humvees and angular APCs. Royal Army vehicles. Followed a platoon of AFVs. Five tanks, their 150mm smoothbore main guns tracking to the left or right to provide firing arcs. The Royal Army LeTankova M1 was a squat beast. Its hydrogen fuel cell engine with backup systems to chug anything from diesel to lawn mower gasoline powered it forward on the highway asphalt. The APCs were primarily M2A6 Neiman-Seine APCs. Bearing either a single .50cal HMG or a pintle mount .50 with a 23mm autocannon on the top. Roving its eight wheels forth.

Inside the lead vehicle of the M2A6's sat a squad of Royal Army troopers. Their sergeant sitting in the front passenger seat looking off to the right. Able to see the burning fires of detonations blossom and plume across the city. Coming in sporadic bursts or sudden flares. Most twinkled out of existence after a few moments. Others lingered as something burned.

Behind a soldier was muttering some form of lyrics. Or what could be possibly construed as such.

"Comin' round, asses phat, big stacks on my lap lap spinn--."

The sergeant spoke up abruptly, "Cobalt have I ever told you I think your taste in music is terrible and a stain on this outfit?"

The muttering trooper grinned, "Many times Sergeant."

"And yet, you still mutter that garbage every time we're outside the wire."

"Reminds me of the good times back home."

"Corporal Marren, please remind me of when exactly, at any point in Cobalt's life did he have 'fat asses' and 'big stacks'."

"Sir, Private Cobalt has never even owned a vehicle."

Some chuckling laughter from the rest of the men meandered about the cramped space.

"Right, now, if you look out your gun ports you will see something much more gratifying to the ears. An orchestra if you will, from our dear benefactors in the Royal Artillery."

More grins, and a few looks out the open gun ports, as the night was illuminated by over two hundred rocket detonations, over fifty shells hitting the ground, and numerous smaller heavy mortar strikes throwing the perimeter of Fallmorah into ruin. "Insurgents having a bad day."

<<Insurgent perimeter defenses neutralized. TF 2-7 proceed to Baharah Market.>> came a chirp over the radio. The Taskforce commander's voice coming over the radio in response in the affirmative.

0315 Local Time

At 0315 Taskforce 2-7 moved into the outer districts of the city. Deploying infantry, the Taskforce moved block by block towards the large bazaar like conurbation of the Baharah Market, some three clicks towards the center of the city. The skyscrapers and large government complexes of the central districts of the city a scant click beyond that. Taskforce 2-7 was not alone in this penetration of the city either. The entire city had been surrounded through movements the previous day by the Royal Army and Royal Marines of the Virgon military. Regimental Combat Group 9, 3rd Marines, was moving in from the West into the Al-Faqqiyah religious neighborhood. While in the East the 14th Regiment of the Royal Army's 8th Division was moving to secure the Eastern outer commercial zones and refinery pipelines leading from the Bas-ra-Elzor Methane fields. To the North in a broad arc the 13th Regiment of the 8th Division was moving in concert to secure the Northern New City neighborhood.

0400 Local Time

By four in the morning remaining known AA assets had been suppressed or destroyed with Army and Marine rotary craft taking up positions over the city to provide overwatch, intel, and medivac services. The advance into the city had been slow, methodical, in line with a true military operation to clear a city of some five and a half thousand insurgent fighters. Sporadic skirmishes, and quick bursts of gunfire, with all assets pausing at 0415 to keep in line with their operational phases. For it was during Phase 2, the advance into the middle ring of districts around the centre and Baharah Market, that the fighting escalated when the RCG 9 met with the main defensive line on the Western side of the small Raqarah River which bisected a quarter of the city from the main body. Connecting the two lakes in the capacity of a natural canal.

0633 Local Time

Marines opened fire across the King Fadil Boulevard from terraced palatial homes on the Western side. The Raqarah and its bridges about eight hundred meters away. The light of Khalib's closest star in its binary system wrapping the entire East in its morning glow. Slowly extending across the sky as daybreak arrived.

"To the left! Left! Lasky!" A marine swiveled his M440 LMG and let it rip in a series of quick roaring growls. The M440 was a product of the last year of the Seven Year's War and capable of 1,320 rounds a minute sustained for half an hour without barrel overheat becoming a problem. It was accurate, fast, mechanically reliable, but big and clunky. The good news was for Company C, 1st Platoon, Lance Corporal Lasky was a bear of a man. Unleashing a torrent of rounds at a balcony. Another marine fired his underslung grenade attachment. The balcony doors, pockmarked and ruined by bullet fire, exploded outwards in a shower of debris. The Marines of Regimental Combat Group 9, 3rd Marine Division, had been methodically besieging the insurgent defenders who had taken up garrison in the palatial homes, apartments, and row houses that sat alone the Western side of the Raqarah. While on the Eastern side the Insurgents had smartly occupied the high-rise apartment blocks, garages, and mixed commercial-residential complexes of the Eastern side. Allowing defilading fire down onto the approaching Marines.

The latter, in a rather characteristic fashion, had merely dug in their heels and begun pushing. Marine tanks and IFVs moved in tandem with quick paced infantry to systematically purge building after building of insurgent forces. Forcing more than one group of fighters to attempt to flee across the relatively open ground between the buildings towards the bridges along the Raqarah. The result was much as one could expect. Entire fire teams of insurgents being mowed down like corn ready for the harvest.

One such sight, which the eighteen-year-old Lasky bore witness too, was a pair of insurgents breaking from a row house out the back door. Unfortunately for them, a Marine LeTankova was waiting with a whir of its forward mounted .50 cal anti-personal machinegun. The weapon dropped the rear insurgent first, his chest erupting in a firework display of red mist; as for the slightly faster lead insurgent, he would abruptly learn but for a moment that bullets are faster than a man's legs. The stream of rounds sawing through his waist and he toppled over. Screams piercing the ears as the man tried to continue moving with his arms. Hands like feet trying to crawl forward. Only to find himself weighed down by his lower half, held on by the soft weak goop of his digestive tract.

A marine armed with a bolt action, the squad Marksman named Reinald, merely raised his scope and pulled the trigger once. A mercy killing.

The fighting continued unabated as the Marines advanced to the river and traded volumes of fire with the insurgents hunkered on the other side. Marine officers shouted into radios and from above and elsewhere aid arrived in flurries of rockets, precision artillery strikes, ballistic missiles, or the brief throaty whine of engines followed by the detonations of dropped ordinance. Occasionally, it was all topped off by the whirling spat of cannon fire from circling Virgon gunships. The fat four winged gunships spewing anything from infrared tracking missiles to 105mm howitzer mounted into the hull.

The Marines advance continued until suddenly the insurgents melted away into the buildings. Lance Corporal Lasky his platoon was the first across the Raqarah as a result. Moving through the debris strewn streets and burnt out, pockmarked, ground cars strewn across the streets. Pausing only by an alley mouth where he saw a body of one of the fighters. Young, scarcely older than he, with the symbol of the Fadil Fedayeen, crossed swords under an upside down crescent wreath, tattooed on his forehead.

0700 Local TIme
Baharah Market

While the Marines had managed to push further the Taskforce 2-7 was met with stiff resistance outside and around Baharah market. Gunfire ripping through buildings, alleyways, and across rooftops as the troopers of the Virgon Royal Army pressed forward. The commander of the 2-7, the stony faced Major Jerome L'clerc moved from platoon to platoon offering words of encouragement, giving directives, and conferring with the men about their individual platoon and company situations. Tirelessly and with contempt for danger, even standing near the mouth of an alley to look for himself at an enemy LMG position mounted on the second floor of a cafe on the Western side of the Baharah Market square. Rounds zipping and chipping the corners of the buildings around him. Before grapping the radio from his subordinate next to him and began shouting into the receiver.

<<Darkstar, Darkstar, this is 2-7 Actual. We have enemy position at a cafe, LMG nest, with several RPG equipped troops on the rooftop. Western side, three story building, grid mark 4789213 sub grid C. Calling down the thunder. Over.>>

Darkstar, one of the Intelligence CIC rotary craft high above the city swung itself by their position as the response came immediately, <<Darkstar copies on all. Stand by for Thunder. Over."

The Army troopers piling up behind the Major, hugging the buildings, could only sit and wait as a pair of Royal Aerospace Force fast attack planes eerily like a bastardized hybrid of the ancient Su-25 and AC-130 of the 20th and 21st centuries came in from the North. Swinging in the two peppered the rooftop before firing a pair of missiles which blew out the entire store face and collapsed the ceiling, Eastern and Northern walls, and surely killed every insurgent inside.

<<Darkstar. Enemy elimated, mission success.>>

<<Copy that 2-7 Actual. Darkstar returning to stand by pattern>>

The army troopers were about to move forward into the Market square proper when something burst from one of the government warehouses in the central quarter. Prying the metal sheet rooftop in the distance away. The Army troopers could only watch as a humanoid figure rose up and hefted something in its hands. A gun. The gun barked once and a humvee, crew leaping from the vehicle even as it moved, exploded into a shower of shrapnel. Cries of wounded and man-down came over the radio as a second figure rose from another government building, throwing a torrent of fire into the direction of the advancing Marines to the West. Then another rose, and another.

0705 Local Time
HMS Bellerophon, Heisei-class Supercarrier

The CIC was largely dark, only the faint aroma of a sweet tobacco cigar filled the nostrils of one man hovering over the communication suite. His naval cap on and brown service shirt without a single crease. His eyes shaded by a pair of golden wire framed sunglasses. The voice of Darkstar coming over the communication channels with a degree of heightened tension,

<<Combat Suits sighted in central district. Firing on forces advancing into the city. Casualties reported. Four suits occupying central government district. Gen 3 General-Suzuki Tech Combat Suits.>>

"Have military assets fall back to Phase 1 line. Deploy Combat Suits, Ensign."

The communication officer looked back, "Sir, Teams 67 and 101 are deployed groundside already sweeping the Eastern Desert."

"Deploy the 99th. They're completed their training after all."

The communication officer nodded slowly, "Yes, Vice Admiral, and flicked on the inter-ship communications. Speaking rapidly for the pilots of the 99th to ready for combat drop.

Hangar C, Bellerophon
Zhirina

Attention, all 99th Combat Suit Pilots report to your machines. I repeat, prepare for Combat Drop, all pilots report to their combat suits.

The communication droned on as deck chiefs shouted orders and crew members moved the Combat Suits of the 99th from their holding cradles onto the massive hydraulic elevators needed to lift them towards the launch bays. Zhirina moved to her own suit, its white parade paint job long replaced by the mute browns of the arid environment of Khalib. Putting on her helmet which quickly pressurized her body glove suit. She moved to the chest cockpit of her machine and dropped into the seat. The deck hand leaning over on a gallery gave a thumbs up. She responded with a thumbs up. She felt it, the machine whirring to life, its Deuterion-Fusion Reactor spinning awake with the power of a small Sun. Her neural network, synced to the machine, registered among its systems to awaken. The screens around her popping to life, camera feeds blinking live, and with that she gained new eyes. Sensor systems registering green across the board. She gained new ears and senses of touch. With a flex of her legs and arms the mighty machine moved to stand from its arresting cradle. Her cockpit door closed as she followed the movements of a crew member wielding glowing batons. Waving her to the nearest hydraulic elevator. Which, once she stepped onto it, her machine magnetized to the floor. The atmosphere venting back into the ship as pressurized doors came down. Sealing her in.

A light on the right side blinked from red to green. The hydraulic elevator began to move with the awesome engineering power of the ships own reactor, which dwarfed the entire team's combined reactor output by a sizable factor. As the elevator rose, she was met by opening doors revealing the starry expanses of space on the far end of what appeared to be a tunnel.

Moving with muscle twitches-becoming-motorized-movements she turned and gripped the 155mm ACSK-75 Battlerifle mag locked to an arresting arm which had arrived on a conveyer from the armaments deck. Her other weapons she was deploying with, such as the inbuilt Vulan and Autocannons, already prior loaded, beam sabers ready in their holders, energized halberd mag locked to the machines back.

Stepping onto a plate which in turn was attached to a straight line leading out to space she hunched down. Two sizable, thick, Valtitanium plates lifting from the floor to meet the machines heels while the ships CATOBAR system gripped the feet of the war machine.

A light appeared to her left, red, and there she saw a pair of crewmen. Flight launch controllers. While on the screen to her left scrawled mission data. The enemy had four Combat Suits. Gen 3 General Purpose Combat Suits. Equipped with 125mm Battle rifles and melee beam weapons. A surprise to be sure as Zhirina momentarily thought about the conflict she now orbited around.

The Democratic Republic of Khalib had once been a Despotic Monarchy ruled by an offshoot of the Terran House of Saud known as the House of Khalib. A rebellion in the wake of the Seven Year's War had toppled that regime in the late 2370's. Virgon had supported the new Democratic Republic regime of President Ashar ibn Khalasad. Yet, by even 2381 there were problems. Royalist supporters to the House of Khalib wishing for a Theocratic Monarchist State based off the tenets of Neo-Wahhabism had risen. Fighting a guerrilla war that had seen the Democratic regime practically destroyed until the intervention of Virgon in 2386. Now, eight months on, some 200,000 Virgon troops were operating as part of a surge plan to destroy the insurgency completely and solidify the democratic regimes power. Eight months, and all to show for it was a cat and mouse game between Virgon and Democratic backed security forces versus an insurgency that seemingly now possessed Combat Suits? All on a world of fifteen million people that had arrived from the Old Middle East on Earth during the Second Diaspora.

The light flashed orange. The flight controller gave a nod and a thumbs up. "Lieutenant Krystalovna, ready for launch?"

She raised her left hand and gave a thumbs up. Her mech mimicking the motion with only the utmost fraction of a second's delay. The speed of thought. She did not need to see the light flash green to know it was coming. The lurch. The panic of being thrown back into her restraining webbing, of her G-Chair trying to compensate for her body. The massive power of the electro-magnetic catapult of the Bellerophon hurling her forth into the depths of space and towards the planet below. Throwing the pit of Zhirina's stomach against her spine. Blood rushing to her boots, she groaned for a split second until the g forces subsided. Returning Zhirina's mind to focus.

A single thought and her mech slid onto course for the area of operations. Its thruster coming to life to course correct automatically. The rest of her squad were already launching or launched and like a loose cloud of space debris they entered the planet's atmosphere. The hull of her mech heating up ever so slightly as she controlled its descent speed. Breaking into the atmosphere from low orbit she accelerated through the cloud layer and spoke, her suits neural link understanding and opening up a Team wide channel. The rest of the 99th would have got the same information as her.

"99th Team, we are to engage the enemy Combat Suits as priority. ROE for non-Combat Suit opponents is to not shoot unless fired upon."

She scrolled through the still updating information on the enemy Mecha. They were old units, Pre-War. Topped out at speeds 20% slower than their own Mechs and were running older Fusion reactor designs. Apparently, they had managed to hide in the government structures running cold on back up battery until it was their moment to strike. Their armoring was simpler. They wouldn't survive much in the way of heavy Combat Suit fire unless they took hits directly to their chest glacis or shoulder shields. For the enemy mecha possessed twin shoulder shields and appeared squatter and more ungainly than her own. Less humanoid and more like taller squat bipedal crustacean. In their tri-digit hands they gripped their battlerifles. Even as she could see the grid like appearance of the city closing quickly with her descent, she could see the ripping plumes of the enemy mecha's gunfire. Tearing apart buildings and evaporating small homes. Their brown paint jobs like hers making their outlines slightly blurry among the drab buildings.

One of them noticed the 99th and as Zhirina's machine recognized the jamming common with Mecha suit designs, causing pilots to often rely on visuals or close spectrum scopes in battle, she readied her own weapon and fired four rounds from her battle rifles 55 round sickle magazine. Forcing the Northerly mecha to lurch away from the 155mm shells that raced to crash around it.

The 99th had arrived.

[Oblivion2]

Hangar C, Bellerophon
Petros Alexios

"The desire to destroy. To disrupt, to lose control. To rebuild, and then... To tear it down again" The lyrics blasted into Petros eardrums followed by the heavy melody of the lead guitarist's riff. The young officer had been in the Hanger Bay working with the Tech crews on some calibrations to his Mech that he felt would improve hand actuation performance by four or five percent when the Standby Order had been given. It stood to reason then that he was one of the first ready for drop- unlike others on the Team, Petros wasn't particularly sociable and preferred the company of music and machines to his fellows. It also didn't help that his assignment here had only begun a week earlier, and he had spent much of his time overseeing the transportation and pre-combat checks for his machine. He was new to the team, the son of refugees, and generally more quiet than not- hardly an ideal combination for getting to know people, so why bother?

