Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

A forum for posting all Transcripts for the mercenary unit known as the Razan's Ronins.
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Iceman
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:51 pm
affiliations: Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Callsign: 'Iceman'
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Kage BA (DEST)
Battalion: DEST
Company: Shadow
Platoon: PA(L) DEST Platoon Alpha
Assignment: Breach
Role: Executive Officer
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

Postby Iceman » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:22 pm

Registered Contract: DC-PA-06-07
Region: Draconis Combine
System: Dieron
Galactic Coordinates: X: 13.04 Y: 15.39
Days to Jump Point: 3 days
Planet: Dieron
Primary Planetary Climate: Subtropical
Approximate Population: 5.284 Billion People
Capital City: Salamanca
Contract Type: Planetary Assault
Primary Operational Terrain: Woodlands, Light
Contract Duration: 6 Months (90 Days in REAL TIME) negotiable
Employer: Draconis Combine
Employer Contact: Tai-sa Evgeni Morgan, CO 49th Dieron Regulars
Command Rights: Faction Command
Forces Recommended: A Company Strength Detachment
Supporting Forces: 49th Dieron Regulars, 5th Sword of Light, Summer's Storm Mercenary Command, Dragoness WarShip Squadron with attached Heart of Dieron Assault Ship Squadron
Enemy Forces: FWLM and ULTRA Forces, FWL WarShips
Supplement Contracts Offered: Relief Duty
Bounty Per Word: 1,400 C-Bills
Minimum Bounty: 24,000 Word Transcript
Bonus Salvage Bounty Target: 48,000 Word Transcript
Bonus Salvage Category: Type-C Salvage

PLANETARY DETAILS:
Settled during the original Exodus of the 22nd century, Dieron was one of the most highly developed worlds, both culturally and industrially, during the Star League. It was an administrative center for the BSLA and capital of the Draconis Combine Military Region. In this function, it was also the headquarters for the Fourteenth Army and a major electronics center for the Regular Army. Though the planet survived the coup by Stefan Amaris intact, it was severely damaged by General Kerensky's campaign to liberate the Hegemony. The Regular Army stripped away the few remaining buildings before leaving the Inner Sphere.

Since the collapse of the Star League, Dieron has been the capital of the Dieron Military District in the Draconis Combine. Legend has it that Minoru Kurita chose Dieron to be a provincial capital out of arrogance; he liked the idea of boasting of having one of the crowing glories of the Star League so prominent a part of his own realm.

Dieron is a cramped world because of its many large mountain ranges. What space is available exists in countless small valleys, and earthquakes are a frequent problem. With so little to recommend the planet, it is amazing that over five billion people live here.

The standard of living on Dieron is surprisingly low for a major industrial world, because Takashi Kurita's policy of restricting travel within the Combine prevents the Dieronese from seeing how much of their productivity is taken from them and how little is imported in return. The cramped cities stuck between towering mountains make the planet a hotbed of resistance to Kurita rule, perhaps, the most discontented Kurita world outside the Rasalhague Military District.

To squash budding rebellions, the ISF plays on the Dieron people's obsession with the Star League. An ISF agent will spread rumors of a Star League cache, causing thousands to flood into the mountains prospecting for artifacts, thus defusing any tensions that had existed before.

3080 Update
Salamanca is the capital, New Leon is another major city on the other side of the mainland.

Socio-Industrial Levels:
Technological Development:
High-tech world with advanced research centers and universities; best medical care available; cutting-edge microelectronics industry.

Industrialization Level:
Heavily industrialized world capable of manufacturing any and all complex output.

Raw Material Dependence:
World/system produces all the raw materials needed and commonly exports large quantities of surplus.

Industrial Output:
World has a wide industrial base that produces many different types of products and exports most of its output.

Agricultural Dependence:
World has a rich environment producing a great excess of food in relation to population needs, with planet’s agricultural regions augmented by agricultural technologies; exports some portion of its resources.

EMPLOYER SITUATION REPORT:
Operation Sunrise (4Q 3092 - 1Q 3093)

With the diversionary invasions now in full swing in the Styx (Aura Wings) and Saffel (11th Ghost), now is the time to strike. Dieron and Altair are to be taken in this next move. The Professional Soldiery Liaison has been instructed by DCMS High Command to seek any properly equipped mercenary commands to supplement our invasion forces.

For the Dieron Invasion, the Summer's Storm Mercenary Command has already been contracted to participate. The 2nd Dieron Regulars had been the original choice for leading the invasion force, but they have still not recovered sufficiently from their losses when an ULTRA division forced them off Altair nearly two years ago. As such, the fresh 49th Dieron Regulars have been chosen to lead the attack, and Tai-sa Evgeni Morgan has overall command of the invasion force. Any additional contracted units would be under his command. The 49th has been unaffected by the war with House Marik to this point and they are both eager and determined.

The Razan's Ronins are currently on world conducting guerilla operations and should be relieved once contact is made.

