Pirate Wars 6
The blue and black painted hover tank was trying to get back, to get away. It knew it was too close to try and open with its PPC, and maybe it was out of missiles already so the only option was to get further out.
Bahar brought her Highlander forward wasted little time as her short range missile launcher hissed expelling propellant fumes before the rocket motors caught and started moving the payload towards the enemy. HEDP riddled down below catching a lighter tank as it peeled backwards into the storefront of some building.
His Dalban had a holographic progress bar up as it unpacked the navigation. The Starport was under attack... obviously, the local salvage and 'mech works was defended but was facing less in the way of a challenge than he would have expected from normal pirates... but then Black Jack seemed anything but normal.
The other question that appeared wasn't so much why VI, it was the capital after all, but why not V which housed a significant chunk of the planet's industry? It did appear as if Black Jack was prioritizing the HPG station. In order to reach the old ministry of communications facility they would need to clear the blocking force out from the star port... the downside of course was Markam's Marauders probably couldn't stop them. Not if the Demons his Dalban was identifying as rolling down the coastal road were in fact armed with Gauss rifles.
Their furies and alacorns were en route but it was going to take time for them to roll off even with the speedy deployment capabilities of the DroSTs. A handful of digital count downs tracked the estimated time for the waves to get through the atmosphere and touch down... but that would only be estimations on how soon they could touch down. It was more likely to be a minimum threshold of long it was going to take, and certainly not the maximum.
A chime sounded an incoming Mech with a Lyran pilot at the helm. The IFF resolved as Aurigan, though the computer didn't exactly know what an Aurigan was. The Dalban quickly resolved the Lyran's mech as customized Centurion, probably rebuilt in the Periphery to be as close to factory spec as was practical. A second Aurigan mech, a Wolverine, following along the Cormorant road.
Those mechs were coming north, but wouldn't have gotten close enough to have made contact with Callahan or Sasha's screen lances along the MSR. They'd probably already been in the city, or in the urban outskirts of the planetary capital.
... and then the come chatter started, even as the sky was streaked with an increasing number of meteors descending from orbit that as they descended resolved into the aerodyne dropships, with spheroids of heavier mass becoming more apparent as they descended.
Apparently the Lyran was the head of the local Royal Guard, if he were going to guess from just the colors the mechs were painted given his Centurion matched the paint scheme of Kintaro, while the Wolverine matched the paint job of the Catapult the local noble houses were either directly related from a common ancestor or intermarried... or both.
Bahar's highlander initiated a Laser Comm connection separate from the radio channels. "The Wolverine, and Kintaro are both registering SLDF era codecs."
"I noticed the Kintaro." He admitted, but even if it meant something it wasn't a priority at the moment... this whole place raised too many questions as it was, but the first priority was dealing with the invaders. They could figure out why there were anomalous mech signatures when people weren't shooting at them. As it was his Dalban was cataloging a list of anomalies that was already proving to be a headache in itself... but they had more pressing issues "Incoming." He intoned flagging another inbound Champion its way tearing down one of the streets of the Market District.
He didn't respond to the Azami piloting the Catapult making the quip that Black Jack had the devils own luck when it came to cache finds. Now wasn't the time, but he wasn't wrong... and it certainly seemed like McGirk had no shortage of men he could throw into the fray.
--
The Triumph class Dropships were safely down. Their doors were open, and the first arriving forces of heavy vehicles were beginning to disgorge. Fury command tanks were starting to form the digital network the overlapping series of inputs that would guide forces arriving into position with the BattleMech forces already engaged against the enemy.
It also meant that there were plenty of warning as the speedy little J Edgar's rushed towards the landing sights and the handful of BattleMechs posted on the MSR. Whatever they had expected it probably had not included hundred ton Marauder II BattleMechs never mind the Gauss rifle equipped battle tanks.
Running off a 145 rating Fusion Engine the J. Edgar were relying on speed to close... the highway being what it was, that was to say a straight line of ferrocrete built up and off the ground meant the hover tanks were travelling right down on them.