I'll bend it backwards until it breaks. Capacitors roaring inside my brain. Agent of chaos, call me a scam, I'm gonna take out the corporate men The singer cried out as Petros slipped into his combat suit and checking all it's various seals and flaps. Everything checked out on his end. With a wave Petros had his weapons technician, a man named Thomas Kinsberg give his suit a second look over- if his cockpit breached he'd need everything working perfect if he wanted a snowballs chance in hell of surviving. Kinsberg's deft fingers worked over the seals, patting the much younger man hard on the shoulder. "Looking good, Sir." He said with a toothy smile and bright green eyes, "This is your first live combat drop isn't it?"

"Start the fire, Start the fire!"

Petros nodded, he couldn't hear the Tech over his music, but he was a fair hand at reading lips. "You'll do fine. Just keep calm and follow the Lieutenant's lead. No need for medal chasing, eh?" Another nod from Petros before he settled his helmet over his head after removing his ear buds and made his way to the hydraulic lift to his Mech Suit. It was tall, and humanoid in its appearance. He could see her reactor had been warming while he was suiting up as her lights and capacitors were being cycled in a final check. She- that is the DA-22 Huscarl had recently been painted from her dark forest green configuration to browns and tans to better blend in with the dry and urban environment they were likely to find themselves in. He admired the stance of the suit, proud like a warrior ought to look. The ERA bricks added a little touch of Eastern Terran Tank design to it as well, or perhaps gave the mech the appearance of wearing lamellar armour. Either way, Petros couldn't help but smile. He'd more or less designed the Mech himself after spending hours in it's predecessor model the Vikingr. An aging suit, the Vikingr still managed to be something of a workhorse. Petros had identified possibilities to refit the model and bring it in line with the performance of 4th Gen Suits and had submitted them as part of a thesis paper while still in the Academy. Apparently someone was impressed as he had found himself assigned to a similarly modified mech suit shortly after graduating.

The hydraulic lift stopped and Petros popped the hatch into the cockpit and slid in. He flipped a few switches manually, the last time he'd need to before he essentially became One with his Mech. That had been part of the reason Petros had spent the better part of nine years in a military academy- He was Singularity Capable. For whatever reason, his brain could handle the strain of coupling with that of the mechanical subsystems of a Mech Suit. He felt a slight shiver of pain as the mech interfaced with his nervous system and the taste of orange Jell-o ran over his taste buds. A bug, the engineers assured him, and a harmless one at that. Some pilots reported other symptoms when they first connected with their suit like pain or brief hallucinations. For Petros, it was the taste and texture of Orange Jell-o on his tongue for but a brief moment. Once it cleared he sent a mental command down to the Deuterion-Fusion Reactor to go from idle to fully online.

Reactor... Online. The Mech reported softly to some part of Petros' brain. Sensors... Online. Darkness was replaced by sight and he saw Lieutenant Zhirina and her suit being lifted up to the catapult. Out of the corner of his vision he saw Kinsberg wave at him and sign for a status report. The Huscarl's hand lifted and formed an 'symbol' as Petros continued to run his last checks. His pulse laser capacitors came back Green, as did his missile tubes and autocannons. His ammunition had been loaded to mission specifications and the anti-personnel pods attached to hardpoints on the Mechs Legs came back Green as well. Weapons, online. The mech breathed in his mind. Kinsberg gave him the ok to walk towards the CATOBAR. Petros signed 'Ok' back and began to follow the directions of a pair of technicians with light batons, guiding his ponderous path. The music kicked back on, fed to him mentally through his connection to the 'Mech, right where he had left off.

"Come join the dance of destruction, Valor, sweet as a kiss. Set it off and it will never stop. Come join the dance of destruction, Valor, sweet as a kiss. Set it off and it will never stop And it will never stop." Petros sighed and allowed the tension in his muscles to bleed away as the music came back. He was so nervous he'd hardly noticed he was shivering. The music quieted a moment as the Mech whispered, Auxiliary Equipment... Online. All Systems nominal. The auxiliary equipment in question was the Byzantium Industries Orbital Operations Kit. Without it, he couldn't safely enter orbit and land on the planets' surface as the Vikingr had been designed with exclusively ground duties in mind, a gap in the platform's portfolio that Petros had made adjustments for. Petros stepped onto the hydraulic launcher up to the catapult and was lifted into position. "Ensign Alexios, ready for launch?" A voice called out on the radio, cutting his music for the moment. "All systems Green." Was Petros' reply, his body tensing once more. "Standby for Launch."

Petros watched as the Lieutenant was launched out into space ahead of him and then the Catapult reset. A light went from red to green, signaling he could step foot onto the catapult and be maglocked into place. Another red light winked on. "Pilot, ready?" The Voice asked over comms again. "Ready." Petros replied, more confidently than he felt. He'd trained on the launcher many times as a cadet, but he still hated the damn thing, and it felt different going into combat for the first time. The light went from red, to amber, then to green. There was a clang followed by the sudden pressure of absurd acceleration. "JESUS CHRIIIIIIST!" Petros shouted as he was crushed against the acceleration couch and his mech was launched into the void. He was glad he'd had the sense to cut his radio a half second before launch. He waited a full two seconds after exiting the ship before firing his thrusters and resuming his music again. Entering orbit however made any semblance of listening to music impossible as the roar of his heat shielding struggling against the oncoming atmosphere made thinking of most anything impossible. Once he had entered the atmosphere and his sensors became operable once more he saw the Lieutenant streaking towards the ground with her thrusters firing. Petros made for the outside edges of the buildings as he came down a half kilometer to Zhirina's right flank and activated his EWAR suite, it wasn't particularily powerful, but it would make him a harder target to lock onto. Once he'd hit ground he ejected the thruster pack and pulled his monomolecular axe from the hardpoint in the small of the Mech's back- the thruster pack wasn't rated to move a mech as large as the Huscarl in atmo which made it little more than dead weight out here. "CS-99 Actual," Petros said over the squad channel, "This is 04. Successful landing achieved and moving in on the right flank to support."

He kicked his Mech forward into a 80 kilometer per hour run and popped off chaff ahead of his position so he could better enter the cluster of buildings and engage the enemy up close. A series of rounds streaked past his moving suit and Petros cursed. He'd forgotten to activate his energized armour as he landed and had thusly nearly lost out on a significant piece of his defensive armament. He toggled the system on mentally and took note of his reactor's increased heat output, which in turn began to activate the Triplex system installed in his Mech. The suit performance began to feel smoother as the Muscylmer strands in his mech began to engorge and work more efficiently in response to the heat. His mech turned while still on the move and fired both of his heavy pulse lasers at his attacker. The shot wasn't especially good, having hit his targets most armoured sections, but it still managed to melt away a layer of armour on his target's torso and force it to revaluate its stance on engaging the Huscarl as Petros got his Mech behind the cover of the buildings.

[Parcia]

Hanger Deck C
Belophoron

Having been on combat alert for the last...day or so, Mathius "Bigs" Bigsby had hunkered down in his mech awaiting the call. He hated ship board berthing with a passion and spent most of his time asleep in his mech rather then his bunk, having gotten comfortable catching some shut eye in his G-chair while his pit chief, a 20 something young women who had caught his eye more then once was tuning some of his fire control system per his request.

It was her throwing a instruction pamphlet at his face that woke him from his dozing. "Hey, bigs, wake up, alert just went out over the IMC, 99th's deploying and I think I just saw your team lead launch."

Cursing, Bigs sat up and went about sealing his suit and going through his check list while his pit chief packed up her gear and made for the hatch above him. "Any reason why where dropping now Clara?" She shrugged as she climbed over him and his seat in the cramped cockpit and used the top of his G-seat to heft her self up and out the hatch, stopping only to flash him a smile and a pat on his helmet as he sealed it. "Couldn't tell yea man, they don tell me shit, but considering your combat mechs, odds are your dealing with mechs. Good luck cowboy."

He smiled, thanking the polarized visor for hiding his light blush as the hatch closed and sealed shut with a hiss and he went about going live. "Deck chief this is 99 tac 1 tac 3, go for APU start and reactor warm up."
"Roger, APUs already hot, hit the switch."
"Roger."
Reaching over with a padded glove, flipped up the covered switch and flicked the old school metal circuit switch.

As soon as he did the various lights and instrument panels of his RX5-A Raven II blinked to life as the APU fed power to the suit. "APU's green, going for boot up." "Roger, standing by."

Another flick of a switch and the onboard controller begin its quick boot up, with the distinctive Eagalmoss brand logo appearing on his HUD before it went through its boot up with a flash of several test images. This would continue as he would go about flipping switches, inputting commands with the small keypad off to his left and testing controls before the controller began its final check, the femininely synthetic voice going down the list of important items.

"REACTOR ONLINE."
"SENSORS ONLINE."
"WEAPONS ONLINE."
"LIFE SUPPORT ONLINE."
"ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL."

"Deck Chief 99 tac 1 tac 3 is green."
"Roger Rabbit, deck is clear, proceed to lane one and good luck. Give em hell for us."

With that he depressed the right pedal and the lumbering avian form of his mech lurched forward, the whine of the VLA-R35 DT Fusion turbine fading to a rumbling hum as the mech stabilized and waltzed from its resting cradle and towards the flight deck. Settling in to a standing position over the launch rails he input a second command and the Mech crouched down, hunkering in place as mechanical locks slid in to place and he awaited the shooters command.

"1 3 stand by, bridge want's a final weapons check, over."
Making sure to mute his mic, Bigsby cursed. "Come the fuck on, I'm gonna be late to the party."
Keying his mic, he responded. "Roger that."

A few moment passed as the CAG boss came over the mic and spoke. "99 1 3, give us a weapons check, start with the cannon." With a sigh he thumbed over the switch on his stick and held the trigger. With the master arm on the cannon wouldn't fire, but the 6 barrels whirred to life in less then a second and spun. "Roger, cannon's live and Huntress reports good ammo feed." "Roger, Missile next." With a flick of the second switch on his stick the FGM-223 tracking system kicked in and began looking for targets, though finding none as everything in sensor range was IFF tagged as friendly.
"Roger, Huntress reports good track, you want the pea shooters next or can we get this party started? over."
A moment of silence as the CAG boss was likely cursing his name before he responded. "Negative, check thruster pack and report to the shooter, Kingpin out."

A sigh of relief as his coms were switched back over to the deck shooter and Bigs started his thruster pack and waited. "Right, burners look good, go for launch when ready."
Signaling his response, he checked his harness and secured what loose items there where before he opened coms again.

"Board's green, I have good ends, good highs, good lows, no out lights. Ready in the back? Here we go." With that, he flashed a thumbs up to the shooter who nodded, kneeled, and made that all to familiar signal with his hands.

In an instant he was rocketing forward, the launch rails flying his suit forward in excess of 7 Gs while his thrusters were at full and in a second instant he was free flying off the deck and starting his decent. The Raven II didn't need any extra kit to do low orbit drops, the nanolaminte armor was designed to allow for it at the cost of some of the heavier protection the heavier mechs in his unit had, and the thruster made for good braking burns as he dropped from several miles up. This had been something he trained for specifically and as the Raven hit denser atmosphere he started his first of several braking burns to slow his decent.

As he dropped the battlefield below came in to view and he began to pick up errant signals and radio intercepts. He felt a ping of annoyance at the realization he was damn near last and flicked open his coms. "99 Actual this is Rabbit, drooping like a rock at the speed of mach fuck, gonna jam the air and hang around the outskirts and catch any runners, over."

As he hit around 15,000 feet he started his final burn and finally extended his legs for impact. Last burn was always the hardest and while he didn't need too, he always red lined the thrusters and damn near cause a flame out just to make sure he wouldn't pancake on the dirt. The whole suit shook and rumbled as he pulled the full 13 second burn before the thruster pack cut out a few meters above ground and he impacted, the whole mech violently shaking with loud metallic thud. His legs having fully crouched and compressed to disperse the impact he slowly stood as the dust cloud began to settle and he flipped the master arm off.

He stayed for just a few moments to make sure he hadn't landed in another wedding and began to make strides down the small side street he had landed in and flipped on his suits comprehensive signals jamming gear, the quiet electric whine as the system went live and any unit not using a Virgon Military channel or wasn't hardened enough fell silent, then quickly drifted in to the static before a selection of tunes began to play. "99 Actual, Rabbit reports jamming is live and Radio Van Zandt is on air.."

Opening up the throttle made for the outer perimeter of the city while keeping his eyes open and his guns on a swivel for any targets of opportunity.

[Revlona]

Democratic Republic of Khalib,
Fallmorah City
March 22nd, 2387

Ensign Alexia Beurvo, 99-1

7 Gs shoved Alexia roughly against the back of her cockpits seat as her Sicarius 2 Mobile Suit was launched from HMS Bellerophons hanger C. She had been on standby with the rest of Team so had been in conversation with her brother Aiden when the call to arms had come through. They had both dropped the conversation immediately, exchanging a hug before running to their suits. She still wasn't sure how she felt about her twin brother being in the unit with her, apart of her was of course relieved to have him around, she loved him and was happy to have a known figure in the unit. The other parts of her where unhappy, she was suspicious that he had joined the RCSD to keep an eye on her, which was unnecessary. So she had been somewhat chilly towards him, never ignoring him but still being cold.

Those thoughts were erased from her head as the Gs subsided, her somehow still open eyes flicking over the information displayed to her, she came to a quick decision as she began her descent towards the planet. Her maneuvering burners came online and changed her trajectory just a fraction, but it would be enough for what she wanted. As the distance closed between her mech and the ground she visually saw the Lt. open fire towards the now visible mechs, their jamming going up as they spotted the 99th.

With her afterburners roaring, the Sic-2 painted in the dark and light browns of Khalib hit the ground running. Her decision to use her thrusters during her descent had landed her a little farther away from the enemy than the others and so she had immediately closed the distance some. Alexia keyed the teams radio channel and said.

<<99-Actual this is 99-1, on the ground and in the fight over>>

Her suit could only be spotted by the naked eye, its jamming and countermeasures would assure of that even against thermals and the like. That was at least what the specs on her suit claimed, she wasn't sure how true that was but its not like it mattered much to begin with in her mind. The naked eye was all any enemy pilot would need in this situation, a building sized mech running faster than most vehicles wouldn't be a problem. Stopping that mech would be.

"That's good enough," Alexi muttered to herself as the distance between the mechs closed, her own systems helped by the information fed to her from W02 Bigs suit. Her suit fell into a crouch, shortening its profile behind the large arm shield on its left arm. Her rifle, a 254mm Krupp-OTO, came to rest in the groove specifically made for it atop the shield. She had already decided on her first target, the far left Gen-3 mech in the formation of four was angled towards her in a way which would be beneficial, a good hit would go through the side of its "chest" armor and all the way through the other side, hopefully killing the pilot and if not damaging vital internals.

Her suits and weapons tracking were among the best in the unit if not the best. That was at least what she had been told by her team of mechanics. Her own personal skill only added to her suits capabilities. She took a deep breath and sighted on her target, its weapon chattering away as it dodged back and forth, attempting to remain hard to hit as her teammates fired at them. She exhaled and thumbed her cockpits trigger, her suit doing the same and putting a 254mm APFSDS round downrange towards her target.

She didn't watch as the round flew as she fired again, perhaps a second and a half between the two rounds as she lined the second shot up. She moved then, her suit rising from its crouch and sprinting at an angle towards the combat, her left arms shield covering a large portion of her suits body as she ran. This didn't stop her from seeing the outcome of her rounds though, the cameras on her suit allowing her to see as she moved.

The first round had hit as she had intended, though whatever damage it had done had not been enough. It was the second round which had killed the enemy mech. Either the mech itself or the pilot had jerked to the left after the first round, trying to bring its more heavily armored shoulder to bear against whatever was shooting it. The enemy combat suit turning and the second round impacting lower than the first, this round hit something hard within the mech and ricocheted up, taking it through more internals and out the top of the mech. She wasn't sure if she had killed the pilot or had just hit something juicy within the suit, either way it stopped moving, its forwards momentum shoving it forward through several buildings before it came to a rest, smoke billowing from its chest as it escaped from a fire within.