The invasion force consists of:
49th Dieron Regulars: Veteran/Reliable (Tai-sa Evgeni Morgan, Taskforce CO), Standard MRC
5th Sword of Light: Regular/Fanatical (Tai-sa Hinata Akiyama), Expanded Regiment MRC
Summer's Storm: Regular/Reliable (Commander Mizra Ludwig), 2 Wings, 3 Assault Ships

'Dragoness' WarShip Squadron:
DCS Dragoness, York Class
DCS Siriwan, Kyushu-kai Class
DCS Autumn Moon, Tatsumaki-kai Class
DCS Blizzard, Tatsumaki-kai Class

'Heart of Dieron' Assault Ship Squadron:
2 Aurora Gunships
2 Avenger-class
4 Taihou Assault Ships
4 Achilles Assault Ships

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES:
1) Secure the Dieron system.
2) Minimize damage to production facilities and all infrastructure in-system

SECONDARY OBJECTIVES:
1) Relieve the Razan's Ronins Mercenary Unit, already on Dieron IV
2) N/A

SYNOPSIS:

This operation starts on Ascella March 17th 3095, with flash backs about the last operation on Telos IV. The Ronins have been on Ascella for the past two months where two weeks of furlough for everyone in the Regiment, they come back for some training, reorganization, and mustering out. The Ronins boost for the Nadir JumpPoint no later than March 20th.

There is a 36 day transit time from Ascella’s surface to its JumpPoint. They Ronins gather their new MH assets at the JumpPoint, 6 BattleMechs, 6 ASF, 10 Vehicles, a Satellite, 4 small crafts, 8 Trailers, and a Vigilant Corvette Class WarShip, the RF MacCreary. The Warship is contractually the Ronins by order of Isaac C Anderson a representative of the Interstellar Consulting Association.

Onishi Razan has negotiated a contract that will allow her Regiment to participate in Operation Sunrise while at the same time she is also continuing with a supplemental contract with her company on Bjarred. Onishi and the Loremaster could not reach an agreement on the terms of said contract, so in the interim, the Ronins opted to hold off on the supplemental.

With the diversionary invasions of the FWL now in full swing on Styx by the Mercenary command, the Aura Wings, as well as on Saffel by the 11th Ghost Regiment, the DCMS feels that the Free Worlds League is ripe for the picking. Dieron and Altair are to be taken in this next wave. The Professional Soldiery Liaison has been instructed by DCMS High Command to seek any properly equipped mercenary commands to supplement our invasion forces. And a mercenary command with their own access to a WarShip is definitely properly equipped.

For the Dieron Invasion, the Summer's Storm Mercenary Command has already been contracted to participate. The fresh 49th Dieron Regulars have been chosen to lead the attack, and Tai-sa Evgeni Morgan has overall command of the invasion force. Any additional contracted units would be under his command. The 49th has been unaffected by the war with House Marik to this point and they are both eager and determined. The 49th will be accompanied by the 5th Sword of Light Regiment and the Dragoness WarShip Squadron.

Dieron is a cramped world because of its many large mountain ranges. What space is available exists in countless small valleys, and earthquakes are a frequent problem. With so little to recommend the planet, it is amazing that over five billion people live here. The Ronins make planet fall on Dieron May 27th 3095 with their contract due to begin in earnest on June 1st. Razan’s Ronins land on the planet’s largest continent, Gaspar, which is located in the equatorial zone. The Regiment land at the Capitol City’s Salamanca Spaceport. The Ronon’s Command Staff report to the 49th Dieron Regulars CO, Tai-sa (Colonel) brevetted to Komanda (Commander), Evgeni Morgan.

The 49th regiment has suffered greatly from an ongoing 5-way fight for the world between 5th Sword of Light, a Mercenary Unit - Summer's Storm , an ULTRA Division and a local cell of the Kokuryu-kai, better known as the Black Dragon Society. Onishi Razan and the Komanda are in agreeance that the 49th doesn't need the Ronins getting caught in the middle of a brewing conflict between the Draconis Combine and the Free Worlds League. What they do need however; is a unit to hunt down the Kokuryu-kai insurgents. Onishi volunteers her command for the assignment.

The terrain and the fact that the population is clustered together on Gaspar in the Stinson River valley allows for a lot of invasive control.

Razan’s Ronin perform a ‘Bait-and-Switch’ counterinsurgency op with a fake convoy of supplies dressed up as livery trucks. They simulate a vehicle break down and "abandon" it at a strategic location. What appears to be crates of small arms and C4 is in fact crates with battle armor troopers hidden inside.

The Ronin’s launch a covert HUMINT Op (intelligence gathering through human interaction) primarily aimed at the monitoring of the Hospital’s wounded area, for troops and refugees. Through an interrogation from our successful HUMINT Op the Ronin’s uncover intel on a Black Dragon Cell in Gaspar’s other major city, New Leon, on the other side of the main land. The Ronin’s DEST Battalion and their unarmored Infantry Battalion perform a joint operation to snatch high ranking Kokuryu-kai fanatics thereby disrupting the Black Dragon Society terror cells and prohibiting their involvement in the fight for Dieron. The operation fails miserably as the Kokuryu-kai prove to be far more fanatic and tenacious than the Ronins High Command ever thought possible. They took out two ‘Mechs from a Lance, several vehicles from a company, and a full platoon of Infantry with just RAGs (Rocket-Assisted Grenade), Heavy SRM Launchers and Light Anti-Vehicle Rocket Launchers.
Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Rank: Colonel
Callsign: 'Iceman'
MH: Steele Dagger Spec Ops BA
Role: DEST
Assignment: CO Battle Armor Regiment
Platoon: Black Ops
Company: SWAT
Battalion: HQ Battalion
Regiment: Smilodon
RESTLESS SOULS MERCENARY DIVISION

User avatar
Iceman
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:51 pm
affiliations: Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Callsign: 'Iceman'
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Kage BA (DEST)
Battalion: DEST
Company: Shadow
Platoon: PA(L) DEST Platoon Alpha
Assignment: Breach
Role: Executive Officer
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Re: Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

Postby Iceman » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:24 pm

DC-PA-06-07 #01

Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Ronin’s Keep
1st Floor
Main Conference Room
Monday March 18th 3095 0800am Local

Tai-sa Onishi ‘Rough Ryder’ Razan rubbed at her eyes, trying to not show her frustration and exhaustion. She was in a staff planning session with her most trusted senior officers going over plans to take the Ronins into it again with the Free Worlds League Military and the United Leadership of the Tikonov Republican Army - ULTRA, who were going nowhere fast and draining her of her energy. She looked across the huge oaken conference table at her officers, her new Executive Officer, Sho-sa (Major) Tanaka ‘Iceman’ Kintaro, who nodded slightly in return.

