24 - Battlefield Trauma

Five Kilometres South of Pirate Encampment, SLSC M9V.2016 (Third Planet)
Dark Nebula, Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
14 November 3053

    Warning lights flash across his console, and Star Colonel Mitchell knows he is going to fall. He manages to fire off a long burst of cluster munitions from his LB 10-X autocannon, and has at least the satisfaction of seeing small explosions scatter across the arm and chest of the mercenary BattleMech bearing down upon him.
    Then the enemy machine’s monster autocannon opens fire, and he blacks out.

    Brigitte Olafsdottír watches the Thor stumble back a step, before something blows apart inside its chest cavity. The big ’Mech lands on its back with a crash, pale grey smoke oozing from the jagged rent in its upper torso. Her computer displays the likely damage on her HUD. A direct hit to the gyro: the Omni’s immobilised.
    She looks at her tactical map. A handful of Falcon machines are still moving, still fighting. The Thunderbolt is down, with a destroyed leg. The pirates’ Archer has just smashed the Falcon Quickdraw into a heap of scrap metal. One of the two Crusaders, its chest armour blown wide open, is now out of the fight: locked in place, its pilot has ejected rather than die fighting.
    Flipping up her neurohelmet’s faceplate, she wipes at her eyes and shivers. Maybe I can put a stop to this. They don’t all have to die… “Mike? Give me general frequencies. Make sure the Falcons can hear me.”
    “Understood.” A click. “You’re on.”
    “Falcon warriors,” she says into her microphone. “I am Captain Brigitte of the Norns. Today you have fought valiantly, but you cannot prevail. Stand down and you will be treated honourably.”
    There’s a pause before a scarred Thug, encircled by Tammy’s lance and a few of the pirate machines, turns slowly in place to look towards her. Its rear armour has been chewed to blackened shreds.
    “Captain Brigitte. I am Star Commander Karina. I speak for what remains of this solahma detachment. I submit to you. We will shut down our ’Mechs at once.”
    “Thank you, Star Commander. Find out if any of your people need a medic and let me know.” Brigitte switches to her own command channel. “Anyone hurt? Marc, are you okay there?”
    The damaged BattleMaster pivots on its heel to face her ’Mech. “I’m fine, Skipper. The Bomb’s probably going to kill me when she sees what I’ve done to all her hard work, though.” The left arm has been stripped bare of armour, and Olafsdottír’s pretty sure that at least one actuator’s been ruined.
    “Ben? Tyler? Your people all right?”
    “Sure. Makes a change to not end up in a heap on the ground,” Tyler replies.
    “No problems here, Skipper,” says Ben.
    “Juno? Silver?”
    “Nothing to report, Captain,” Silver says. “Armour damage only.”
    “The same here.” Juno sounds a touch breathless, but unhurt. “No internal hits.”
    “Good. Horst? Stay put. You too, Juno. I want to get the Falcons out of their machines and checked over. Mike, I need to know how long we’ve got before their comrades up to the north come calling.” She switches back over to the channel she used to speak with Karina. “Star Commander?”
    “I am here, Captain. We have two pilots down and unresponsive. Some others are out of their machines.”
    “I see that.”

    MechWarrior Alessandra fumbles with the release catches on her seat harness, and frees herself after the third try. She tries to climb out of the command couch and instead falls flat on her face.
    It takes her four or five minutes to muster up the coordination to pull off her neurohelmet. She shivers as the clammy climate of this nameless rockball makes itself felt. The coolant suit she wears makes for very poor insulation against damp.
    She props herself up on her elbows and surveys the battlefield. Smoke is rising here and there from wrecked BattleMechs. Of her own Trebuchet, all that remains is a few bits of blackened scrap and a massive scorch mark on the ground. The computer must have triggered the ejection sequence when the ammunition was hit. She certainly had not had time to do it manually.
    Alessandra shivers again. Her body aches all over, and she wants to be sick. I cannot even die in battle, she realises. Perhaps Harold was right. I am worse than useless…
    “Hey! Are you all right?”
    She turns her head to look. It takes some effort.
    Two people are approaching on foot. A male and female. The female has a pack slung from her shoulder, and the male is carrying a pump shotgun. Behind them is a parked skimmer.
    “I… am not,” she manages to say. The female kneels down next to her and quickly checks her over for broken bones or visible wounds. A Medtech, then.
    “You’re feeling sick? You can’t stand up?”
    “Aff. Am I dying?”
    That gets her a scornful snort. “Not if I have any say in the matter. Jerry? Bring the skimmer closer. She can’t walk.”
    The male nods and turns back towards the vehicle.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Alessandra.”
    “I’m Adele. I’m a medic. You’re going to be fine, Alessandra. First of all, we’ve got to get you up off this wet ground and out of that stupid suit. You’ll catch pneumonia like that.”
    If only things could be that simple, Alessandra says to herself.