<<This is 99-1, one down>>

Alexia broadcasted, a grin affixing her face as she began to track the other enemy suits.

[Kasa Tkoth Sphere]

Fallmorah City

Lucille Aitner hated a lot of things.

Now, being flung off the side of a carrier in low orbit and sent on a ballistic arc to the planet below was something she hated in one way, the very common way, where she made herself stop thinking about it and let the moment pass by like all the others in her career. Even with the T630 lying on its back, secured to a half-football of a disposable heat shield, and exposed to vacuum everywhere except the part that mattered, she could zone out and take the plasma-induced comms blackout as a sign to breathe and relax, to the extent it was possible under the gees. She'd done this jump before, under all kinds of conditions. She hated the overturned feeling in her stomach left over from the catapult, and she hated thinking about how fast she was falling, unpowered, just like the space capsuleers in the old days — that altitude number was dropping fast. It was a hate she could leave behind.

But when the sky above turned from black to blue, and the drogue chutes unfurled from the heat shield to block out the view from the hull cameras, her new kind of hatred was laced with fear. The other pilots, with their flying Suits or their descent packs, could weave through the AA and clear their own landing zones. The T630 could do neither of those things, and if something cut her chutes free she'd meet a nasty bounce against her seat a few seconds later, with who knew how many damaged components on the Suit to boot. She didn't stop to consider scenarios any worse than that. This was a hate she had to power through. Thirty seconds to landing. Twenty. Ten. She was safer with every tick, just one more — then the heatshield crumpled beneath her, the clamps released, and she exhaled in one great heave as her mission took over inside her head. Damnit, Lucy, move. Move.

There were always some switches to flip. FUS-MAIN to BUS 1, SRP to AUTO, TVGS to ON.

"99-Actual... 99-7 reporting," she simply said, with one of her usual split-second pauses, but with her voice clear as if she'd hadn't just gone through the ordeal, "I'm coming around the left." Petros had said he was taking the right flank, after all. This much was obvious.

BAT-KEEP to OFF, DTPL to HIGH, SURGE-CONT to MAX.

Her fingers shook off the continued numbness of reentry shock as they dashed across the massive panels, and then wrapped around the control sticks with her wrists comfortably settled below. She pushed one stick ahead and tilted it to start the standing sequence. The T630 stood up first by raising its upper body atop its pelvis, like a human sitting upright from a prone position, and then bending one knee back to lift its torso off the ground. One final step back brought it upright, and put Lucille's eyes right around window level to a nearby building's third floor. Not that that was the only thing to see; the targeting HUD took its turn to boot up next, orange circles and arcs sprinting across the fake "cockpit" panel to the right places.

Right pedal down. The suit began to move ahead; its gait was just a walk at first, but the bobbing and squeaking of her seat's shock absorbers picked up over time as it accelerated to a smooth run. But the near-forty-ton brick of a mech was far from perfect, as the system diagnostics, scrolling past in dense rows of white-on-black text in a little console off to the side, confirmed. Oh — oh, there's too much wobble on the ankle joints. Thought they told me they picked that up... She brought her left hand off a stick to punch in 000 under GYRO-L, eyes never leaving the road she was headed down. Her peripheral vision confirmed it: the warnings had stopped piling up. It was a quick hack, but these kinds of things worked most of the time.

Her full attention shifted back to the direction her eyes were pointing just in time, as a suit pouring smoke careened across her vision a couple blocks away, coming clean out of one building to punch through another across the street and continue on its merry way. Alexia's proud declaration calmed her nerves just enough to get her to hold back on leaping to the gun controls. There were enough things to keep track of — the map, the infrared sights, the error console, the readiness of her guns — and she already hated having to think about all of that, too. Did Alexia get this kind of overload? She was just good at what she did. Fresh unit, enemy bringing in Mobile Suits out of nowhere, and she had taken one of them down right off the bat.

Lucille quenched her jealousy, or at least tried her best to. "Thanks," she responded over the radio, "that one was pretty close. I'm on my way to sweep the vicinity... lure out some reinforcements." Where one suit went down, more were sometimes ready to take revenge.

Now, combat... her fear of combat brought about a whole new stew of hate. This time, it felt justified.

[Sotoak]

__________________________________

__________________________________

VIRGONESE ARMED FORCES-tHE_bLo0dY_N9nEtY_N9nTH(1).MOV
DATE // MARCH 22nd, 2387
LOCATION // ORBITAL SYNC ABOVE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF KHALIB, FALLMORAH CITY
PERSONNEL ASSINGED // Ensign Mihaly Albrecht Richthofen Ignatius Raphael A. Shilage, 99th Mobile Suit, Royal Armed Forces
MISSION // ELIMINATE REBELS
__________________________________

[ Mission Request Received ]

[ Calculations Complete }

[ Begin System Reboot]

[ Rebooting... ]

[ Rebooting... ]

[ Rebooting... ]

[ Reboot Complete ]

[ Begin Systems Check]

[ Weapon Online ]

[ Thrusters Online ]

[ Flaps Online ]

[ ECM/Targeting Pod Online ]

[ Systems Evaluation: 107% Efficient ]

[ Motion Sensors: Pilot Detected ]

[ Bio-Scanners Verifying ]

[ Pilot Idenity Verified ]

[ Mihaly Richtofen, welcome aboard ]

[ Open Hatch ]

__________________________________

The hatch opened with the exhale of stale air like the final gasp of a dying man to reveal the cockpit underneath. A leather indented seat surrounded by all sorts of electronics that could be crammed into the small cockpit protected by the armored windshield. All the screens at the moment were all black save for a single dot in the middle that slowly faded in and out to show they were almost done in the process.

In and out. In and out. In and out. In and out.

Mihaly narrowed his eyes as he watched this. He did not consider himself a perfectionist. Nobody could or would ever be. Those who claimed to be perfect in their crafts were the greatest failures of them all for they had decided that they could improve nor learn no more. By all means, they had given up on their reason to live. And by extension, given their right to life.

How many aces out there claimed to be perfect?

He would see.

The reflection of his brunette hair reflected off the screens as he settled down. Mihaly stared at them as if he was in the hall of mirrors, dozens of black polished surfaces staring right back at him. Well-bred stock. Clearly not anything like the dirty commoners who never paid attention to their appearances nor held pride in their natural-born gifts. He had theorized and had errant thoughts over the past few weeks, or rather in some ways feared, that his birth had not been entirely natural. Genetic editing at conception wasn't impossible. He didn't place it above his family or father to stoop that low despite what they claimed was pure Shilage genes in a "perfect" son. Mihaly had chosen to forget it. Why did it even matter how he was created, the circumstances of his birth, and the expectations of the family he had fled? All that mattered was his present and future actions.

Though it was strange how despite decades of "pure" breed, no inbreeding defects had been noted.

He sighed and shook his head. No more time to ponder on it. Orders had come down for the 99th to directly intervene. Already he could feel his heart starting to rise in his chest. A sense of almost childish excitement and anticipations took over the boy. This had been the combat he had been craving for. None of the simulations or all the live-fire training in the world could even come close to anticipating the feelings now running through his veins like boiling water. Mihaly took a deep practiced breath in response. Despite his issues with his family, he was still a Shilage. And Shilages are not "childish." The time for waiting was over. His time was now.

"Protege nos qui vitam frugalem agimus," he began to recite. A prayer from old earth.

The navigation GPS systems were the first that came to life, lights flickering as it updated its positions according to their orbiting world and the onslaught of data from the ship's computing core. Green overlays flashed on the screen. Grids impose themselves over 3D mountains and rivers. Distances were measured and the most efficient flight path was devised. Mihaly double and triple-checked them with paper documents he kept in a slot beside the seats. Some mistakes with the terrain, a ridgeline that had eluded sensors and data updates. He made the necessary rectifications with a few adjustments to data allowance parameters.

"O terra nostra, dona nobis perpetua bona,"

The targeting pods were the next to come online. Displayed in simplistic but sturdy displays just to the right of the cockpit's seat they showed the ammo account of the current weaponry equipped and firing solutions being factored in from the continuous flow of information. The lasering systems on the tip of the pods ocellated in their ball-bearings and blasted off several harsh bolts into the hanger bay at the wall. Rivers of numbers and mathematics flowed by at such volume on the screens that even a theoretically experienced man such as him found it hard to keep up with.

"O calida lux quae regulat matutinam quietem,"

The last awake was the control shaft between the leg wells. The safety trigger flicked red to show it was activated. He gripped it tightly with the gloves of this modified flight suit before making several maneuvers with it. His engines of course. The last time he'd even let them flare-up in the hanger the technicians had given Mihaly a good dressing down. That he promptly dismissed. He was their pilot. They should be thankful that he had even allowed them to touch his Mobile Suit. He glanced out the armored cockpit's bubble window as the ailerons and flaps responded perfectly. At least even if the technicians didn't show him the respect of his class, they still were sufficient in their expected duties.

Soon the small cockpit was filled with the sounds of data and of machinery now all at full performance.

Mihaly flicked a button on the control panel and the cockpit dropped, sealing itself with a hiss as climate control blasted away to test the strength of the seal. Soon the stale air was purged in favor of a cool refreshing one more fitting for someone of his skill. He gave a thumbs up to the Air Marshal on the flight deck waving a pair of blinking lights as he directed the suit to trundle downwards.

He adjusted the thrusters slightly. Even that slight movement caused the aircraft to start to vibrate ever so minutely. A novice would be able to understand just in a second the power of the engines and the sleek engineering required to create the airframe around which it was based. The SU-30VF "Flanker" was truly a work of art. There could be no other way to say it. Ground, air, void domination all in one package bristling with the best weapons and systems the Kingdom could afford. Mihaly knew that he deserved nothing less than the Flanker as he rolled it down into the launch hanger proper.

A moment for final checks.

All green.

"99-Actual, beginning takeoff procedures. ETA... well if I go full-burn about a minute or two," he stated casually as he strapped the oxygen mask over his face and lowered the visor of his helmet.

"Lead Flight Tower, 99-5, Hanger 26, ready for takeoff."

"99-5, Hanger 26, cleared for takeoff." the response came back over the comms. He could hear the busy work in the background. Clearly not a slow moment in the tower.

"Cleared for takeoff Hanger 26, 99-5" Mihaly responded back. "Opening hatches."

Shutters peeled back along both sides of the deck, and hydraulic doors yawned underneath the cradles, revealing the massive void of infinite black with only an occasional white speck in the far far distance to gather a sense of scale. It always took his breath away no matter how much he hid it. To see it from the ground was one thing, to only have glass between you and it was another. The next frontier for humanity and a way to break away from the shackles of the earth. If there was a future for all mankind he had decided long ago that they must break the shackles of the balls of dirt called worlds to take to this new world that was worthy for all of them. A new evolutionary stage of humanity if you will. He looked at his scanners as they detected in the long-range a nearby asteroid hurling through space. Interesting.

But enough of his ideals.

He was a pilot and he had a Kingdom to serve.

Mihaly pushed the lever forwards and the engines began to whirr loudly as they began to properly awake from their slumber.

"Flight Tower, 99-5. Execute." he radioed in.

"99-5. We have launched execute. Set to release clampers. Count off from three. Three, two-"

There was a lurch and a series of concussive bangs.He pushed the lever all the way forwards and suddenly the walls of the launch hanger passed by him in a blur as he was launched into the cold void. Outside the ships of the Kingdom sat in orbit over the city.

"99-Actual, this is 99-5, I have launch. Entering atmosphere. ETA? Let's set up a challenge and say one minute." Mihaly chuckled as he made sure his route of descent was clear of ships before flipping several safeties off. The robotic voice of the SU-30VF came up with warnings but he silenced that as well. Just him and his machine right now above his target. He could hear the whine of the engines vibrate through the cockpit. He gripped the controls tightly.

"Dormientem illuminat, o caelum nostrum," The final verse. It was now time.

He slammed the thrust controls forward and like a speeding dart the SU-30VF hurled through space. Mihaly was crushed into the back of his seat, his head bouncing off the leather headset. The forces were incredible. It felt like at any moment his bones would crumble, his lungs collapsed, and his heart pop like a pus-filled blister. His skull felt like it might suddenly collapse in on itself at any moment. His eyeballs retract and fall into their sockets. He almost bit his tongue off. The taste of blood filled his mouth. Every screen was red and blaring something. The ships became blurs then distant specks. The enormity of the planet began to swallow him up in its vastness. Flames began to appear across the heatshields of his craft as he entered the atmosphere though he made several adjustments to make sure he didn't turn into a burning wreck.

Like a comet, he shrieked towards the earth.

And the entire time he had a shit-eating grin on his face. This was it! This was the combat he had been craving the entire time! To joust a foe and to find if he was truly worthy of inheriting the legacy!

"The Hero always arrives fashionably late," he said over the channels even though the effort to do so was a monumental effort. Despite the climate control, he was breaking a sweat just from the effort of his bravado. "T-this is 99-5 actual, entering the battlefield."

Fifty kilometers from the ground and fifty to the south of the city he began to ease on the thrusters finally exercising caution as he switched his fighter from void to atmospheric mode. Air flaps jutted out and brakes extended to gradually slow him down until he leveled his craft just above the hills, thrusters skimming the ground and throwing sand and dust everywhere.

He took a moment to analyze the battlefield as logs and comms came into his cockpit. Lieutenant Zhirina. ROE was to target the mobile suits themselves. Boring. Maybe he would do a few reckless fly-bys to provoke the rebel's anti-air fire. That way he had a perfect excuse for some fun if the enemy Mobile Suits went down too fast. Petros had landed too. He wasn't subtle but at the very least he made move into the city. Maybe he'd draw some fire for his lack of elegance. He was a big man with big shields, he could take it. The Princess had noted her first kill and that made Mihaly scowl. The honor of the first kill should have belonged to him. Never mind that he wouldn't allow himself to be undone by her of all people. Lucille? He didn't think of her at all. He didn't wish to waste his attention on someone with no passion. Those were worst than the "perfect" ones. Why bother living if you had no passion at all? Just the thought of her being allowed in the 99th infuriated him. The power of a nation was the will of its people, what use did they have for those with no will in their armed forces? And Bigs-

The radar went red. Lock. Already his eyes scanned the rooftops rapidly approaching. Hand-held probably or something ground forces missed. He cursed as he popped chaff, white-hot shards of metal strips flying into the air with miniature explosives, and went defensive by plunging towards the ground. The chaff way-laid the Stella-8 missile by confusing its sensors in all directions causing it to plunge to the earth to detonate in one of the houses. He spotted the source, distinct shapes on a cooling roof now dropping a launcher and starting to run. Prey shouldn't escape that easily and the 30mm secondary cannons sparked into life. Several shots went wide, crashing into surrounding buildings as he quickly adjusted his aim onto that roof. From his cameras he saw the figures stop being figures, disappearing into puffs of red mist as the rooftop collapsed all around him. There could have been civilians in there. Mihaly didn't particularly care. Under ROE he had only fired back when fired upon. A missile would have been appreciating the response but that would likely have leveled the entire building. As for as he was concerned he was being merciful. Either way, he was covered legally he was sure.

He was now barely skimming the rooftops. Any higher and he'd risk drawing further fire. He'd normally just keep popping flares but something about the fact the enemy had mobile suits told him that maybe that wasn't the only trick up the sleeves. He took risks. Just not suicidal risks.

The feeling of scraping so close to possible death was exciting but it lowered his scope range.

<<This is 99-5, requesting that all 99th Units in the area designate their targets with laser or whatever targeting equipment you have. I'll bring the hellfire. Lend ol' Mihaly a hand won't yah?>> he said on unit-wide comms as he rapidly began to approach the combat scene, thrusters screaming over the city.

[Segmentia]

Hangar C ready room, Bellerophon
March 22nd, 2387

Junior Lieutenant Josephine Dupont de Bourbon Fujiwara Golikov had been reading over some older reports about both the rise of the democratic government of Khalib and the rebellion it had been fighting for the past six years. Information was the key to any successful military action, even as low down as squad sized engagements. If, and when, the 99th Combat Suit Team deployed, every little detail might help. She was just taking a sip of her coffee, an expensive blend she had grown to like rather than the dregs that were served in the ship's mess halls, when the call came. Closing the reports and standing, Josephine made her way out into the hanger proper unhurriedly. There was no point in her rushing to her own combat suit, considering the extra final look over the massive machine needed. As she walked she watched as the maintenance crews rushed to complete their final checks, and her fellow pilots moving to their mechs. They were an…interesting bunch. To say the least.