‘He's shaping up well’, Onishi thought. It was the right thing to do to promote him up to the units XO in Owen’s stead. Onishi had made a full recovery from her injuries suffered on Telos IV and returned to her duties. Tanaka had filled in well in her stead, but the Ronins still needed the steady, measured hand of the elder Tai-sa (Colonel).

The 49th Dieron Regular ‘proxy’ Liaison, Sho-sa (Major) Hitomo Muromachi was also here, quietly observing and making few comments. He's sulking again. To Onishi it was no secret that Hitomo wanted her command of the DCMS Modern Innovated Tactics Test Regiment, but Onishi denied him at every turn. Though he was a skilled pilot and unit commander, he was the wrong choice to lead this experimental unit, the Ronins. He would use it for prestige and political gain and not truly for its intended purpose, finding new methods for the Dragon to succeed. Muromachi’s sullenness at this moment only confirmed it to Onishi.

Also present at this staff planning session was the Confederated Magistry Native and former Unit XO, Sho-sa (Major) Owen ‘Kestrel’ Callaghan . He was still the Executive Officer over her Ronin Legion Battalion; Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) Reece ‘Buddha’s Fist’ Kimura. He was head of her vehicle Battalion, Steel Dragon, and sitting to the left of Callaghan. Directly across from Onishi, flanking these two officers like book ends were the Ronins Tai-i (Lieutenant Commander) the petite Kuritan, Torii ‘Nemesis’ Nashiro, AeroSpace Fighter Pilot in charge of the Ronin’s Ice Dragon Wing; and the ebony skinned officer, Sho-sa (Major) Reid Mediate, who headed up MWR Battalion or the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Battalion of the Razan’s Ronins. In addition to the five Combat Officers, the rest of the men and women of the Ronin’s were just as critical to the Regiment and its ability to wage war. Most folks with just a minimal understanding of war knew that a Mech Regiment had three Battalions and each battalion had thirty six pilots, but what most people didn't think about was that even though on paper, her Razan’s Ronins were now classified as a Regiment, they were in fact a MIXED Regiment. Which meant they had a battalion of each; ‘Mechs, Tanks, Infantry, Naval support, and all of the support that those battalions relied on to do their jobs. Each Mech had a Tech assigned, with four additional astechs. Each vehicle had a crew, with two additional astechs and so on. That brought the Ronin’s total technical staff up to 226 that were on the Razan’s payroll with an additional 759 temporary astechs. The head of the 984 technicians for the Razan’s Ronins Mixed Mercenary Regiment was a stout, dark haired Sho-i (Lieutenant Senior Grade) named Harold ‘Bokor’ Fairbanks. The grimy, yet always professional, head of the Ronin’s Repair and Logistics Lance, sat at the leftern most narrow end of the table.

The two missing officers from today’s little soiree were Chu-sa’s (Lieutenant Colonels), the venerable, John Dryden, responsible for the Ronins two Invader Class JumpShips, Red Storm and Hydra’s Bane. And Georgi Draganov, he was the Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) of the Ronin’s DropShip Wing, Flying Dragon. Although, as of two weeks ago, Draganov had been promoted to a full Dai-i (Naval Commander) and had boosted at two G’s to take command of a the WarShip RF MacCreary, a Vigilant Class Corvette contractually the Ronins from the Interstellar Consulting Association by order of a one Isaac C Anderson who says he is their representative. After having her lawyers read through all the legal mumbo jumbo Onishi’s take on it was that the contracted stated that the corporation's board is requesting information on events across the Inner Sphere, including military operations and mercenary activities. It also specifies that the Ronins would not be held to disclose any sensitive information concerning our employers or our unit but any and all information that the Ronin’s can collect would be most appreciated. It farther outlines that the vessel will be equipped with data collection equipment that will automatically download information on any system that the vessel goes to and return that information to ICA at various times. It specifically stated that the data collection will not include any of the Razan’s Ronin's communications or communications from our employer and that all data will be encrypted and sterilized before transmission so the source is never known.

The contract is for a ten year term and has three notable stipulations. First one is that this vessel is must accompany the Ronins on their missions and it cannot sit at some backwater port patrolling the great black sea and collecting data on only a small number of systems; the vessel must travel to as many different systems as possible. Second clause states; that the data collection systems and transmitters cannot be tampered with. Damage to the systems due to military action will occur and will be repaired by ICA technicians, six of which will be assigned to the vessel. And the third condition was that if the actions of the vessel are entirely the responsibility of Razan’s Ronins and if it is used in some inappropriate or illegal fashion, ICA will not be held liable for those actions.