Complex command and control software came online, and the first of several tartan badged Alacorns opened fire. At twenty five tons with mostly short range weapons it was a turkey shoot, the pirates light cavalry force had been peeled off to find out, which was what had happened when they had advanced towards the LZ.
"Hammer Lead, to all units, lets roll out." The tanks would move forward, and then the infantry crammed into the Blackwell industry light vehicles would follow on even though they were faster.
--
A spider skidded out, the quadruped was the first of the new arrivals followed by its heavier friends with Hanzo pivoting to face an Ostroc and leaving him the apparent lance leader a seventy five ton Orion.
The first few shots went wide. The rounds pummeled a brownstone behind him, as the other command 'mech came forward. The pirates were starting to respond to their intervention. They realized that if they didn't facilitate a breakout... or otherwise reassert control of the situation they'd lose momentum... losing momentum in a fight meant being at risk to a coordinated counter offensive against superior numbers...
... and probably their own DropShips would likely try to leave without them, saving their own hide rather than risk being captured by arriving forces.
The new arrivals were in more Star League era mechs. He didn't recognize the exact model of Orion, the Machine's data code was scrambled... other than the asshole piloting it had added more SRMs at some point, and pulled the LRM launcher to compensate.... and apparently had the arm cannon reinforced so that he was comfortable throwing a punch with it.
The Enemy Machine waded over the corner its arm gun checking the shoulder of his own mech.
There was a stream of profanity over the channel as the Orion opened up... though he was nearly drowned out by the roar of fusion engines overhead.
The few dozen ASF had moved off, to turn and burn away from the Aurigan Reach's capital city of Cordia City. They were low enough that mech avionics could read the underside of their wings featuring either a symmetrical starburst roundel in gray and white or with an asymmetrical starburst with crossed sabers. The descending dropships, the final wave coming with medical relief and additional personnel, mirrored the divide with gray and green paint schemes.
The Marauder's Ferro fibrous was coated in a fine sheen of plaster dust, and ash, but outside of some minor SRM contacts his systems returned positive system checks. Gene wasn't particularly worried, but he had taken note that the Aurigans seemed to have a lot of Mechs and Vehicles for a minor Periphery kingdom... unless of course that was because they were all defending the capital... which might have explained the defenses.
He resisted the urge to simply mute the particularly swear happy pirate captain currently cursing up a storm to anyone who was listening to the open channel. And it was an open channel, it may as well have been planet wide even anyone with even the most basic receiver system could probably pick up the snarling bastard swearing... but the pirate was also backed into a corner.
The Orion's hoppers must have cycled as its dual srm launchers at this range connecting, and sending alarm notifications through his system, but on the other hand the other seventy five tonner was close enough to touch. The ER PPC in his right gauntlet bloomed severing power cables and feed systems for the torso pin feeding two missile launchers. It didn't cook the ammo bins off but the launchers abruptly clicked as the hoppers failed to cycle for the third time.
For the Orion's driver it didn't matter his right arm had already been coming across as a mech scale haymaker to punctuate his diatribe over the line.
His regimental data feed knew better than to distract him while his machine was in melee but he was still cognizant of the data update.
The Orion attempt to connect as his Marauder's close range weapons came on line clusters of medium lasers opening into vulnerabilities in the other machine's exposed torso armor. Tristian's overhaul of the Marauder he had woken up with on Aquagea, his black horse finished the job dumping its SRM2s into the opposing machine's VLAR 300.
There was an abrupt stall as time lapsed enough for the fusion engine to go into emergency shut down, and power failed to the motive system. One leg locked, and the machine tilted, and crashed down bathing the street in plaster, and concrete dust.
The damage to the Ferro Fibrous front glacis of his torso wouldn't just buff out... but they had replacement panels... it would just mean down time. He pivoted the machine around coming to swing his left PPC onto the downed Spider first, and then the Ostroc, he didn't end up needing to note the heat warning as a gauss slug from Bahar punched sideways through the mech's torso causing the formerly royal machine to topple sideways.