Josephine put them from her mind though, as she reached her own mech. She couldn’t help but look and smile at the massive machine. The MCS-SH-03X ‘Gotterdammerung’ was the largest mech in the squad, the largest mech in use in Virgon as far as Josephine knew. Towering at just over 30 meters in height and weighing over a hundred tonnes, the super heavy mech was more a heavy weapons and heavy assault platform more than anything. It was painted in the muted tans and browns of their expected area of operation.

“Almost set, ma’am.” The crew chief, Anton Borisov, said as he walked over to her, signing off on one of the check-lists. “We’re securing the munitions right now.” He informed her. Josephine smiled as she finished her coffee, collapsing the folding cup and sliding it into one of her suit pockets.

“My compliments to the crew, chief.” She said as she started making her way to the elevator that would take her up to the boarding gantry, chief Borisov following her.

“You have the standard load out of ammunition for the 280 and the missile and rocket pods. We’ve sorted out that calibration issue with the beam carbine as well, it should be running at full capacity now.” Borisov explained to her as the elevator shot upwards.

“And that, Chief Borisov, is why I have the best service crew on the ship.” Josephine said as she stepped off the elevator. Charisma came naturally to her, part of her noble bearing. Borisov and another tech, Bertrand, helped her into the cockpit, Borisov handing her her helmet. Josephine gracefully flicked all systems on to fully active before strapping herself in, Borisov and Bertrand double checking the restraints.

“Munitions are secured, you’re ready to go, ma’am. Good hunting down there.” Borisov said. Josephine slipped her helmet on.

“We shall see about the hunting, Chief. I’d be surprised if there was any good sport to be had down there.” It was an arrogant, self assured reply, but her crew expected nothing less from a noble, and she would hate to disappoint them. Borisov grinned and gave her a thumbs up as the heavily armored pilot hatch hissed shut.

Launching from the Bellerophon was routine, Josephine prepared for the G’s knocking her back into her seat. She remained calm during it all, passing through the atmosphere, hurtling towards the ground. She fired the few thrusters that the Gotterdammerung had to slow her descent and deploy the parachutes that would see her to the ground safely. Her mech was simply too heavy to rely on thrusters alone to prevent it from pancaking into the ground. She shifted her descent vector, aiming to land outside the city as much as she could.

Gotterdammerung landed as gracefully as it possibly could, and Josephine set about her work. “99-Actual, 99-2 reporting as on station. Heavy fire support is online.” She announced, her tone clear and posh.

Josephine launched two of her UAVs even as she began maneuvering her mech towards better ground, weapons at the ready to directly or indirectly attack any targets that may present themselves.

[Imperialisium]

Battle of Fallmorah
Operation Geist
Democratic Republic of Khalib

Khalib at face value is but a giant dirt ball that when not covered by rocks is covered with seas of sand. Inhospitable, little water, and forcing colonists into a delicate balance of agricultural clinging to isolated lakes, rivers, and small dead seas. Yet, humanity has come here, and why? Khalib is a gold mine. Not just any kind of gold either. Black gold. Khalib and its deserts sit on an ocean of precious hydrocarbons. Methane reservoirs the size of old Terran nations, oil fields that would have swathed across the Old Mid-West of long dead America. For while non-fossil fuel powered machines and cities exist on various wealthy worlds, Humanity has never been able to completely make do without oil or methane. From certain plastics necessary for modern society, to cheap auxiliary fuel resources. Both are commodities that give Khalib its inflated prize value. Thats the real reason why we're here. Not whatever Deladier [Prime Minister of Virgon] says in some reheared public address.-General Markusz Tadeusz of the Virgonese Army, Commander of the Royal Army on Khalib.


Zhirina

Zhirina crouched behind a set of commercial high rises as she traded what amounted to the Combat Suit equivalent of 'potshots' with the three enemy suits that had appeared. No intel brief forecasted the Insurgents would be able to build or get their hands on Combat Suits. Someone made a big mistake. Zhirina thought-leaned, and her machine mimicked the move in real time. Trigger squeeze. This time two shots. One nailing an enemy mech in the shoulder joint. Disabling its right arm. The enemy pilot having the sense to duck behind one of the central city high rises. Her communications were alight with the arriving 99th behind her. Bigsby was running EWAR and making for the perimeter of the city.

The Army Special Forces unit code named Eagle's Nest coming over the comms that they have clear line of sight of Bigsby and everyone else. Josephine also was in the outer perimeter ready to deliver heavy fire. While Mihaly was above and Petros moved up on Zhirina's own flank. Alexia meanwhile had claimed the first official kill. Zhirina took it at face value. First blood to the 99th. She took no sense of outlandish bravado or glory seeking like some of her peers. But that could be chalked up to upbringing as a ward of the state. Pushing those thoughts aside she blink clicked the two icons popping up on her HUD that joined the airspace above the city. Josephine's UAVs.

Immediately, she could now see through their camera 'eyes.'.

"Josephine, cover Petros, fire for area effect. Petros flank right. Alexia, shoot if they pop their heads up. Mihaly--."

<<99-Actual, be advised Darkstar is registering unusual activity to West by South-West>>.

Zhirina turned to the right and craned her neck at the updating geo-positioning map interface. The icons of her Team and the various Virgon units marked in blue. Known enemy sightings in red. Several orange icons had been marked to the South-West of the city.

Zhirina resumed issuing orders, "Mihaly, come from above. Bigbsy and Lucille fall back to Josephine's flank. Unusual activity on our perimeter. Investigate, Darkstar will provide overhead surveillance."

HMS Bellerophon, Heisei-class Supercarrier
CIC

"There it is again." The stout and squat brunette Naval rating manning the planetside scope console pointed. Very faint and broken up heat signatures had cropped up on a brief fly by from one of Josephine's UAVs when they took off from her perimeter position. The pipe smoking figure of the Vice Admiral was behind her and spoke, "Switch to thermal scan, deep penetration spectrum."

The Ensign complied, flicking a switch and turning a dial slowly the screen's colors switched to show ten distinct, but faint, thermal readings.

"Check for DT."

"DT-Fusion? Vice Admiral Kuzmaire, surel--." The voice of a Naval Intelligence Officer behind the Vice Admiral was silenced by a wave of the hand from the latter. "I'll be the judge of that Nikita."

The screen switched and the flares remained. The Vice Admiral instantly grabbed a communication set and put it over his Naval cap.

<<All 99 CS elements. This is Vice Admiral Kuzmaire. You have ten DT-Fusion flares at your seven o'clock, I repeat you have ten DT-Fusion readings. It's an ambush.>>

Zhirina barely had a moment to comprehend when a flurry of shell bursts erupted around Petros, Alexia, and her machines. She hit the deck, machine literally falling prone in a trained manner. Its frame proving stronger than the asphalt it now laid upon. She need not check where the shells were coming from.

Darkstar and Eagles Nest were lighting up communications about enemy fire erupting from the desert dunes to the South-West. Rating them between 120mm and 145mm shells. Zhirina blink clicked to Darkstar and to their bravery the pilots of the quad craft had swung in and began peppering the dunes with their weaponry in a daring strafing run. Return fire vomited upwards as ten more machines rose from the dunes. The pilots of Darkstar fighting to dodge the lazy streams of shells as they swung in low and banked sharply out into the desert to get out of range.

Already information of the development was reaching the Marine and Army elements in the city with rearward units moving to take up defensive positions. Bringing out whatever they could. Tanks moved into alleyways for cover. Infantry hauled out RPG and tripod mounted AT rockets.

*boom*

Something that was easily in the range of 250mm sprang forth from the South-West. Catching Alexia's machine in the back at an angle. Gouging and sparking as a 250mm APFSDS round narrowly missed a direct impact on her back armor plating. The distance of that shot was more than six kilometers from those dunes to Alexia. The enemy had a trained sniper.

But first they needed to take care of the three enemy in front of them. "Orders stand 99th. We take these three out and wheel around."

[Oblivion2]

Battle of Fallmorah
Operation Geist
Democratic Republic of Khalib
Ensign Petros Alexios, CS-99-04

In battle the situation could change on you even more rapidly than the weather. The fluidity of combat showed itself as the radio erupted with reports of a second combat suit team- larger and better equipped than the first by the sounds of things. The Lieutenant snapped off orders to the team in hopes of dealing with the new threat and quickly. Part of that was making sure there wasn’t an old enemy in their flank ready to strike while they dealt with the new suits. So Petros did the only thing he could and thought-flashed an acknowledgement signal to Zhirina’s HUD. It would show up as a brief green blinking signal on the Lieutenant’s display but wouldn’t take up any space on the radio waves- orders and new intelligence would require priority as the situation continued to develop.

Petros pushed his Mech’s back against a tall building as Josephine’s munitions streamed through the air and began to land in a tight grid not far from Petros’ position. This was the cover that Zhirina had called in for him. Kicking his suit into gear he began to move forward towards the last known location of the suit he’d traded shots with and hopefully the rest of its team. Petros’ mech was designed for this sort of fight, and he didn’t think all three would be stacked up on top of each other in the face of Josephine’s bombardment. Somewhere to his left he caught a flash of movement as his mech trundled on despite the earth rocking explosions. He blinked and activated his C3 Slave systems and forwarded the targeting information to both Zhirina and Josephine. He marked it as hostile movement for their attention. Since they both outranked him he could tell them what they ought to do with the information only inform and make requests as the situation demanded. He suspected the other older suits in the team were shifting to start harassing the rest of the 99th and Josephine would appreciate the new targeting data, he didn’t request a shift in her barrage though, that would take too much time and he needed to pay attention while on the move. Besides, both of his superiors struck the Greek as being quite competent.

His decision to trust in his teammates to make their own decisions saved his life; as Petros was rounding the corner of a building the Mech suit he’d engaged earlier in the battle came into view, it’s rifle ready and prepared. Petros leaned and ducked down to make himself a smaller target as he willed his 47’s to open up in a stream of steady firepower. The armour piercing rounds smashed into the enemy’s already compromised armor and threw off its aim and sent its shots wide of the Huscarl’s armoured frame. Stealth abandoned, the hostile suit fired off a small salvo of four missiles at the Huscarl which impacted and were defeated by the ERA on Petros’ suit. The young ensign bared his teeth as the feel of bee stings impacted along his side, then willed his pulse lasers to turn on their shoulder mounts and target the enemy. Flashes of blue light beamed out of his weapons and struck the enemy mech along the top of its knee and across its belly. Her pilot was on the move now too, and was trying to get as much distance from Petros as he could.

Unfortunately for him, the Triplex system was beginning to react to the heat of Petros’ mech and he closed the distance between himself and his opponent faster than a mech of his size should be able. The hostile mech fumbled for a beam saber as the Monomolecular Axe in the Huscarl’s right hand unfolded and energized into the brutal mass of modern alloys that it was meant to be. As Petros closed, he swung and found his weapon’s strike deflected by the now ignited beam saber blade. His momentum on the other hand hadnt gone anywhere, and Petros smashed into the enemy mech at speed and rammed both of them into a nearby high rise tower. The steel and concrete bones of it mostly survived their impact, but floor upon floor of glass and office furniture didn’t.

The enemy shoved Petros off of him before swinging a blow at the Ensign’s side. Petros blocked and found the enemy raising the barrel of the battle rifle he’d managed to keep a hold of during their scuffle- the blow had been a distraction to try and get a sneaky shot or three off into Petro’s lower abdomen. Unfortunately for him, Petros fought at the speed of thought and Triplex was operating at about 50% of capacity which meant he was more than fast enough to grip the barrel of the rifle in time and jerk his fist forward, bending it into uselessness. He followed up with a knee struck into the ‘stomach’ of the enemy mech, staggering it as armour buckled under the Blow and breaking the lock on the two pilot’s weapons. With space between them now, Petros pivoted on a foot and swung his axe, burying the head of it into his opponent’s chest. The enemy spasmed against the high rise, the suit clearly dying. Petros planted a foot into his enemy’s hip actuators and pushed off to free his axe from his body, then he fired off his heavy pulse lasers again into the massive wound in the Mech’s centre.

The blue beams punched through the ruined superstructure and through the reactor, killing the suit in its entirety and blowing hot slag through its back and into the half destroyed high rise. Fortunately the mech must have been in decent repair, as it detected the catastrophic damage a moment before containment on the reactor was breached and managed a timely emergency shut down. The mech going critical wouldn’t have hurt Petros any unless he was still right on top of it, but it was always a problem that the locals would have to deal with afterwards, and Petros didn’t like being a nuisance where he could help it. He wondered briefly if the pilot was still alive, if the cockpit module was in the chest of this particular model or the head. Had that thick substance on the enemy’s chest been blood, oil or coolant? He’d never know, and he didn’t have time to think about it. Stilling his mind as best he could, he opened a Comm channel to Zhirina and spoke, “CS-99 Actual, this is 04. One suit destroyed, minor damage to ERA sustained, no other damage. Continuing my advance to engage remainder of suit forces in the city, please advise with targeting data and new orders as necessary, 04 out.”

He kicked his Mech back into action again, jogging through the ruined section of city his battle had made while he thought up a message for Josephine and then sent it via encrypted text. Good Barrage, it read, My thanks for the support. -04

[Parcia]

Battle of Fallmorah
Operation Geist
Democratic Republic of Khalib
Warrant officer Grade 2 Bigsby
CS-99-03

"Orders stand 99th. We take these three out and wheel around."

Bigs clicked twice on his mic in affirmation and reoriented his Raven around the same time as one of the last three went down. He had 6 MFDs in his cockpit, two to each side and two up above his main console and controls. He slowed and paused in a small back way as he reached up with his left hand and went about switching through the feeds on his to top displays until he was patched in the feeds from Josephine's drones. He kept his right on the stick, safeties off and ready to go.

As he scanned the feeds he saw the muzzle flashes of several mech scale weapons and shifting movement in the dunes. He switched over to his Javelin launcher and fired a shot off high. Set to active scanning, it would arc roughly 800 feet in to the air before angling towards the dunes and sweeping the area. The Javelin performed best in direct fire modes with a lased target, but it had indirect fire modes for situations like this.

He watched on one of his MFDs as it swept the dunes for roughly 6 seconds before it juked and settled on a vector, activating its terminal flight mode and accelerating to Mach 7 and impacting. He couldn't see if it hit anything, trusting Darkstar up ahead would record the shot.

He started to load another round and move when his proximity sensors blared and he instinctively pressed the button on the side of his throttle while swiveling his head, and his weapons, towards the target. Rocketing down the side street and on to the MSR he had been on before, a set of 125mm battle rifle shells flew past as the humanoid form of an enemy suit came around the corner and laying down alarmingly accurate fire in his direction, the Raven's high rate of initial acceleration saving his ass as he spooled up the Autocannon and returned fire with his much more rapid spray. The enemy form dove for cover as Bigs switched to the NARC and snapped a shot off, getting damn real lucky and sticking the beacon to one of its lower legs as it dove.

He depressed the button on his throttle again and his thrusters came alive as the NARC went live and began loudly broadcasting his enemy's location. Switching back to his launcher, he locked it near instantly and fired off a shot in top attack, the missile lancing out as he closed on foe's position in a rapid downward drift. It impacted, though only succeeded in impacting its right shoulder and sheering it off at the joint. He landed off to its left, quiet literally smashing down in to what he hoped was an empty hab block and began making steps towards the still live beacon when the enemy mech decided to rush him through another building, beam saber held high.

Acting more on instant then thought, he counter rushed his enemy with a full burn and slammed in to him while the saber was sill high. Pushing both of them down the small allay and in to another building, Bigs took a single moment to switch the fire mode on his cannon from standard to High and held down the trigger on both it and his 4 heavy machine guns.

His world shook violently as he held the trigger down and emptied close to 160 57mm APHE shells in to his enemy at point blank range and center mass. That, combined with close to half of his 15.5mm MG rounds, tore apart the mech in a prolonged violent sputter as its body rocked from the multi-tone burst mass of the shells. Bigs let go of the trigger and eased his dinged and dented Raven backwards. He stared on the now exposed internals and cockpit of his dying opponent twitched and jolted in its reclined position amongst the rubble of the building.