Draganov’s replacement of CO over the DropShip Wing was the long suffering Johnny Yee, who was also not in attendance due to his overseeing the loading off Military Hardware, munitions, equipment, consumables, and everything else that the Ronins would require for the journey to Dieron. John Dryden’s absenteeism was accredited to it not being feasible for him to travel 36 days down from the JumpPoint to attend this planning session only to turn around three days later to make the return voyage. Would have been a total waste of two months that he could have utilized to oversee maintenance on the Red Storm and Hydra’s Bane.

At the moment, it was Tanaka who was speaking, and most eyes in the room focused on the XO. They had just reviewed the success of their last action into the Free World systems of Telos IV. The risky mission had paid off, in that ULTRA had backed down and no longer made maneuvers to attack the Draconis Combine or any other worlds. Now for the much more important matter of Dieron itself.

"Captain General Agatha Rousset-Marik continues to refuse to return her conquest of Styx and Saffel to the Dragon. No one is doubting that her forces have taken a beating. In fact, her BattleMech forces are at best, 65 percent combat operational, and that includes raw recruits replacing their losses. She's going to bleed us dry in bringing her to heel," Tanaka remarked.

Onishi frowned in thought. While Agatha Marik, Agatha, herself had dropped the Rousset part of her surname after she had captured Terra, was always a painful thorn in Onishi’s side, she had thought the Captain General would do what was best for her subjects. It would have been one thing if her forces had managed to take over the entire Prefecture, but now, everyone knew that she was simply delaying the inevitable. No sooner had they began debating their upcoming maneuvers, Onishi’s Admin, Go-Chu (Corporal) Mary Sadler , walked into the conference room. "Forgive me Tai-sa (Colonel), but there is new information from Bjarred. The Ebon Raptors have been repelled from Altona and the RF MacCreary has made it to Altais and will be at the JumpPoint by the time the Ronins arrive."

There was a collective sigh from the room as the announcement sank in. As a final act of defiance, a band of Pirates had sent several units as raiding forces into both the Draconis Combine and Clan Snow Raven Occupied Territory. The Ebon Raptors with their elite LAM Pilots were a particularly concerning element of the raids. News of their withdrawal was a burden off of everyone's shoulders as well as the arrival of a Corvette Class WarShip.

"Tai-sa . . .” Hitomo stood up and addressed Onishi. "I should get a detailed report on this development back to Tai-sa (Colonel) Evgeni Morgan before we get too far into the rest of the briefing". Accepting Onishi's slight nod, the covetous Executive Officer of the 49th Dieron Regulars walked briskly out of the room. ‘At least the Liaison can perform his assigned duties well’, Onishi mused. Of course, the problem is that he wants to assign himself more duties! Motioning for Tanaka to continue, Onishi listened as her own XO provided analysis, commentary and theories about where to start the re-conquest of Dieron. Though she paid rapt attention, Onishi mostly felt tired.

Sho-sa (Major) Kintaro wrapped up and returned the floor to Onishi. Onishi stood and straighten out her rumpled tunic. It was a charcoal grey ensemble with gold embroidery and golden epaulettes. It had a short shoulder cape draped over her left shoulder. She wore the feminine version, complete with a black, knee length skirt and over the calf boots. Her hair was fashionably pulled back in a cherry red horse’s tail. “Lemme see. We can at least tend to internal business while we await Muromachi’s return. I know the rumor mill is in full swing about the Ronin’s acquisition of a WarShip. Well, as of today, you may lay all the rumors to rest. YES, it’s true. Razan’s Ronins will have access to their very own WarShip as long as we are a unit and can keep it functional. It’s a Corvette Class Vigilant, christened the ‘RF MacCreary’. However, I have been toying with the idea of renaming it to the ‘Banished Justice’, but you know how these Naval crews are; such a superstitious lot. Changing a ship’s name is revered to be some sort of omen. Anyway, The RF MacCreary has been contractually granted to the Ronins for a 10 year period to collect data on every world, mercenary unit, military action we undertake for the next ten years by Interstellar Consulting Association. After that time frame expires the WarShip becomes ours. We have three obligations that we must meet to stay in compliance.” Onishi held up her left hand in a fist and ticked off a finger for each point. “First we can not leave the WarShip at some backwater port patrolling some Great Houses Periphery Border. Two, we can not tamper with the data collection systems in anyway, shape, or form, and number three; the Ronins agree to take full responsibility of all actions performed by the RF MacCreary.” She shrugged her shoulders causing her horse’s tail to sway from side to side. “I’ve promoted Georgi Draganov to a full blown Dai-i (Naval Commander), the equivalent to my rank, but this does not grant any of you the right to mutiny …” Onishi joked playfully. “ . . . And I wrapped all of our AeroSpace and Naval assets into an AeroSpace Assault Battalion under Draganov’s command and named it Wakayama. This will not change any of our AeroSpace commands other than Johnny Yee now will be the CO over our DropShip Wing, Flying Dragon.”

“The Ronins have either salvaged, bartered for, or purchased all of the following military hardware in expansion of the Ronins. We now have six more Aerospace Fighters and four small crafts to make up the RF MacCreary Assault Squadron in support of the rest our fleet of DropShips and JumpShips in the Wakayama Aero Assault Battalion. There are two Slayers, Hornest’s Nest Flight; two Corsairs, Thunderbird Flight; and two Sai’s, Screaming Eagle Flight. The squadron is called Yumi Squadron under the guidance of Sho-i (Captain) Christiaan de Gunst . . .” Onishi glances at Torii, “Tai-i (Lieutenant Commander) take’em through their paces and make sure they are up to speed. You have my permission to make adjustments to personnel and hardware as you see fit.”