    Silver studies the canopy of the downed Summoner for a moment, before opening a panel in the OmniMech’s shoulder housing to reveal a red-painted handle. She grabs it, twists, and pulls. She turns her head away from the cockpit as explosive bolts blow off the canopy.
    “Nicely done,” Benjamin says as he joins her. “You’ve done that before.”
    “On Tukayyid,” the trueborn replies. She climbs up and into the cockpit. Lying as it is, flat on its back, the ’Mech’s orientation is ninety degrees off the vertical. Instead of sitting upright, the pilot is stuck on his back, tangled up in his safety harness.
    “Has he got a pulse?”
    “A moment, Benjamin. I do not want to take off his helmet. He may have a neck injury.” Silver tugs off a glove and checks the pilot’s wrist. “I have a pulse. He is still alive.”
    Benjamin unslings the medical bag he is carrying. “Has he got any wounds or broken bones?”
    She takes a few seconds to make sure. “Neg. Nothing that I can find.” Silver examines the harness straps. “We have to cut these.”
    Benjamin reaches up and passes her a clasp knife. “Use this.”
    She gives him a nod of thanks and sets to sawing through the restraints. All the while, the pilot remains unconscious. From what Silver recalls of Jade Falcon rank markings, this one is a Star Colonel. He is almost certainly the overall leader of the solahma force, then. She points this out to Benjamin.
    “Makes sense. He’s the only one riding an Omni.” He studies the controls and displays carefully for a moment. “You ever get to pilot one of these things?”
    “Neg,” Silver replies. “I used to pilot a Stormcrow – the machine that Juno is using, actually. I am more comfortable in medium ’Mechs… and besides, this is a Summoner. It is more of a Jade Falcon favourite than it is with the Smoke Jaguars.”
    “So the different Clans each have machines they favour more than others?”
    She nods. “That is so. The Falcons like the Summoner, and the Wolves prefer the Timber Wolf… I think you know it as the Mad Cat.”

    Seated in her stationary Zeus, watching over the battlefield, Midge Fairchild drums her fingers on the edge of her control console. She’s ill at ease with the entire situation. This is only the second serious fight she’s had since joining the Norns; the engagement with Juno’s crew on New Exford was over and done so quickly it didn’t really count as a battle.
    That isn’t what’s got her nerves on edge… and it isn’t the hull damage that has been done to her ’Mech. That’s easily dealt with.
    She’s thinking about Apollo. Seeing the green paintwork on these Falcon ’Mechs brings it all back.
    There’s a flashing light visible on her comm panel. Sighing, Midge reaches over and opens the channel. “Yeah, Sarge?”
    “I don’t need a crystal ball to tell what’s on your mind,” Tyler’s voice says.
    “Huh.” She’s quiet for a moment. “As far as we know, some of these clowns were at Apollo.”
    “That’s possible. We’ll find out soon enough. That going to be a problem I need to know about, Midge?”
    She can’t answer him.

    Marc Campbell looks at the damage display on his control console and sighs. Nearly half the centre torso armour has been destroyed, and the whole left arm has been stripped. Two of the actuators have been damaged and several of the myomer bundles that serve as muscles have been cut to ribbons by flying shrapnel.
    Still, if he’d been in a smaller ’Mech, the chances are the arm would have been blown to pieces. He counts himself fortunate. A glance at the BattleMaster’s weapons display tells him how many SRM warheads he’s expended; he didn’t even get a chance to use the twin wrist-mounted machine guns.
    Yeah, Jacqui is going to kill me when she sees the state of this thing.
    What irks him is the radio conversation he’s just had with Brigitte. She’s put him on the sidelines. When the remaining Falcons attack – as they almost certainly will – he won’t be out there to face them.
    ‘Least hurt, first fixed’; it’s a repair bay mantra that’s at least as old as BattleMechs themselves. It’s simply a matter of practicality.
    A machine that has suffered only armour damage can be returned to fighting order in a fraction of the time a ’Mech that has lost an arm would need. In this case, Marc’s BattleMaster will have to lock down aboard the Lodestar and wait its turn. There are other ’Mechs which can be readied to join the fight. He’ll have to sit it out in the DropShip’s CIC.
    Sixty fracking seconds, and I’m out of it. Great. The battlerom data show that the engagement lasted all of sixty-one seconds, from the first PPC shot through to Olafsdottír’s call for surrender. It wouldn’t make for exciting holovid viewing, but that’s fine by him. He’s never really seen the appeal of war ’vids anyway.
    Glancing out through his cockpit’s bubble canopy, he can see where the pirate Warhammer still lies on its side in a heap. From Del’s preliminary examination, it looks like Jacobs’ old heap has had two leg actuators shredded. The machine’s not getting back up without serious help.