He paused, genuinely puzzled as to what to do with the still moving corpse when it jolted forward and attempted to lunge at him. Throwing his mech in to full reverse he launched a final missile at it and watched as its disappeared in a fiery ball of hell fire and smoke as its reactor and what ever munitions it had left cooked off. Stopping, he stared for a moment longer before he keyed his mic.

"A-actual, rabbit reports bandit dead, im a little dinged but still in the fight, moving to provide extended interference for Josey."

He turned and made for the larger heavy mech's position at full speed, taking the moment of peace to double check all his system were online. He had burned through a 5th of his cannon ammo, 3 missiles, and close to 3800 MG rounds and lost a full tone of armor to impact forces but was otherwise still operational.

Today was going to be a hell of a day.

[Sotoak]

__________________________________

__________________________________

VIRGONESE ARMED FORCES-tHE_bLo0dY_N9nEtY_N9nTH(2).MOV
DATE // MARCH 22nd, 2387
LOCATION // FALLMORAH CITY, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF KHALIB,
PERSONNEL ASSINGED // Ensign Mihaly Albrecht Richthofen Ignatius Raphael A. Shilage, 99th Mobile Suit, Royal Armed Forces
MISSION // TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE
__________________________________

Suddenly fire rippled from the sand dunes in the distance, heavy calibers whizzing over the city line penetrating buildings and detonating either with their cores or they had hit something important inside.

"New contacts," he muttered as his eyes flew over the screens, updating himself on the positions of the new enemies. DT reactors? This was just getting better and better. The question for whoever had supplied them could wait for now. At this moment Mihaly was only concerned about the methods which he needed to avoid their fire and eventually kill them. He dropped as low as possible. The SU-30VF at times even dipped below the rooftops of buildings as he jinked in and out of buildings. Windows shattered and fell onto the streets in cascading walls of glass shards. A few insurgents who found themselves unlucky enough were almost torn apart by the shards. All of them ended up deaf as a doorstep at the very least.

He was making his way towards one of the remaining three targets, the UAVs flying above data-linked with his feed expanding his view of the battlefield. The limited radius with his own sensors increased tenfold. Ten of them? Combined with the three remainings? Now he wasn't a mathematician but in terms of Mobile Suits currently on the ground, the 99th was outnumbered and maybe even outgunned. The odds were beginning to stack against them.

A grin spread across his face. Just the way legends were made. Just the way his legend would be made.

Something on the tactical map's screen blinked red. Target spotted. Near the back of the fight. Fire support maybe? Whatever its role was, they would all fall one by one as one.

"Heh," he chuckled, "This is 99-5, to 99-Actual. I've located my prey at the rear. Moving to eliminate."

Engines whining he dodged between buildings. He saw flashes from rooftops and windows. Small arms in a pathetic attempt to try to bring down one of the most advanced pieces of technology on this planet, piloted by one of the finest pilots on his path to overtaking the legacy of his ancestor. He would have laughed at their feeble attempts and responded in kind with a hail of 30mm gunfire. But he had locked onto his prey. And his prey never escaped.

The nozzles of the thrust-vectoring systems shifted, blasting thrusters in the opposite way of his jink to turn it on a fine dime. The canards near the nose began to show vapor as the sheer friction of which his craft struggled against the forces of physics boiled the water molecules in the air. The buildings passed him in a blur. Sky and ground seemed to stretch and drip, and nothing seemed to be solid anymore. An impressionist's wild nightmare. Warning signals were blaring across the board again. G's increasing as he weaved between the towering structures. He caught glimpses of tracer fire of those heavy caliber guns chasing after him from the distant sand dunes. Several times they came close, way too close even for his comfort. One even deflected off the spine of his wing leaving behind a shallow groove. One more inch lower...

Five seconds of intense maneuvers passed and he'd crossed half the city to his target, placing the buildings between him and the hills. Five seconds and he made his first visual contact with the foe. Just like the reports. An older model. Mihaly's heart almost fell as he saw the jagged edges, the imperfect armor, the ill-maintained systems, and frankly drab color scheme. Even the battle rifle it held was a brutish design with no concept of elegance or precision, just made to hurl heavy-duty rounds out of the barrel savagely.

"This belongs in a museum!" he took no joy in destroying what should all rights serve as a symbol for how far the art of the Mobile Suit had come. Where would be the glory? Where would be the excitement in squashing a bug? But the mission came first.

Shrieking just barely off the rooftop from behind at near-supersonic speeds, the proximity sensors of the enemy suit barely alerted it that something fast was approaching it from the back. It swung around, bringing its battle rifle to bear and blasting cannon rounds in the direction of the oncoming threat. Mihaly had to give it to whoever was piloting it because he was forced to wrench his fighter to the right to avoid the tracer rounds that streaked just by his cockpit. Turning to its side to flank it, the SU-30VF was followed closely by the stitching tracers of the enemy suit as it struggled to turn its rifle fast enough to catch up with the Variable Fighter. Mihaly had given it an opening at the start. He would not give it another again. By the time it had finally come close it had almost turned around to where it had started.

By the time it re-acquired the lock on Mihaly it was too late. The safety flicked off. The trigger depressed.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT

The twin 55mm rotary guns squealed as he let rip. Two hundred depleted uranium discarded sabot rounds slammed into its side. Half of it was deflected by a mixture of the enemy pilot's speed in shunting its shoulder and chest plates, the most armored parts, between it and the salvo. Mihaly was almost impressed. Truly. Maybe if they had chosen to join the Kingdom this enemy pilot would have made a fine asset to their ranks. But instead, they had chosen to rebel against the Government and know Virgon had to clean up the mess. This pilot was his prey. And the only mercy prey could be given was a mercy kill.

The barrage rocked the enemy suit backward as the bullets that did strike the less armored parts tore it apart like tissue paper, penetrating deep inside and destroying internal systems with miniature explosions and electrical sparks flying out of the holes poked into it. Two seconds into his barrage, nearly four hundred rounds and he was now barreling towards it directly at barely a hundred meters now. More parts exploded under the deluge of depleted uranium. The "eyes" on its head were ripped straight out of its socket despite their shielded observation cupola. It was rendered ineffectual as a tight grouping of sixteen rounds detonated the shells within it ripping the gun into two and reducing all its six fingers into wrecked metal. A spiraling round that had deflected off its crotch found home within its right leg joint jamming the gears within it entirely as it continued all the way throughout the sole of its foot.

Fifty meters.

"You have to be faster than that," he made sure his comms were on the wideband. Just so that this pilot could hear him.

Twenty-five meters.

He applied the brakes at the last moment, only to the point where any damage to his craft would be minimal, and then wrenched a large red lever right above his head. Suddenly the fighter stopped being a fighter as suddenly in the air its wings retracted into their sockets. Its thrusters shut off and gave way to what seemed like aback. At the bottom, the fuselage appeared with a pair of ground-based locomotion, legs. And from the weapons pod at the root of the wings arms appeared. In a split-second it had been a fighter built for void and atmospheric domination, to one built from utter ground supremacy. This was the power of the Variable Fighter.

Maybe it was a combination of shock. Maybe one of his rounds had penetrated the protected cockpit of his foe. Maybe it was just too damaged. Either way, it didn't even raise its arms as Mihaly engaged the structural locks on his craft and aimed his two legs right at its chest.

The force of dozens of tons of metal slamming together was defeating and reverberated through the streets. Even with the inertia protection of his suit, Mihaly's teeth chattered and he was slammed forward against the restraints of his harness so tight that the breath was driven out of his chest. He wasn't even entirely sure if he had cracked a rib or not. Whatever pain he felt in that moment, the other guy had it worst tenfold. The enemy mobile suit's chest crumpled like a tin can under the sheer force of what some commoners would use the vulgar term "drop kick" whereas Mihaly would have referred to it as "an elegant and final close to a perfect performance." Lurching backward it crashed against a building collapsing the entire front of it and a cascade of steel and brickwork pinned the enemy mech to the ground.

Burning the thrusters on his back Mihaly landed back on the ground and disengaged the lock. The damage had been extremely minimal on his end thanks to the reinforcement he had activated at the last moment. But the gyroscope was out of order and he might need a moment to restart it to get it to-

Suddenly cannon fire ripped towards him. It could have hit him there, arrogant and surefire that he had won, but the enemy suit was blind and just firing based on the most primitive of fire controls. The enemy suit was firing a sidearm, flailing it wildly in hopes that it could hit something, anything to avenge its own death. Mihaly was almost sorry to say it hadn't worked.

Almost.

He strode forward and ripped the sidearm out of its hand, along with most of its shoulder from its socket. Mihaly could almost swear he could hear the pilot screaming in pain and horror at what was happening. He saw its other hand struggling for any weapon it could find against the rubble. Another gun maybe. But Mihaly was done playing with his food.

"I'm sorry to say pilot, but your journey ends here. Take heart in your attempt." he said coldly once more over open comms to this one suit.

And then drew his "Scyzet" Bayonet from the sleeve in his arm and plunged it into where he was sure the cockpit was.

There was a moment of silence.

He ripped the blade out. The dark red goo liquid off the knife was all he needed to know.

:This is 99-5 to the 99th. I record my kill on the enemy mobile suit."

[Segmentia]

Battle of Fallmorah
Operation Geist
Democratic Republic of Khalib


Josephine let out a hiss of annoyance as the Bellerophon delivered the news. It had been a surprise when the rebels had had four old mechs, but now there were ten mechs with DT-Fusion cores? Someone had really dropped the ball on this one. Her hands gracefully moving across the controls, she wheeled Gotterdammerung around into a better position to get fire on the ambushers. She launched two more UAVs and set them to patrol the rest of the perimeter, while the original two she launched she turned to hang above the sector the ambushers had been hiding. That sniper wasn’t likely to show themselves, so she would simply have to find it.

Moving into a position where she had good line of sight and firing lines, Josephine made her mech kneel, engaging the fire bracing system while also independently dedicating some rockets and missiles to support Petros. She fired off a salvo of munitions where he needed it even as she prepared to engage the newly advancing enemy squad with her other munitions. Her screen read green across the board. Bracing the immense 255mm rotary auto-cannon, Josephine brought the aiming reticles on target, listening in on the radio chatter as final locks were adjusting.

She couldn’t help but sneer as she heard the voice of Warrant Officer Bigsby refer to her as ‘Josey’. “That’s Junior Lieutenant de Bourbon or 99-2 to you, warrant officer.” She spoke sternly to the jumped up little territorial savage. As her locks were set, she spoke again into the team comm, just to give them a fair warning.

“99-2, firing.” Josephine a split second before she pulled the trigger. The rotary cannon spun and began firing. To those outside the sound would have been immense, like a god clearing its throat. She had had to double check to make sure no friendly, or civilians, had been in the immediate vicinity lest she damage their hearing. With only five hundred rounds of ammunition for the massive rotary cannon Josephine was firing in ten round bursts, moving from target to target rather than focusing one down at a time. Her first burst threw up huge clouds of sand around one of the advancing mechs, the pilot clearly not expecting to come under such heavy fire. The mech's left foot stepped into a newly formed shell crater and the pilot was unable to compensate in time, the mech losing its footing and falling heavily onto its side.

Even as she moved the rotary cannon onto her next target she locked the 280mm shoulder cannon onto the fallen mech, struggling to right itself. The shoulder cannon boomed, the heavy shell searing over the tops of several smaller buildings. For a single moment the spin of the shell formed a vortex in the sand cloud as it screamed towards the fallen mech. The shell hit the mech dead on in its center of mass, cracking its armor, super heated spalling killed the pilot before they even knew what happened. Additional shrapnel set off one of the mechs munitions stowages. The following explosion evaporated the mech's mid-section, leaving it looking more akin to hanging pork than the proud war-machine it had been seconds before.

Josephine was already firing on her second target as the explosion lit up her monitors, the light cloud of sand seemingly amplifying the brightness of the explosion, though the explosion itself threw up an even greater cloud. Staying focused, Josephine continued her bracketing fire, seeking to disrupt the enemy units cohesion and formation before they got into the city. If they stayed organized they would be a real problem for her teammates.

Moving onto the fourth target, she unleashed another burst of 255mm shells. Doing the mental math, Josephine frowned. She wouldn’t be able to put fire on all of the mechs before they got out of her line of fire. Moving quickly she targeted one of her missile pods onto the seventh and eighth target she had on screens. The missiles streaked up and towards the mechs. Moving onto her fifth target, Josephine saw that her missiles fell well before their targets, giving them an obscuring screen of sand clouds more than damaging them.

“Merde!” Josephine hissed to herself, depressing her thumb onto the firing stub for the rotary cannon. This one, Josephine thought with a grim smirk, she had targeted perfectly. Rounds smashed into the mech, some deflecting violently into the sands around it, and if Josephine hadn’t decided to give it another burst it probably would have been fine. But she pressed the firing stud down again. The shells from the second burst hit home. The rounds ripped through the leg armor, cutting it off at the knees. The upper portion of the mech sailed forward a little ways as its momentum kept it moving forward, but the sudden collision with the ground brought it to a violent halt. Its handheld weapon was thrown from its grip as the torso rolled, the arm holding the weapon being bent at an unnatural angle. Were it a human, its arm would have clearly been broken at the elbow, from what Josephine could tell.

The mech clearly disabled well to the point of being considered a mission kill, Josephine moved on. She leased a few more bursts at other mechs before they cleared her firing zones. Disengaging the fire bracing system, Josephine got her mech back on both feet and began moving. That sniper was still out there, and she had presented herself as one hell of a target. Honestly she was surprised she hadn’t caught a clean hit yet, just some hasty return fire that hadn’t hit home.

“99 Actual, 99-2 reporting two mission kills on new enemy mechs, and varying damage on others. None seemed too severe, however.” Josephine broadcast, informing the lieutenant. “Moving to a new firing position, unless you have a need for me elsewhere.”

[Kasa Tkoth Sphere]

Fallmorah City
Southern District

Lucille felt increasingly frustrated with each passing minute about how slowly her part in the battle was unfolding. Her teammates had called out their kills so quickly and decisively, and here she was, still just keeping her foot to the pedal, taking the Shitcan down a wide roadway to the south to protect Josephine's flanks. Orders took precedence, too, so she couldn't stop to help out in any of the little infantry firefights she overheard or saw the flashes of in her cockpit. No easy pickings for her; no warmups. On the bright side, she was at least approaching the new wave of enemies now — though, of course, her mind immediately twisted that into the also-reasonable fear of having to genuinely engage, and against an overwhelming force at that. Even now, she pictured herself sweating, thumbing through the controls as her memories failed her, watching helplessly as a cannon round took out her leg, or worse. Training was keeping her from hesitating before she even got to a fight, but it could only do so much.

Mihaly's taunts over the open band had her glaring off to the side, not that he could see her. The 99th's first deployment, immediately overwhelmed with enemy numbers, and this was how he acted? And I thought you were scary enough before our lives were on the line, she thought to herself. It stirred up some fire, though, and gave her all the more reason not to panic when combat happened; she couldn't get embarrassed in front of such a self-congratulatory little brat.

A distant explosion brought her back to her usual scowl, and she hopped off the roadway into a side street to get some extra cover and keep zigzagging her way towards the Gotterdammerung, visible even from a klick or so away; the T630 would have barely reached its mid-thigh if they stood together, and judging by the sheer amount of ordnance the artillery suit was putting downrange, simply getting that close would've been suicidal. The buildings out here weren't as useful as the ones in the middle of the city. Some were only two stories, and she could see right over them. Still, she felt a little better, knowing some suits couldn't even fit through these gaps without walking sideways.

Her hands, resting softly against the control sticks, clinched up when her right-side infrared cam screeched and flashed red. Missile, came the word into her head like a brick through a window, as she noticed its plume was pointing straight down —

From above her, the APS computer let out a graceful chirp, and then the turret on the T630's head followed it up with a thunder crack. The infrared cam turned off its warning, and a half-second later the explosion finally reached her ears. She slumped down in her chair with a sigh. Info on the attack was flooding in — a hundred and eighty meters away, consistent with some other infrared noise over at the end of a cul-de-sac one street over. Having just realized that her mech stopped a top-attack ATGM all by itself, Lucille was surprised above all else to be feeling a bit of pride in it. If nothing else, she had the adrenaline now, for thirty crucial seconds, or however long she needed.

"99-7 here. Got an enemy missile team in the south district. Engaging." Her voice was still tranquil. She realized, looking at team intel, that Josephine was already on the move after having given the incoming force a serious pummeling. "Gonna need a minute before I can catch up to 2."