There was a slight nod from Torii.

“Our Small Craft Squadron, commanded by Sho-sa (Force Commander) Lucille Alicata, consists of two Caerleons, dubbed Deathdealer and Druid, in Red Justice Flight and two Ares Mark IX, the Black Glove and the White Lion, dubbed Peregrine Falcon Flight. Our small craft Squadron as well as Yumi squadron will jump from system to system inside the holds of their parent ship, the RF MacCreary Vigilant Class Corvette, for quicker deployment and as our screening force. In addition, each Caerleon shall be equipped with a redeployable Antares AS-17 Satellite System and transport an Ailette Zero G Exoskeleton Squad to deploy said satellite. Hereby I keep my promise to all my Ronins, my promise never to be as deaf and blind as we once were upon our first visit to this rock.”

“Ronin Legion Battalion is now up to full strength at thirty six ‘Mechs with the addition of six refurbished BattleMechs. They are all of the Light class variety but a ‘Mech is a ‘Mech is a ‘Mech. We filled out Scimitar Company with the addition of a new lance, Wind Dragon, with an SOP of reconnoitering. Wind Dragon Lance is commanded by Chu-i (Lieutenant) Phelan Davion, no relation, aboard his Morrigan 2, joined by a Pack Hunter II, a Hermes, and a Spector. The other two light ‘Mechs went to fill out our guard lance or Dragon’s Lair Lance. We bumped Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Vania Kyrridwen out of the Rokurokubi and moved her to a Locust to bring Chu-i (Lieutenant) Onyanko Soleng off our reserves bench and into the line up over Dragon’s Lair Lance. The other two ‘Mechs completing her lance are the Venom and a refurb Stinger.”

“Steel Dragon Battalion, no change. Why mess with perfection,” Onishi quipped before continuing. “We made one small change to the DEST Battalion as a result of a training Op called ‘Broken Arrow’. Sho-sa (Major) Kintaro decided that he wanted an additional ground mode for rapid extraction of his units so we acquired our second Blizzard Hover Transport. This one actually has six ton worth of troop carrying capacity. It will be allocated to the DEST Rapid Response Lance.”

“Okay, moving right along to our Social Services ‘Section’. This one here is our jig saw puzzle people. You’ll need to stay with me or you’ll get lost. First it’s no longer merely a ‘Section’ it’s been expanded to a full battalion and renamed to the MWR Battalion – Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Battalion. It has a new company, Bulwark Company with three lances; Combat Engineer, Mechanized Infantry, and Logistics and Supply. The only thing we changed in the Combat Engineering Lance is that we swapped out the LMTT Bridge Layer trailer for the Command Post variant. We needed some way to stay in touch with the engineering platoon when they were out on maneuvers. The Mechanized Infantry Lance is equipped with four Ibex RVs. They damned things look like Dune Buggies with Monster truck tires. You wouldn’t catch me dead in one of those things. Those guys should get hazard pay. I’m not volunteering it, I’m just sayin’. ” Her comment was greeted by a small smattering of chuckles. Her officer corps was likely thinking the same thing. “We moved the two World Rovers from the Bivouac Lance and picked up two twenty tonned trucks to make our Logistics and supply Lance. As an after thought, we decided to make our supply lance pull double duty and purchased four add on trailers, a Thumper Gun Trailer, A Mjolnir Gun Trailer, and two Military Tactical Trailers; an LRM and a Command Post. The two gun trailers will be towed by the workhorses of the lance, the 20 ton trucks, and the lighter World Rovers will be assigned the Light Military Tactical trailers. To replace the void the transfer of the World Rovers created in the Bivouac Lance, I got a hold of an extra GESV Bunker and a Sherpa, mobile canteen variant. The bunker will double our Johnstone billeting capacity and the Mobile Canteen, while it isn’t as large as our dedicated Johnstone Kitchen, the up side is that it is truly mobile and it will sure relieve the burden on our main kitchen. And in closing, allow me to inform you that we finally got all our firemen certified and trained and ready for deployment into the Johnstone, whether it be to tackle a fire or to assault an enemy platoon. (Sho-sa) Callaghan.” Onishi yielded the floor to ‘Kestrel’.

As the meeting continued, Onishi looked at the chronometer in her pinkey ring. Fifty five minutes had passed since Hitomo had walked out of the room. While it would take a moment to get the information and comeback, it had been too long. Onishi was beginning to feel uneasy. "I'm sorry Gentlemen, but we really should have our DCPS Liaison here. Owen, please wait.” Onishi looked up over her right shoulder to a desk where Mary was seated taking notes, “Go-Chu (Corporal) Sadler, go see where Sho-sa (Major) Muromachi has gone to before we continue."

"Of course Ma’am." Go-Chu (Corporal) Sadler, an efficient but uninspiring admin moved from her position, moving towards the door.

Sending the non - comm after Hitomo was a subtle reminder of who was in charge. Another move in the continuous game Onishi had to play. As Mary moved across the room, Onishi's unease only grew. This was wrong, Hitomo was defiant, but he wouldn't try such a subtle move in showing Independence. Onishi was on the verge of standing up herself when Go-Chu (Corporal) Sadler reached the door. Her hand twisted the knob, straining to open it.

"That's strange". Tanaka turned to look at his Commanding Officer, they both felt it.

Onishi was just about to shout a warning when the hallway beyond erupted with small arms fire from her Nighthawk sentries positioned outside the conference room’s doors.




Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Ronin’s Keep
1st Floor
Foyer
Press Conference
Monday March 18th 3095 1600pm Local

Onishi Razan stood on the podium, her uniform still torn and singed. Her wounds had only received the barest medical attention. Her calm demeanor in front of the cameras only solidified her persona of the weary, battered warrior, resolute in fulfilling her duties to the Dragon and House Kurita. She had already spoken for 10 minutes to the film crews in a speech that was sure to make its way through the Combine, indeed, the whole Inner Sphere within weeks. "And so, with heavy sorrow, I ask that the Ascella mourns with me as we accept the loss of one of the selfless countrymen the Combine has ever known." ‘Except for failing to keep his ambitions in check, fighting a single successful war or keeping that bitch Agatha Marik in her place’. Onishi mourned internally. Muromachi had been a great leader once, but time had worn him down. The older man was too stubborn to know that it was time for young blood to take over.

"I swear to you that this tragedy will not go unanswered, and that the guilty parties to this cowardly assassination of Hitomo Muromachi will not escape justice." It wouldn't be long before the Free Worlders were discovered in the attack and her position as the Innovated Tactics Tai-sa (Colonel) was assured. There was no way anyone would be acceptable to the Warlords, not after this. "I ask that all of us, as one people stand united in this moment. We must not accept the evil of other men to dictate the measure of our resolve. The Combine is strong, stronger than one man, stronger than one moment. We will stand up from this dark day, stronger than ever. All that I ask is that you will stand with me!"

WORD COUNT 3424

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE



DC-PA-06-07 #02

Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Ronin’s Keep
Garage
Prowler Bay
Monday March 18th 3095 0845am Local

Nebraska looked back at the missile strikes in the simulator and he shifted. He knew it was not his vehicle. His had four sets of axles per side and those the rear three were dual tires to cut down on the surface pressure. When the bulldozer blade was lowered, the front tires were almost lifted off the pavement. He smiled, yes it could go through walls and even ones, like that were no match but he shifted and looked back. The Prowler tank treads had armor and he paused. He was a tech and an engineer and he did have a small shop.

He looked closer at the bottom of the tank just above the tires. He could see where the older tank had an attachment for the track armor and they did have pins. He smiled slyly and he pulled out some armor. He cut a ¼ ton armor segment for each side, to hang partway down the tires, preventing the simulator damage from happening to his ride. He added it without so much as bye your leave and he adjusted the suspension to handle the ½ ton more weight. With 9 tons of infantry a full jump jet company he’d have some slop over room. If he was hauling powered armor, not much left. But that was why he was a tech after all. He liked figuring out things himself. This would just hang down and not hopefully mess up the tank. He shifted to look at it and he looked at the manual. He saw there was a spot to add, no someone added springs to the tank in a previous attempt of what he’s doing. He could move the springs to between each dual tire segment and enable him to what he was planning and then realized he could use it for storage. Seems odd, but tanks commonly used the exterior for storage.

World War Two, prime example, Sherman Tanks would have additional treads alongside the sides or in the front of the tank, little extra protection could at times go a long way. He lifted it up using the automatic suspension and he moved the springs. These were put there initially by someone else. He adjusted them to rest between the duals and he noticed a previous hole. He locked them in and then checked the system out. The system didn’t like them there. He removed some of the storage to look at the holes from the inside and he saw the problem he moved a set of wires out of the way and retightened the bolts. He saw that fixed that side and he removed the storage spaces to do it and he moved the wires and screwed them down and he put the storage spots back and he noticed the give in the floor. He smiled and went to the spot where the springs were in he got down to eyeball it. They looked now to be a ¼ of an inch off. He removed the storage and the looked at the springs. He smiled and removed the nuts to add a ¼ inch spring washer, a locking washer to the bottom and asked Ju’uro to put the pin back in. He tightened it up and went to the other side. He did the same thing and he put the storage spots back and no give. He liked figuring out little things, like that and he climbed back underneath to use the fiberglass resin to plug the holes carefully so it would remain water tight. He used black light to cure them and he moved back to stand behind it and look side to side. They just might work. He used a bottom pin and welded in a bracket to secure it to the spring to keep it from sliding in. He added angle iron to the edge to stiffen it up and then welded in more brackets. He attached the remaining ¼ ton armor, exact opposite cut of the others to be outside and upside down of the armor and he attached to lengths of metal to the sides and tied them together, when he dropped the bottom plate these bars would move down to hold the plate in place. Nebraska was working slowly and steadily. He’d not seen anyone hit his tank in said manner before and he never wanted to. Now he could if need be attach fuel cans to the exterior of the vehicle if needed. He had seen enough vehicles and aerofighters to know there was a lot of fuel needed to be packed. He went through the checklist as well of prepping for off-world use and he knew he had to make sure all was in ready.

Chuck looked over he had do something he rarely had in the past. Most of the places he’d worked at didn’t have a problem with it, in fact, they rather enjoyed it. Saved paperwork some. Namely, as a member of DES or Explorer Corps, he was trained to handle a lot of jobs. Why because there would be a time, when sometimes there wasn’t anyone else to do the jobs but his own people.

He waited until he knew when Colonel Onishi Razan had some free time, he knew the schedule, it was posted and he shifted to walk to her door. It was posted when she had ‘free time’ to handle problems and such. He hoped this won’t be a problem.




Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Ronin’s Keep
3rd Floor
Tai-sa (Colonel) Office
Tuesday March 19th 3095 0915am Local

He knocked on the panel and she spoke, “Enter.”