    “Very neat. Clinical, even.”
    Jessie Danvers adjusts the tatty woollen cap on her head and frowns. “Sorry?”
    The mercenaries’ lead Tech – Delaney – trudges up to join her by the foot of her Banshee and nods in the direction of the downed Falcon Hunchback. “That one; particle beam to the brainpan. That was you, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    Delaney grins. “Thanks. Worst part of my job is having to hose blood and guts out of a smashed cockpit. ’Least with a particle beam, there’s nothing left behind to hose down.”
    “You’re welcome,” Jessie replies. “So… what’s next?”
    “There’s a third DropShip out there. Thataway. A Lion class boat, so it’ll have maybe ten ’Mechs aboard. No more than that. We’ll have to deal with them or they’ll try to attack us. The Skipper doesn’t want us trying to pack things up with those Clanners taking pot-shots at us, so we gotta fight them.”
    “I don’t get it. Ten ’Mechs, against… What? The machines your boss held back, plus whatever we can repair from here? They don’t have a hope of winning!”
    Delaney shoves his hands in his pockets. “You’re right; they don’t. But they don’t see it like that. They’re on the scrap heap. They’re at the tail end of their usefulness to the Clans, so they’ll want to go down fighting.”
    “Frack me… You’re talking a suicide charge, aren’t you?”
    The mercenary turns and looks at the Falcon pilot who’s clambered down from the Thug. “They may not be as willing to listen as that Karina over there. Could be they’ll make us kill them.”
The idea leaves a bad taste in Jessie’s mouth.

    Why do they all seem to be taller than me?
    “Captain Brigitte,” says the Falcon MechWarrior as Olafsdottír approaches on foot.
    “Karina.” Brigitte takes a moment to regard the other pilot. Like the other ’Mech jockeys, Karina is dressed in armoured boots and a coolant suit that closely resembles the outfits that she saw Juno and Silver wearing back on New Exford… except that it’s emerald green rather than Smoke Jaguar grey.
    The MechWarrior herself is the sort of thing you’d find on some sweaty holosite dedicated to ‘BattleMech Cheesecake’ images. Tall and leggy with regular features that are just a little bit too chiselled to be called pretty. Her blonde hair is almost platinum-pale, swept back from her brow, and she has chilly green eyes.
    “Here,” the Falcon says, unsnapping the buckle on the gun belt around her waist. “This is yours.” She offers Brigitte the belt, holster, sidearm and all to the mercenary commander.
    Olafsdottír accepts the submission without comment. She has learned a little more about the mindset of the Warrior Caste from Juno and Silver. As isorla, Karina no longer has the right to bear weapons… Not until she is told otherwise.
    “There are still two Stars of ’Mechs to the north. Are they going to attack us?”
    Karina nods. “Star Captain Kathleen will try to follow the orders she was given, Captain Brigitte. If our detachment fails to dislodge you, she will stage an attack on the camp site.”
    “You know the machines she has in her command?”
    Karina bobs her head. “Aff. A Star of heavy fire-support ’Mechs and a Star of light, fast machines.”
    “Salvaged equipment for the main part?”
    “Aff. Only Kathleen has an OmniMech… a Kit Fox.”
    Brigitte makes a mental note to find out what design that might be. She glances around at the recovery and salvage work under way before turning back to Karina. She raises an eyebrow when she catches the other woman hurriedly pretending that she hasn’t been rubbing her arms against the dank climate. That coolant suit’s as much use as being stark naked in this dump, Olafsdottír concludes. “Come on,” she says. “Follow me. Time we got your people in out of this weather.”
    “As you wish, Captain.”