No need to time myself. It's a fight. They'll understand. Just breathe. Breathe, Lucy.

Stick right, then left. The T630 pulled over to the next block, then around the corner, charging the big house at the end of the cul-de-sac with all the finesse of a gorilla in chainmail for just a few steps, before it ground to a stop, smashing asphalt against its toes, and started pacing to the right to get behind a two-story shop. Okay, that's as good a feint as I can manage... Lucille's thoughts started to cloud. A misstep now meant her awkward advance would become a blunder, and she'd have to run from some guys with missiles in a forty-ton war machine. As if on cue, the taller building behind her suddenly shook with an explosion against its wall, showering glass and bits of brick onto the mech with an impressive, if not worrisome, rattling noise. No sign of a trail this time, and her APS hadn't triggered, so odds were it was a recoilless rifle round that went too far to the side or a self-focusing laser that she didn't quite catch the visible part of. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Shoot...!

She groaned and brought up the T630's left arm, giving her ballistic computer a second to think and then putting tank-shell-sized grenades in an arc at full-auto up and over the shop, into a ditch, right in front of the house, where she thought the attacks had come from so far. After a handful of satisfying thunks — though they felt woefully insufficient — she called it off and yanked the controls right, shuffling her mech out of the gap onto the next street over. The infrared was wobbling, and she couldn't guess whether her barrage had even worked. Her mech's foot shifted, without much incident, after one big step and a corresponding metal-rattling boom; she looked down to see a crater blown out by a mine she'd just stepped on. The computer wasn't giving any damage warnings, but she didn't stop to think about it. I'm so fucking bad at this, look at that shit —

Lucille bit down and inhaled sharply. Nope. Breathe. They've got more mines closer to them, obviously. I should get around... there's got to be another firing line to the ditch.

The T630 ambled across the street and crouched against the far wall of buildings, stopping at every gap to check for anyone that might be hiding all the way on the far end of the cul-de-sac. She counted steps until it'd be the house in view.

Then Lucille marked down the very last step, counted to three, and slammed the control stick for "four" and "five" before letting go on "six". The T630's remaining momentum brought her right up to the last gap, where the ditch was far easier to see than it'd ever been.

She didn't think. She just swung her right arm into place and threw a shell right down the open space. There was an explosion, sort of pitiful but still irritating the infrared again... and at the very same moment the whole frame around her shook as another blast came dead-on against her side. The computer spat out an ERA loss and a spaced armor failure. Lucille didn't have time to think about them. The next round she flicked on her selector was HE. Maybe that last one hadn't been. One trigger pull later, a second explosion erupted from the ditch, turning it into something more like a circular crater.

The fuzzy dots that had been there were gone. Dead, maybe. Retreated... that was also possible.

Lucille took a moment to keep breathing. She'd probably killed people. She'd have to do that again. Josephine needed help, and there was going to be a hell of a fight to come. Fourteen suits from a group thought to have none? Stupid. But it was command's job to figure out why any of this was happening.

"Okay, I'm all clear. Sorry, 2, I'm coming."

Hers was to stay alive.

[Caltharus]

Hangar C
Bellerophon
Elija Kalnieks

“Try again now”

During the final pre combat checks Elija’s Arbalest had been found wanting. One of the missile pod doors refused to open and now his mechanic crew were hastily doing whatever they could to bypass the doors faulty systems. There had to be something wrong with power transmission. This time when he pressed the button to open the door it opened, albeit slowly.

“Many thanks to you” Elija said while beginning to close the cockpit hatch.

“No need, might be best to leave it open for the whole mission after drop, sir”

“Indeed, we’ll have to see about that door once I return”

He couldn’t hear the mechanics response as the cockpit hatch closed but as the man cleared of the launch ramp Elija saw a thumbs up. Due to that little episode, he was now the only one still aboard the Bellerophon. Closing the missile pod door, he prayed that it would open back up when he got down.

“This is 99-9 ready for launch”

As the countdown begun Elija braced himself. The drop was usually the worst part of each operation, at least it had been during all the training ones. To him it was never pleasant to feel himself barrel forwards at speeds he couldn’t properly maneuver at. Then the countdown reached zero and all other thought perished. The G's pushed him hard to his seat as he flew down towards the atmosphere. Rapidly the surface of the planet below was becoming clearer and clearer. With a flick of a switch, he engaged his jump jets to carefully take control of the fall. The controllers wrestled against his orders feeling almost uncontrollable. With but a small mistake in this process would surely result in him plummeting straight into a building and totaling his suit. Yet with the city below rapidly approaching he was able to stabilize the fall and land properly – just as they had been trained. A large dust cloud appeared all around him as the 60 tons of metal and missiles touched down.

On the front of his cockpit was the screen through which he would aim any laser guided strikes. To both sides of this screen were five switches, each corresponding to a type of missile loaded in, though the fifth ones currently did nothing as he had only four types of missiles loaded. Below these switches were various buttons corresponding with countermeasures from flares to smoke, whilst above them were located tiny screens that showed accurate amounts of missiles left in each pod.

To his sides were located the two joysticks responsible for moving the mech and its arms. On them were buttons for firing the arm mounted pulse laser and triggers for launching missiles of the specified type. As he begun advancing, he flipped switches both to his right and left so that both triggers launched HEAT missiles should he get a visual or a fire mission order and opened the missile pod doors. To his relief both of them did.
Radio was filled with callouts and reports of felled enemy suits. It seemed that the city would soon be cleared. At least, that was the case until it became clear that more enemies were seen closing in, in far great numbers no less.

As he begun to make his way to a suitable firing position from which he could see the approaching enemy suits, Elija begun frantically flipping switches so that his left trigger would fire cluster ammunition which could be fired at the rough whereabouts of the target whereas his right would fire HEAT and HESH missiles guided to their targets. Arriving to a small square he could see friendly tanks taking cover in some alleyways to his left and right, probably afraid what would happen should the enemy suits get on them.

For few anxious moments he waited for the still rather far away enemy to become visible. All the while he could hear Gotterdammerung opening fire in the distance. Then for a moment the moving foes became into vision spurring Elija into action. Adjusting his position slightly he tracked his targets for a second before pressing both triggers.

With terrible shrieks his missiles were launched towards the enemy, four cluster munition ones to hopefully shakeup the enemy formation and half a moment later when the missile guidance system reported locks five more precisely aimed ones at two, from his point of view quite close to each other moving suits. Though his mind begged to stay and see the results of his fire, training pushed in, and he moved looking for a second firing position. Fire and forget was the name of the game, and if he moved well enough, he might be able to minimise the enemy counter fire coming bat at him. Stopping momentarily to take cover behind a building he reported:

“99-9 engaging on enemies, no confirmation on effect”

[Parcia]

Battle of Falmorah
WO2 Bigsby

He had made good progress down the MSR towards Gotterdammerung when her curt reply came out. “That’s Junior Lieutenant de Bourbon or 99-2 to you, warrant officer.” and he had to stifle a snorting chuckle over his mic. "Aye Aye ma'am, pardon the mistake."

Being one of the more nimble of the unit he made it in between her salvoes, finding Lucile in her T630 and Elija in his M60T forming a loose perimeter around the artillery mech. He had an idea and hoped his team mates would at least humor him, initiative was the Noncoms key trait after all.

"Lucile, get on Josey- I mean the good Madam Lieutenant's ass and stay in between her and incoming. Elija, key in your missiles with the good Lieutenant's and stand by, I'm going to fish for targets, rabbit out."

With that he increased his speed and kicked his thrusters on, shooting up in the air and hanging for roughly 10 seconds as his sensors swept the dunes and outskirts in front of him. As soon as he got returns he started having weapons fire lance out to greet him and the reports of mech scale auto cannon fire added to his solutions. Just as his burners cut out he fired off a pair of NARC beacons in a high arc, the magnetically launched beacon drones going live as soon as they hit the dirt and painting another 4 targets for anyone with lock on weapons and a data link. He keyed in his Javelin and fired a missile off at one of the standard mechs, not watching as it lanced out and accelerated to terminal velocity.

Landing with a loud thud he fired off another missile and watched as it immediately arced and flew off towards another target. "All units 99, sniffers are up and bandits painted bright, rain hell on em over."

[Imperialisium]

Zhirina

Advancing down the street, juking down intersection corners, her movements only occassionaly punctuated by bursts of her Vulcan rotary guns barking death at improvised positions by Insurgent infantry combating the Army and Marines still struggling to take their objectives. Joined by the 99th Combat Suit Team the conventional forces of the Virgonese ground force in Fallmorah had resumed their advance around Baharah Market. Engaging the insurgents in brief but brutal street and building firefights.

Taking a turn, she reflexively rotated her shield into position. Four rounds pock marked its surface and she returned fire with a quick snap. Six shell casing crashed down onto discarded vehicles below her. The last mech in the city died as its armor was penetrated and reactor breached. Resulting a brief star like explosion as the Fusion reaction went critical for less than a second. Just enough to vaporize the unfortunate pilot inside.

The 99th's communications were a buzz with activity. Lucille and Bigsby had carved their way to support Josephine.

"99-Actual copies on all. Combat Suit's destroyed in Fallmorah. All 99th are to engage enemy ambushing squad. Josephine, begin suppressive shelling of oncoming enemy machines." Zhirina checked her map. Lucille had fought her way to the perimeter through insurgent forces. She had skill with that machine. Zhirina could give her that. Probably more than Lucille gave herself credit for.

An abrupt alarm sounded for one member of the 99th and Zhirina's eyes widened.

Insurgency Ambushers

The ambush was well laid, having instructed the local pilots to conceal their thermal signature by running on minimal power and disguised under the dunes. A process that had to be done quickly and there they had sat for four days. Letting the desert wings obscure their actions before the Virgonese would launch their expected operation to bring Fallmorah back under the regime they supported. The mecha the insurgents had been old models, humanoid, but early Gen 3's with most having straight factory default programming and hardware. But the presence of Combat Suits among the insurgents would surely shake the Virgonese high command about the practicalities of the campaign here on Khalib.

The order to open fire had been when one of the mechs, armed with an older yet no less lethal Gladus Mk.II Anti-Suit Rifle fired off a round which nearly took out one of the Virgonese suits. Being saved by chance and the less than stellar fire of the ambushing squad that had accompanied the sniper. The squad of ambushers which now had advanced and come under increasingly withering fire from the more advanced machines of the Virgon military. But where there was lack of skill there was loyalty to cause. A fanaticism that had seen the insurgency through thus far. However, the Mech with the Anti-Suit Rifle remained in the back.

Even as the Virgon artillery suit mission killed two others and gave shrapnel damage to another pair. Even as another suffered critical camera and sensor damage from the Virgon scout unit's Javlin. Even as another Combat Suit arrived late from their carrier in orbit and killed another. Already reducing the ten-suit squad down to four operational units. Even as the Virgonese Variable Fighter suit came crashing down and destroyed one of the squad. Alone. Alone.

<<You have to be faster than that>>, <<"I'm sorry to say pilot, but your journey ends here. Take heart in your attempt>>.

The message in Virgonese Creole came over the communication frequencies on wideband. The mecha with the sniper watched as the Virgon pilot killed his squad mate brutally. Almost coldly watching without apparent concern. When the Variable ripped the knife out the sniper merely snapped up his rifle and fired. Blowing the left leg of the SU-30VF off at the knee. Causing it to violently lurch to the side as the leg it supported itself on was now suddenly disconnected from the rest of its frame.

The pilot of the mecha with the Anti-Suit Rifle snapped open his communication frequency. Wideband, but short range, barely beyond the range of a walkie-talkie as he dialed in. Speaking dismissively without attempt to disguise his accent, which clearly was not Terran or Khalibese, <<You should talk less>>.

Moving the mecha with the Anti-Suit Rifle began to jog the kilometer or so it was to the SU-30VF. Discharging the round from the rifle unnecessarily via manually having his machine reach over and pull back the bolt than simply send an automatic order to the gun's onboard computer to cycle and chamber the next shot. Letting the slide rack back as the small twelve round magazine lifted another artillery sized shell into the chamber.

[Revlona]

Democratic Republic of Khalib,
Fallmorah City
March 22nd, 2387

Ensign Alexia Beurvo, 99-1

"FUCK" Alexia screamed as she was shoved forward in the cockpit of, her face smashed into something and white flashed across her vision for half a second. Mercifully the pain lasted only a second before she was fully in control again, turning her suit so that her shield was facing the direction of the incoming fire. She could feel through her suit the impacts of half a dozen rounds against the shield as she moved into a sprint, careful to keep her suits important head below the top of the shields outline incase the sniper tried again.

All hell had seemed to break loose, it was an ambush and the forces of Virgon were the ones being ambushed. That enraged her for some reason and the next few moments were a blur, she just knew that she needed to find cover and quick. The cover came in the form of a tall highrise with Virgon marines stationed outside and in it, exchanging fire with someone she couldn't see. She skimmed to a stop, careful to no damage to her allies, and placed herself behind the skyrise.

She used this relative bit of calm to read the situation better, as she had dived for cover alot had happened, 99-9 had come down and had scored a kill, as well as several other members of her unit scoring kills against the ambushers. As she surveyed the scene a stray autocannon round streaked off her armor and into the building, her eyes followed where the tracer had come from and fired, her four head mounted 20mms spewing a quick stream of death at whatever was firing at her and the marines.

The whole time this was occuring however, her eyes were in the distance, trying to find just the smallest glimpse of the enemy marksman. When she did, she gasped. Mihaly had killed on of the new mechs and had apparently been reveling in his kill when a fast moving round had removed one of his mechs legs at the joint. She raised her rifle, trying to glimpse the actual marksman when he appeared. She narrowed her eyes, confused as to his intent as he jogged towards the unsteady Mihaly, then she realized what he must be doing and growled.

<<COVER YOUR EARS>>

A feminine yet intense voice said from the large mech, Alexia didn't look to see if the marines had obeyed as she raised her rifle and took aim. Once again she took a deep breath, stedying herself both physically and mentally before squeezing the trigger over and over in quick succession, her shield helping the minimize recoil for the rapid barrage of rounds. In just a few seconds the remaining nine 254mm APFSDS rounds were hurtling downrange towards the enemy sniper, hopefully in time to save her comrade.

[Oblivion2]

Battle of Fallmorah
Operation Geist
Democratic Republic of Khalib
Ensign Petros Alexios, CS-99-04

The city now clear, Petros flashed Zhirina an acknowledgement of her orders. Once again he kept off the comms, simply aiming his acknowledgement light on her HUD on and off twice. She’d get the idea. With the force of his thoughts he willed his suit forward having it jog through the city at a reasonable clip. He was nearing the outer edge and watching the read out of his internals cooling down when he saw an indicator on his own HUD flashing a violent red. He expanded the alert and frowned as he saw the overlay of Mihaly’s suit and the damage that it had sustained. He didn’t need to see the ‘Mech physically to know that it had been made mission ineffective; the leg actuator on his wounded side was basically gone. It wouldn’t walk again without extensive refit and repair.

Another indicator lit up on his display, targeting data this time. Between Lieutenant de Bourbon’s drones and NARC Beacon read outs from Warrant Officer Bigby, Petros had a fairly accurate picture of what was going on outside the city. A quick glance at the ranging data told him his missiles wouldn’t have the reach to do any sort of damage, and eight tubes wouldn’t overwhelm any sort of active protection systems those fourth gens likely had equipped. No, offence wasn’t an option from how far out he was. But an idea dawned- he could still potentially keep Mihaly from getting into a worse situation. Mentally he signaled his autocannons to switch ammunition types from armor piecing over to smoke shells. He fired the pair of rounds he had in the chamber into the roadway off to his left as he opened up communications with Zhirina. “99-Actual.” He said in a calm and even tone. “This is 04. Be advised I have loaded smoke in my cannons and will be in position to lay down a screen in front of the SU-30’s position in six seconds. Once smoke is on the ground we should be able to move up a little easier to provide relief.”

Petros willed his Mech into a sprint and began calculating the best positions for the smokescreen using 99-2’s Drones and his onboard computer. The firing solutions were green by the time the Huscarl came bounding out of the city and into the first couple feet of arid terrain. Bump-bump-bump-bump the 47’s cried out, sending rounds down field into each of the positions marked on his targeting overlay. Clang. went the auto loader as the last smoke shell left the barrel and depleted Petros’ reserves. He’d laid down a thick blanket of chaff laden smoke to prevent Mihaly’s downed Mech from taking any more punishment, and the young Greek had deemed it prudent to use more rounds and keep his squad mate safe than save a handful for himself that might not prove useful anyhow. P for Plenty, his friend Bertrand would have said. With the smoke now in play, Petros slowed his advance down to match the axis of his Team’s advance, there was no sense getting ahead and trying to play hero. If he detected fire coming his way he could always speed up or take cover in the dunes. Zhirina no doubt would have new orders within the span of a few seconds anyhow.

[Kasa Tkoth Sphere]

Fallmorah City
Southern District

Fuck! Mihaly!

Lucille's first thoughts stayed inside. There was nothing she could do about the pilot in trouble. Any pleasant thoughts of being rid of him were utterly drowned by fear. What had he gotten himself into? What kind of impossible, hopeless person even flew off on his own, taunting the enemy, and didn't expect the worst? But she had to stay on task. There were people she could help right now. Simple, clear goals always helped stave off her darker thoughts.

When Bigs radioed in with some stern instructions — signing off with "rabbit", apparently — Lucille cocked an eyebrow. She craned her neck to get a good look at the Gotterdammerung, towering over the neighboring buildings and the T630, and sighed. Bigs had good points sometimes, but "stay in between her and incoming" scarcely made much sense in a situation like this, with the brutally efficient killer largely exposed anyway, especially when Lucille was still at quite a long engagement range and the assault mech was better prepared to handle enemy rifles regardless. She thought for a moment, picked out her most pressing concern of several like those, and then started talking. She'd hate to pull the rank card, god knew she didn't deserve to be bossing anyone around at all, but Bigs' idea wasn't an order, and she had just as little combat experience as him.

"I'm not putting my little suit face-to-face against that much firepower. Nothing I could contribute up front. We've done a good job so far splitting enemy fire. I don't see any reason not to stay... not to stay on her flank." Her stutter on the last words came about when an explosion nearby drew her attention for a moment.

With her heartbeat so strong it made her neck tremble, Lucille got another look around at the battlefield. The new hostiles weren't just a couple of guys in a ditch with missiles — any misstep now could get her killed. She eyed a sturdy-looking building, brought the T630 over behind it, and then popped its gun arm around the side to get a glimpse with at least some of the cameras. The NARC beacons helped her get her bearings a bit, but she needed visual ranging for her ballistic computer to get anything useful done, and when her data on that front consisted of occasional signs of kicked-up dust and gunfire in the distance, the computer couldn't help her do much better than guesswork. Nonetheless, she lobbed a HEATFS round at the best-guess position she hashed together in her head, watching the explosion on the infrared camera a moment later with no clue whether it'd done anything.

After ten dreadful seconds — plus or minus a few lost in the tension, no doubt — she decided enough was enough and she couldn't loiter in her old firing position any longer. The T630 crouched partway and ambled to the next piece of cover across the street, a much more heavily damaged structure that she guessed was an apartment complex. Again, she brought her suit's right arm around one side, this time adding some hull cameras to the mix now that her new cover wasn't as high. The big difference was in the firepower; this time, she remembered to preload a burst. Four rounds of HEATFS, she'd discovered in training, was the sweet spot; any more, and the later ones would end up scattering way too wide at this range, notionally medium-long but certainly extreme for her short-barreled rifle.

Echoing from the distance, a machinegun's rattle made her clinch up. They could be pointing at me, now, I can't stay... I'd die... 

A flash of metal in the optics, something crossing a dusty street in the far distance, clearly one of the enemies entering the city from a few klicks away — that was enough to make Lucille slide her targeting point over to where she guessed it'd be in four seconds and then hold down the trigger while sweeping the gun along its rough path of motion. Four times in two seconds her suit shook, until on the fourth the vibrations got a little too intense and she had to bring her gun down to kick in the full set of dampeners.

She permitted herself the satisfaction of imagining, just for a second, scoring the jackpot, landing all four shells on its body as it sprinted.

Then she remembered that they were going to shoot back. Two blocks over, there was a big brick building with two tall towers — good cover — and a low roof between them — a good firing position. Maybe it was a church. Today, for another minute or so, it'd stand between her and the unknown.

[Sotoak]

__________________________________

__________________________________

VIRGONESE ARMED FORCES-tHE_bLo0dY_N9nEtY_N9nTH(3).MOV
DATE // MARCH 22nd, 2387
LOCATION // FALLMORAH CITY, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF KHALIB,
PERSONNEL ASSINGED // Ensign Mihaly Albrecht Richthofen Ignatius Raphael A. Shilage, 99th Mobile Suit, Royal Armed Forces
MISSION // TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE
__________________________________

He wheeled the SU-30VF Mobile Suit around, starting to lock onto his targets to finish all of them in a massive barrage of missiles. A grin stretched across his face. This was his first step! The legacy would be his!

"Now which one of you is ne-" he declared arrogantly before suddenly his whole world went silent. He blinked. One moment he had been hunched forward gripping the controls tightly the next his head was lying against the side of the cockpit with something warm running down his head. Multiple screens were red. Sirens were blaring. A datapad with the full outline of his mech was just to his right just above the proper control stick. The left leg was completely crimson.

Total loss. Gyro stabilizers about to fail in seconds.

For the first time since he had enlisted total shock took his entire body. Mihaly was not a man afraid of death. In fact death in the line of combat against impossible odds and celebrated not only by his Kingdom but also by his foes, just like his ancestor had been. But dying here would be too early. Too soon in the grand vision of what he was entitled to with his lineage. Just another statistic to be remembered by his comrades as a fool who overextended when he had been so frustrated seeing his partner score kills before he did. Another headstrong hot-blooded idiot. For once in a very long time, Mihaly was afraid.

<<You should talk less>>

The voice came in his ear, sounding to the shocked man like a viper hissing into his ear. Not a local accent. No, he realized that whoever this was that had just blasted off his leg with a sniper was experienced. Veteran enough to have made that shot that quick despite Mihaly almost having unleashed a barrage. This wasn't just some goat-fucker on a third-world planet, this one was a real threat that Mihlay had just barely escaped being another tally on its kill-mark through sheer luck. By all means, better than Mihaly.

And that infuriated him beyond belief. His arrogance, just as much a weapon against him, burned red-hot in his heart washing away the wave of panic with cold-blooded determination. He would not allow himself to be bested by this champion. He wanted to live. He wanted to become something more than a puppet for his obese father and their family cursed to forever carry on the cycle of degeneracy and cruelty and arrogance that plagued his bloodline. He wanted to be better than those bastards and wouldn't see their laughter justified at his closed-casket funeral. He wanted to become a legend.

Suddenly he blasted the thrusters on his left side, and the nozzles at his back adjusted to the sudden imbalance. Despite lacking a leg the power of the engines was keeping him upright and giving him locomotion. He focused further power on them. Through gritted teeth, he wrenched his craft with them at full burn to the side spitting out a wave of chaff and electrical superheated smoke in his wake to throw off future shots when they came. But something had been knocked as well in that impact and only half of the electrified smoke and chaff

He didn't fire with weapons as he dashed blindly for cover they may have given his position away further through the smoke. He tried to place the dunes between him and where the shot had come from, crashing his Suits shoulder against a massive sand dune for a moment to readjust balance with the fact he was now working on only one leg. He considered the fact of transforming and taking flight into the sky. Losing a leg would have in his Variable Fighter form lost him one of his tails and some of his superstructure but nothing as deliberating as his ground supremacy mode. But taking flight would leave him too much of a target in the few seconds before he could achieve mach speed. And besides, there could be further damage than just losing a leg. He didn't exactly have time to do a check-up on all systems.

Time to stop being an idiot. He swallowed his pride and opened up comms, speaking quickly "This is 99-5, I've overextended. Requesting backup. Requesting backup."

Turns out he didn't even have to ask.

A volley of 254mm APFSDS from the Princess flew over Mihaly's head providing cover fire as he continued to move. Great. Now he owed her something. Not that he wouldn't do it, it was just he had never wanted to be in a position when he had to pay her back. He hated this feeling for having to... rely on other people for a mistake he made. But even with her cover fire he was sure he'd never make it into cover in time before the second shots came in, then suddenly a barrage of smoke and chaff shells landed all around him, creating a field of heat and opaque smoke giving him maybe the few seconds he would need. Who had it been? Ah yes, Mihaly's eyes flicked for a moment at the screen. Petros. To say the least, Mihaly wasn't the biggest fan of demeanor, but he was more than thankful for the cover he was being given.

That was two of his team-mates that he owed.

He wasn't just going to stand by as he was being carried and as he drifted across the sands for better cover, making sure to employ evasive maneuvers to further lessen the chance of getting hit, he noted the fact he was still getting strong signals from the UAVs. In a split-second he had an idea and immediately sync'd his targeting computer with the sensors of the UAVs. Unorthodox but in his mind it was better then just sitting here and taking it. Using what the UAVs could detect on the sniper he tried to find a lock.

The moment he would find a lock, if he could find one, he would launch two of his Kornet missiles right at the sniper. The rockets would arch from his back and fly above with his current configuration, hiding the majority of the heat signiture. Even one was enough to take the sniper down. Two may have been overkill but he had underestimated his opponent once.

And he wouldn't do it again.

"Come on!" he yelled within his suit.

[Bentus]

Aiden Beurvo
Fallmorah City

---

<<A dozen wounded, but we can move them. Transport’s out of action. Requesting recommendations on exit routes.>>

Aiden grimaced as the report crackled through the radio. Flicking his eyes away from his main viewscreen, he watched the Army Major through his suit’s external feed. There was a surreal detachment that came with looking down on the chaotic movements of the soldiers beneath him, each of them unidentifiable were it not for the digital overlay that the display conveniently provided. Those unfortunate enough to have been caught by shrapnel from the hostile mobile suits were crying out silently on the feed, while their comrades tried to do what they could to dull their pain. A few figures lay motionless immediately around the ruined skeleton of the unit’s vehicle. Nobody was spending time attending to those soldiers.

“Roger that, 2-7. We’ve got eyes on three hostile suits.”

Skimming the information being streamed from the rest of his squad, Aiden noted with no small relief that their opponents seemed to be entirely focused on dealing with the rest of 99. “They don’t seem to be interested in you or your men anymore. No indication of conventional forces moving against you either.”

<<Copy, 99-6. Be aware that we’re relocating to the flagged building.>>

“Keeping you covered.”

Aiden replied, noting with a sense of empathetic relief that the Major’s request for emergency evacuation had been approved by the powers-that-be. Turning his attention away from the men and women racing around his feet, Aiden smiled as another of the older mobile suits was blown apart by one of his squadmates. Good shooting, guys. He thought to himself.

For his own part, Aiden didn’t engage much beyond a few shots to help keep the hostile suits suppressed and off-balance. He wasn’t there to deal with the direct fighting, and he wasn’t as well equipped for it anyway. If he opened fire too much, he could just end up drawing attention to himself and the already-battered army unit. His shield was good, but he wasn’t one to tempt fate and risk a nasty surprise spoiling his day.

As if someone thought it would make for a good joke, that was the exact moment that 99’s main channel erupted with chatter and the sniper’s first round screamed over the battlefield.

Aiden’s chest tightened as Alexia’s icon flashed on his display, indicating a significant hit had landed on her suit. Glancing over to see her stumbling from the glancing blow, he sighed in relief.

“Nice dodge, Lexi.” He muttered to the empty cockpit around him, the mixture of relief and adrenalin still leaving his fingers feeling a little numb.

Taking a fresh look at the map being streamed to his viewscreen, Aiden frowned as he noted the new contacts blinking into view on the city’s outskirts. “2-7, be aware that -”

<<Damn it kid, I know. We’re moving as fast as we can.>>

Blinking at the harsh tone in the Major’s response, Aiden knew better than interrupting the older man again as he pushed his men to hurry themselves to shelter. The more experienced soldier’s reaction muted his earlier feeling of relief, replacing it instead with a growing unease.

<<99-Actual copies on all. Combat Suit's destroyed in Fallmorah. All 99th are to engage enemy ambushing squad. Josephine, begin suppressive shelling of oncoming enemy machines.>>

Hearing the Lieutenant’s order over the radio, Aiden flicked an acknowledgement across the net. Shifting in his seat as he fully directed his attention to the new threat approaching them from beyond the city limits, he reopened his channel with the Major.

“2-7, I have orders to relocate. Please acknowledge.”

<<Acknowledged, 99-6. We’re clear of your suit.>> Aiden thought he heard fatigue in the Major’s tone. Heavier breaths weighing down upon his shoulders now that the immediate danger was over for his squad of infantry. <<Godspeed, Tombstone.>>

After hearing the confirmation, Aiden’s hands danced across the control panel of his suit. With the whirring of hydraulics enhancing the muscylmar tendons of its limbs, he lifted his mech’s two valtitanium shields up from where they’d been offering shelter to the infantry. Towering above even the standard combat suit, simply moving the two slabs of armoured plating caused a noticeable spike in his reactor output. It wasn’t until Aiden had already turned and started a conservative jog towards the frontline that he realised the Major had used his combat suit’s moniker rather than his callsign.

<<You have to be faster than that.>>

A new voice came over the radio. Initially surprised that someone was communicating over wideband, he felt a chill as he realised that it wasn’t from one of theirs. That chill turned into a solid lump of valtitanium in his gut when Mihaly’s suit got its leg blown out from under it.

“Shit!”

Aiden cursed, immediately activating his suit’s take-off sequence. His reactor complained with muted warning lights, but he dismissed them with a flick of his wrist.

“99-Actual, be advised that I’m moving in to cover 99-5.”

Without waiting for any acknowledgement, Aiden bypassed the safety for the thruster pack mounted to the back of his mech and pulled the trigger. In an instant, he felt like an elephant had just decided to plant itself on his chest.

Pushed back into his chair as the acceleration caused the corners of his vision to start to darken, Aiden could only grimace as the crude propulsion system rocketed his suit into the air. Rather than the graceful maneuverability of flight, he felt like someone had just strapped him onto the back of a missile. Relying on speed, armour, and pre-programmed countermeasures to avoid getting swatted out of the sky, the Tombstone’s deployment system was a brutalist design. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t effective at getting him to where he needed to go, which right now was right between Mihaly and the hostile out for his blood.

Speaking through gritted teeth and quick breaths to keep himself from passing out, Aiden opened a channel to his squadmate even as his own mobile suit tried to shake his teeth from his gums.

“99-5, 99-6 landing danger-close.”

Please don't be right under me when I land.

[Imperialisium]

The Desert Fox of Khalib

As Mihaly's doom seemed to approach the Sniper that had got the drop on the 99th Combat Suit Team was assailed with a barrage of ordinance. Several 254mm rounds smashed into the dunes with two glancing off his suit. Tearing and warping armor plating rocks through tin foil. Artillery fire from Josephine brought so much sand and debris into the air that several meters worth of cloud scape were created. Obscuring visuals even further as other members such as Aiden made a B-line for their downed comrade. A comrade that soon began an emergency maneuver to put distance between himself and his assailant.

Well this is a sudden change of pace. Thought the pilot as he snapped his suits head around and with disciplined bursts of twin rotary cannons. Intercepted the NARCs while his suits own reactor vents opened to max. Slamming a hand down on the emergency shunt system button. The DT-Fusion Reactor in his suit went just under critical output as he EMP'd the surrounding area. The Kornets above being thrown off their locks he kicked his thrusters to the side. Jerking his suit to the side. Grimacing as he was thrown around the cockpit in the high speed, suit stressing maneuvers. Raising his rotaries again he fired off two bursts of HE-FRAG with timed fuses coded from his suits computer. Detonating in mid air.

Flipping a switch the assailant of Mihaly popped his own Chaff and ECM counters while still gunning off into the Dunes. Opening a channel to his squad mates he snapped quickly, <<Pull back into the desert.>>

He didn't wait for his squad as the Sniper kicked his suits thrusters into full throttle just as Aiden touched down where Mihaly was moments before. The EMP burst would be expanding and temporarily blind orbital scopes as their EMP protective measures registered the expanding dome of the magnetic pulse and did a precautionary power cut off procedure. As for the Combat Suits of the 99th. Such an EMP would be negated by their own suit materials and reactor compositions. Another reason why Combat Suits had revolutionized warfare over the past thirty years.

The four-remaining enemy mechs dumped their own reactors, fired chaff, and with far less finesse began to thrust away from the combat zone in the direction of their apparent leader. Rotary guns blazing as they put up a disorganized yet effective flak wall to deal with incoming 99th CST ordinance. At least until they got out of range that 99th scopes could not pick up.

Zhirina

Zhirina had been moving through the city. Exchanging skirmishes with insurgents still in the city as she moved with the rest of her team in the general direction of Mihaly. Their communications were fast and tense. Stressed and afraid. Nothing could truly prepare you for combat and Zhirina found herself largely silent as she moved. Doing all she could to keep focus on the positions of her squad mates.

<<Acknowledged 99-56. All Nine-Nine callsigns secure Mihaly and prepare for rendezvous to the South side of the city. Taskforce 2-7 has a FOB being set up. Army and Marine foot mobiles are still sweeping insurgent forces from the city.>>

The insurgents have Combat Suits and at least one trained pilot. No doubt more. If the enemy has one, then it is to be probable that they have more. Command is not going to like this. Zhirina pushed the thought aside as she flexed her legs. Her suit turning to the left as it adopted a loping stride to the South. Looking to the right her Suit did the same. Eyes focusing, cameras focusing, as she saw through her suit at the magnified image of her squad mates closing in on Mihaly and his damaged suit. The deck chiefs will be riding his ass for weeks on this. Glancing down at her scopes Zhirina could only frown as the blinking 'CONTACT LOST' icon flashed where the mystery sniper had been. "Who are you...," she whispered.

The situation on Khalib just got a whole lot worse.

[Oblivion2]

Fire Base Gamma Six,
200km South of Fallmorah City
Ensign Petros Alexios, 99-04

The firefight had come to as abrupt an end as it had started. The enemy seemed to be content enough with their losses and the losses of the 99th and had begun deploying chaff, smoke, and a literal wall of lead to cover their retreat from the city and out into the desert beyond. Petros didn’t much care; Zhirina didn’t give the order to pursue and the idea would have been very unpalatable to the young Greek officer. Who knew what sort of forces their enemy had out there in the dunes, waiting for just such a foolish maneuver. They’d already proven to have forces greater than intelligence had initially suggested, only a fool would believe that they couldn’t get it wrong twice.

Rearm and refit sounded good to Petros. His suit hadn’t taken too much damage, maybe some minor armour replacement and some new ERA bricks. Mihaly on the other hand wouldn’t be so lucky- the actuator on his damaged leg had been pulped all to hell when he’d taken his hit. Petros suspected his mech would be out of action for atleast a few days with an injury like that to it. Days of feverish work by the techs, with plenty of overtime. Hopefully they wouldn’t be deployed without Mihaly; he had a hot headed streak it seemed, but his mech represented a significant portion of the combat team’s air cover. Getting his suit back to the FOB wouldn’t be easy either and it would take several hours to get to the FOB at the best of times.

As they got closer to the base the elevation began to increase until the team found themselves upon a plateau that overlooked much of the surrounding terrain. The FOB stood atop it, a gleaming compound of steel and quick-crete which had started being assembled even as the team was being sent down from orbit. Each and every structure was a prefab job, assembled on the quick by the Virgonese Engineering and Logistics Corps. Some of the walls around the perimeter were still coming up as the team arrived. Each Mech was directed to a berth where they were locked into position so the tech teams could begin to swarm over them and immediately begin rearm and repair procedures.

It wasn’t until Petros popped his cockpit hatch that he realized just how much he stunk of fearful sweat and how his jaw ached from clenching it. He stepped onto the elevator platform and removed his helmet, breathing in the arid atmosphere of Khalib that seemed even to permeate the air of the mech labs. He removed both of his gloves and tucked them into his helmet, tucking that under his arm together. He ran a hand through the wavy locks of his dark hair, beginning to curl with sweat. As the elevator touched down onto the quick-crete floor of the lab, Chief Kinsberg met Petros, a concerned look on his bearded face. “How’d she handle, sir?” He asked in professional tones.

“Definitely within projections,” Petros answered with a nod, “All the time you spent putting up with me tinkering and meddling with the crew paid off Chief.” Kinsberg grinned widely and cast a glance up at the suit. “Looks like mostly superficial damage from down here, you took battlerifle fire?”

Petros nodded. “Not much in the grand scheme. Should be a quick job.”

Kinsberg gave the pilot a puzzled look. “You alright? You’re looking a little pale.” Petros hadn’t thought he was letting his discomfort show. He’d been quiet on the jaunt to the FOB, consumed by thoughts of the third generation suit he’d duelled with in the city. He couldn’t know for sure if he’d killed that man or not. Maybe he wasn’t a man at all. He couldn’t be sure if the cockpit was in the head or in the chest as the Mech design wasn’t familiar to Petros off hand. So many possibilities played out in his head that it was starting to make him feel sick. He’d never been in a real fight like this before despite years of simulator experience at the academy. He’d never killed before, and the closest he’d ever come to feeling this way was losing his left hand. Unbidden, the titanium alloyed prosthetic flexed and then clenched it’s fingers. “It was my first time.” Petros spoke up finally after having considered what exactly to say.

“Ah.” The Chief Technician said with a nod. He’d probably been with atleast a handful of new pilots over the years. He knew it was Petros’ first drop into combat, and now he suggested that it was his first kill as well. “Well don’t worry sir, we’ll take care of the Huscarl for you. You just take care of yourself tonight.”

Petros nodded, not really sure what to say. Take care of himself? How was he supposed to do that knowing he’d possibly killed a man? The actual admittance to the thought made Petros stomach roil and it took a concerted effort to walk away from Kinsberg without getting sick. Fortunately he spotted the Lieutenant further along down the mech labs and made his way down to her. Zhirina was a striking woman- with her true flame red hair and striking features, she looked more as though she would have belonged on the cat walk somewhere rather than behind the controls of a Mech. Her eyes though… They bore the weight of command, and a cunning intelligence that you wouldn’t associate with those in the fashion industry. It seemed to Petros that she much prefered this sort of challenge than the relative ease she could have gotten with her looks alone.

He saluted her as he approached, once he was certain he had entered her awareness. “Reporting for debrief, ma’am.” Petros said in his best professional tones, though considering where his mind was at it came out half hearted at best. He didn’t ask whether it was to be held here and now, or later in one of the conference rooms that was sure to have cropped up on base- the Lieutenant would tell him exactly where she wanted him.

[Guuj Xaat Kil]

Maya Hiraoka, 99-10
Fallmorah City, South District

BANG

Ah, what a beautiful morning this was, nothing but the sun in the sky, 2-7’s rear and friends below, and the sound of gunfire and explosives going off.

Why was she assigned to the Taskforce’s rear again? “Oh yeah, damn flankers.”

“Hh- hmm.“ She shakily hummed in acknowledgement as she notched another imaginary dash mentally. That was an unknown- presumably double digit- amount of particularly audible explosions and mechanized arms fire, especially that one distinct crack of a mech rifle she heard just a little while earlier. “Ooh, wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that one, that’s for sure.”

Some poor shmuck from the 99th probably had a component busted to kingdom come, “Well, that for sure ain’t my problem.” Indeed, that was a mess she was a little bit too far to join, the closest one however, was right here at her footsteps.

<<This is 99-5, I've overextended. Requesting backup. Requesting backup.>>

“Ah, so he’s the guy getting his ass busted-“

PLINK

“…Motherfucker.” It was already bad that she forgot to switch her ammo to slugs instead of frag rounds when the drop started, but to be assailed by a suit here, “Get off my back!” Taking aim for a moment, she quickly let loose a pair of shots, the bark of the shotgun-like cannon in her suit’s grip seemingly musical to her ears.

“Powerful bugger this is, yesiree.” She could see the dust clouds forming even from a distance thanks to those rounds kicking up dust, there were some six of them coming out of her gun, and all six seemed to, “Oh, OH…” Have hit nothing but dust. Was the enemy hiding in there?

“Bastard better get out fast, I got a rear to take care of.” And speaking of flanks, 2-7’s would be extra vulnerable for while with 99-6 taking off, “Mihaily’s in deep shit it seems.”

What the guy piloting that one was on, she’d probably ask for some later, “Keh, time to get moving, gap ain’t going to fill itself.” And as she was reading her thrusters, the sight of a combat suit flying out of the dissipating cloud she made with her gun quickly greeted her eyes, with dust and smoke rapidly trailing it. It was then that she let out a sigh of disappointment at the thing she just bore witness to.

“Psssh, coward.” Air blew out of her nostrils angrily at the probable kill that was currently getting more and more improbable as it grew smaller in the distance, “Better be thankful there’s closer fish to fry.” Nothing but nerve-wracking skirmishes with insurgents today it seemed, with her stuck between 2-7 and the unknown, carefully managing cover fire for the former and wrecking whoever was on the latter. Even with the Taskforce carving a bloody swath through the city, the insurgents were still coming at them from the rear.

Her gun barked again as she spotted a group of insurgents creeping in, this time her gun’s frag rounds were used to great effect. “What a day.” <<All Nine-Nine callsigns secure Mihaly and prepare for rendezvous to the South side of the city. Taskforce 2-7 has a FOB being set up->>

“Ahh, it’s winding down eh?” She mentally tuned out the rest of the broadcast with a nod. Flicking a switch, she activated her Uhlan’s engines, and soon would hear the roaring of the suit’s thrusters. And so she flew, flying low in Fallmorah’s skyline, popping the occasional countermeasure as to not get swatted out of the sky. She could see from here that the mech from earlier along with other suits were now flying hard towards the distant dunes, “No orders to pursue, probably for the best.”

It took almost two hours’ worth of flying mixed with walking, along with some skirmishes with scattered insurgent groups, to get to the FOB set up by 2-7. It was then that she realized that her grip on the controls was somewhat- no- very firm. “What in the…” Firm, and shaky too, “Haaah…” It was a shaky exhale of air as well, first time for everything, and it this particular first time had rattled her something fierce.

“First time, first kills too.” She’d realized that only now with the battle’s excitement rapidly draining from her as she approached the base, its aura of security washing away the tenseness within, and leaving nothing but realizations of what had occurred, “Think I’l-“

HEAVE

The acrid stench of vomit filled the cockpit, it was subtle no thanks to her trying her hardest to hold it in, ensuring only a little came out, but what little was already pungent enough for her to know that event that subtle smell would stick around for a bit.

She shuddered, “Fucking hell, they’re faceless Maya, don’t worry about it, they’re just faceless…” Her gramps had told her about who he’d fought and killed once, and how he blotted the faces from his thoughts to make things easier for himself.

“Use it when you get in, and out, there.” He had told her on that last call before she was deployed.

Her stomach threatened another salvo of the noxious vomit, but she willed it down as she entered the base. The lack of other mechs around informing her of her earliness at arriving, “Guess they’re busy hauling Mihaly’s ass.” There was some mirth to be had in that, she couldn’t wait to join the stares everyone would be giving him later.

Making her way down the mech, it was quickly swarmed by VELC’s engineers, fussing and tinkering with it so, “As long as you keep that paintjob up, I shan’t complain.” She had told them once, when she first tinkered with the suit’s cosmetic appearances, it was more or less subconsciously embedded in them at this point, with no effort on her part.

“I guess taking that paint off is more trouble than its worth.” She thought with a small grin, muted from what she had experienced earlier, “All is as it should be.”

It wasn’t long before the rest of them got to the base, a few minutes’ worth separated her arrival from theirs, they’d probably spotted her pale-ass heading here earlier. She did nothing but gawk for a while, probably more than a minute or two at this point. There was something about watching those suits from the ground, seeing them tower over oneself.

It took another minute for something important to make itself known in her head, “Oh shit, the debriefing!” She took off like a comet, quickly coming up to Petros’ back in the process of heading to wherever she guessed the Lieutenant was, and it seemed that she guessed right, as said Lieutenant was by the pilot’s general area.

“Reporting for debrief as well, ma’am!” It was a shoddy introduction, but the salute was at least passable. She flinched slightly in realization, the tone nearing the end? Not so much. At least she’d be able to piggyback her fellow pilot’s conversation with Lieutenant Krystalovna.

All in all, a good morning to be in.

Somewhat. She was not so sure just how good this morning was. “Oh well, at least it won’t be that bad later, right?”

[Segmentia]

Battle of Fallmorah
Operation Geist
Democratic Republic of Khalib


Gotterdammerung was a slow beast, at least compared to most of the mechs in the squad, but that was more than off-set by the sheer firepower and armor it brought to the battlefield. Josephine was relocating to get a better firing position as the team moved to engage, and then sprung into action as Mihaly got his leg blown off, out in the open. She couldn’t help but sneer a bit at that. Of course the arrogant braggart would over-extend, acting as if this was some game instead of a military operation, or he was some famed pilot who could handle such an overextension, which he most certainly was not. Typical nouveau riche. She hadn’t even had time to privately reprimand Warrant Officer Bigsby for openly broadcasting different orders than those of the lieutenant. She would make a note to do so later on. His advice should be kept to himself or sent to the Senior Lieutenant only, not shot out into the open.

The team was then directed to cover 99-5, to save him from being oh so unceremoniously executed even as he fled into cover. That must have been a blow to his over-inflated ego, that’s for sure. But before she could properly engage again the enemy team had popped counter-measures and disengaged, vanishing back into the dunes. No order of pursuit was given, for the better in Josephines opinion. It could well have led them into another ambush. As the team regrouped and literally picked Mihaly’s mech off its ass, Josehpine took up a cover fire position. She wouldn’t dirty Gotterdammerung’s mechanical hands by carrying the fools mech.

A few hours later and they arrived at the FOB, Josephine guiding Gotterdammerung to the largest mech berth, the ground crew rapidly securing the massive mech. She opened the cockpit as all that went on, getting some fresh, if hot and dry, air. She had gotten two mechs, and in such a fashion that the status of their pilots was without doubt. She had taken two lives today, at least two lives that she could directly chalk up to her actions. Part of her was shocked, disgusted by it even, but she kept that feeling strongly under control, thanks to her noble upbringing. It was her duty to be as unshakable and as unaffected by what she saw and did as possible, to be the solid foundation and rock for those of less noble blood to look to.

The whir of an electric motor brought her back to reality, as Crew Chief Borisov and a few other techs were rising up towards her on an elevating platform. She beamed a confident smile to them. “I got two of the bastards!” She told them. Naturally they would be reviewing the footage of the entire team to confirm or deny kills before official tallies were appointed, but Josephine knew for a fact that she had gotten the two she did.

Borisov and the crew cheered, grinning wide. “Two on your first action?! You’ll be an ace before the week is out at that rate, ma’am!” Borisov laughed. “Where shall we put the victory marks, ma’am?” He asked as the platform came to a halt. There was a bit of a clumsy dance as two techs stepped off, Josephine making room for them, as they went to work on the cockpit, and Josephine then gracefully stepped into the platform.

“Right on the chest plate I think. And they weren’t those old models that were in the city either, so let's make those marks look sharp.” Josephine said as the platform lowered. When the lift got to the bottom a crewman handed her what looked like a bottle of wine, but was in fact just non-alcoholic grape juice. She took the bottle and pulled the cork out with her teeth, holding the bottle up in triumph. The crew cheered again before Borisov sent them to work.

“We’ll have her good as new when you need her next, ma’am. Can’t swap out any weapons at this time, they aren’t down from the ship yet, but we’ve got munitions at least.” Borisov informed her and she nodded. She had been happy with the current weapons load-out anyway.

“I know you will, chief. Again, my compliments to the crew. But I need to go see the senior lieutenant.” Josephine said, and they nodded to each other as Borisov went off to join his crew. Before leaving the berth, Josephine pulled out a data-slate, earmarking a meeting room for the debriefing in an hour. That would give the pilots time to talk with their crews and also get a quick shower of bite to eat if they wanted.

She found Zhirina not too far away, with Ensigns Alexios and Hiraoka. Josephine marched over to the small group, and interjected herself. “You two are dismissed. Briefing is in an hour, check your data-slates for details.” She informed them. She waited until they would be out of earshot before speaking to Zhirina, voice down so just the two of them could hear.

“Not the worst first mission, but not the best either.” Josephine mused. “I’ve written up suggestions for reprimands for Ensign Mihaly and Warrant Officer Bigsby, should you wish to pursue them.” She said, handing her data-slate to her commanding officer, before speaking into her throat mic.

“All 99 pilots, debriefing will be in an hour. Check your data-slates for details.” She announced.