He opened the door and walked in, he saw she was alone and closed the door. He reported to her properly. “Gunsho Nebraska Nobrinsky, call sign ‘Chuck’, Ma’am.”

“Good Morning Gunsho (Sergeant). Please be seated, now what can I do for you?” greeted Tai-sa (Colonel) Onishi ‘Rough Ryder’ Razan.

Nobinsky moved slowly to put a badge on Onishi’s desk and leaned back. “I have been a Remote Outpost Marshal or ROM high near twenty years. I don’t explain it often to others like I am doing. The Explorer Corps and the Dragon have had an understanding since well long before you were born. No offense.”

“None taken.” She replied.

Nabraska continued nonplussed, “We sometimes find it crucial to be in place to handle weird cases. We started to deploy on merchant ships since 3024 when Halifax and Engadine was discovered at that time. I am here to explain officially to you, I was asked to join because of the numerous cases we have lately involving war crimes by Word of Blake and U.L.T.R.A. From organized prostitution camps to other nefarious schemes. Even one world where it was discovered being used to extract endorphins from a human being’s head and spinal fluid, which was a fatal for those humans, and use it to increase temporarily the neuro-kinetics needed to handle some rather odd mech designs. I have not had personal knowledge of that, spending my entire time assigned normally in DES or Explorer Corps. I was a rather fresh face and others were better known instantly. I am not here to cause you problems, my entire visit is a courtesy visit to explain why I am here and why I have come in as it were from the cold.”

“Anything else?” Onishi asks the Remote Outpost Marshal (ROM) Agent as she rubs her chin thoughtfully.

“Not currently, Ma’am.”

“Will you be filing reports with the Draconis Combine’s Professional Soldiery Liaison?”

“Same ones I do for you.”

“Look...”

“I do mean that, my format may seem odd, but I will only send out paperwork if need be as vetted by you.”

He stood up and took the badge back and placed it now on his belt. “If you have other problems I am officially unaware of, let me know. I enjoy rather making life simple again. Pays some extra bills at times and keeps me, if I do scrounging off the radar as it were. Everyone knows Mercenaries have free hand and more, slippery fingers. It has come in handy as well for getting me out of jams as well. Namely no one wants to bust an undercover cop or something along those lines. I have been in DES, my entire adult life. I have known no other organization. I have served as needed where and when, even as MP or local prosecutor for cases, mostly because no one else wanted the damn job. Grandfather was a stickler when it comes to filing proper reports, he was the one who got me in. Don’t mind the extra few Ryu incoming as well, lets me do more.” He nodded and walked out.




Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Ronin’s Keep
1st Floor
Mess Hall
Tuesday March 19th 3095 10:00am Local

Nebraska got off the lift and saw the crew was headed to the mess hall, and followed them and then looked as Yuroyuki noticed the badge. It was still on his belt. Visible. He smiled and looked over, “Problem, sir?”

“You...” Gunsho (Corporal) Yuroyuki Niznik replied defiantly.

“In DES, Explorer Corps, I did some occasional work as a member of the law enforcement community while deployed with them. Comes in handy, no one likes to bust a cop if he’s scrounging and trying to keep the stuff running. It also pays a little, not a lot, couple extra cases of beer a year. Nothing too drastic, normally.”

“Normally?”

“Ah, did you know ROM or Remote Outpost Marshals with DES deployed to Tukayyid in 3052 and fought with...”

“I don’t understand...”

“Clans use Kerensky their monetary unit is called a Kerensky.”

“I don’t...”

“They store their money in their codex, these.” He tapped his white plastic band bracelet.

Heishi (Private) Tiffany Troyer paused, “So, it’s not like...”

“Lot of Clansmen were on Tukayyid. Some interesting person decided to drain all the different Kerensky credits from the Codex and install them on his. I know because I inherited it.” He looked over and he pulled a small hand scanner to let her look at the codex. She saw what he explained and noticed the amounts, couple were big money. She looked at him.

“Sir, why you not an officer?” the young Private asked.

“Politics, and because enlisted folks and warrants get to have all the fun.”



Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Ronin’s Keep
1st Floor
Officer Country
Tuesday March 19th 3095 12:00pm Local

He stepped over and knocked on Tai-i (Captain) Max Akamatsu’s office, the CO of the Transport Company dedicated to the DEST unit assigned to the Ronins.

“Enter,” came Maximilian’s gruff voice from the other side of the door.

He walked in and he closed the door. “Tai-i, I would like to have some time to get the Transport unit familiar with the Nose Guard’s capabilities. May I have some useful suggestions ... not like that, I am just a driver and tech / engineer for them. I am outside the official chain of command until I prove to you and others where I fit into this unit. I would like a class to go over what I consider is helpful in odd cases. I just want to talk, show them some things. May I ask you to come with me and I can explain the same thing to you, so you understand what I mean.”

Maximilian looked up from his desk over the top of his spectacles to see if the Gunsho (Sergeant) was being sincere. Maximilian’s appraisal of Nobinsky indicated that, ‘Yes’, the Gunsho (Sergeant) was being dead serious. “Hai.” Akamatsu answered Nebraska as he looked over his schedule. “Let me send a meeting notice out to the Company requesting their attendance. However; everyone may or may not show, due to it being on such a short notice and all. Let’s say in about 90 minutes, shall we? I’ll meet you in the Vehicle Bay at one thirty. And I was in the middle of something, so if that will be all Gunsho (Sergeant), Please, show yourself out.”




Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Ronin’s Keep
1st Floor
Officer Country
Tuesday March 19th 3095 13:30pm Local

Nebraska shifted, “Most Prowlers don’t have an advanced Johnstone comm suite, this does. Pull down here, and there is a handset and a holographic imager. Either will pick up. So if you need to call for fire from anyone else, this works. One of the unique things is this one is ancillary; no control of what happens here goes inside. So even if the Prowler is damaged or offline this still works, has its own power source. It is a sat comm. Now this...” He closed it up and opened the doors. This prowler had fold down doors/ ramps and he could load cargo if needed. “Mission equipment storage under the seats.” He moved closer to the front, and pressed a button. “Complete holographic projector. Can be used inside or out. Let you plan attacks with weather sat images.”

Max sat down in a nearby metal, folding chair and raised his eyebrows noticing the badge. “Badge?”

“Remote Outpost Marshals, ROM. When I was in DES, Explorer Corps, I was asked to join it, got me an extra paycheck and ad the time, well we had to do every job we could get our hands on, just to stay viable. If three men are doing every possible job, every possible training possible, they are more desirable and thus able to be promoted or at least kept around, those who slack off are asked to hit the door.”

He raised his brow again and this time he simply smiled. “Some days it feels like I am speaking with a jet engine behind me. Probably just me. Hope so anyway.”

Nobinsky looked over and opened the mini fridge and held out a beer for Max. He knew the man should accept it. But he also knew the man was a professional. He chuckled, “I know the badge fools a lot of people, been nice to have cover.”

“Why nice?” Maximillian took the proffered bait.

“Ah, can’t arrest myself for theft or other things, violation of a lot of orders, doing that. You could turn yourself into the command, but mostly they look the other way, if successful. Some think it is a character flaw, I like to think of it as a nice bene’ at times. I actually used once, I told someone I didn’t know if he was shooting at me because I was DES or because he knew I was ROM. That quiet comment, shifted the mere shooting to Star League charges. (There is no federal, republic or kingdom. Could be explained as shifted to ‘House’ charges.) He shifted, “God I love this job, all of it. I can swipe something and no one will yell at me for swiping it. Mercenary, got to remain in character. Who knew.”
He paused, “This is now one of your DEST Command vehicles, sir.”

Maximilian scratched the side of his head before replying, “Thank You Gunsho (Sergeant).” And to himself, he thought, ‘but I thought the Tai-sa (Colonel) had ALREADY established that’.

JOINT POST BETWEEN:

Word Count: 2283

Name: Nebraska Nobrinsky
Call Sign: ‘Chuck’
Rank: Gunsho (Sergeant)
Role: Tech/ Engineer
Hardware: Prowler (Driver)
Company: Rapid Response
Lance: Transport
Battalion: DEST
Unit: Razan’s Ronins
House: Draconis Combine
Player Name: Adrian

&

WORD COUNT 408

NPC
Tai-i (Captain)
Maximilian Akamatsu
Black Dragon Lance
Transport Company
DEST Elite Strike Battalion
Firestorm T11
Battle Armor Transport
Razan’s Ronins Mixed Arms Regiment
DRACONIS COMBINE

Name: MyKayla
Rank: Sho-ka (Master Sergeant)
Callsign: Sy-Berian Starr
Lance: Dragon Sword
Company: Katana
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Military Hardware: Daboku DCMS-MX92-E
Role: Assault
Unit: RAZAN’S RONINS MERCENARY REGIMENT
House: DRACONIS COMBINE

WORD COUNT 2691




DC-PA-06-07 #03

Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Ronin’s Keep
Mechwarrior’s Billet
Dormitory 7A
Monday March 18th 3095 0430am Local

Kashira (Talon Sergeant) Zach Evans sat up from his bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He glanced at the alarm clock on the night stand. It was only 0430, a full hour before he had to get up, but he knew trying to go back to sleep was futile. While being able to wake up quickly was normally a blessing, once he was up, he was up. Sighing, Evans sat up, careful not to disturb his bed mate, Go-Chu (Corporal) Jamila Shani. Jamila turned but otherwise remained still. Zach was still not sure about how he felt towards their relationship, he was technically her superior and they had avoided acting on their mutual attraction in the past. That all changed after the drop. The Drop. That's what all three of them called it. After Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Jac Aboss and Jamila were picked up, it was a tense, somber mood on the dropship. Evans tried to comfort both of his fellow pilots over the death of their comrades, despite his own grieving. Aboss took it all in stride, like he always did. He was used to death in a way that Evans hoped he would never be.

Jamila was quiet different. When Evans went to her quarters, she was clearly crying. What started as comforting became hugging, and hugging quickly moved on from there. It was healing for both, but Evans was unsettled afterwards.

He realized it wasn't just Gunsho (Sergeant) Leif Benzen death that had affected her so much, it was that she had been kissed by death. Jamila was an excellent pilot, but getting shot out of her Jenner had been the first time she had been so close to dying. The fact that she had to fight off several ULTRA infantrymen after her ‘Mech fell, only made it worse. Back when he was a scout, he had been attached to a Special Forces unit that in turn was supporting a Liberation unit. The Fifth Succession War was in full swing, and it was not going well for the Draconis Combine. Liberation Units were dispossed Mechwarriors, Yakuza, or other ner'do'wells that were trained by the Combine to enter hostile terrain, break stuff and cause chaos. In return, these desperate men and women were promised any ‘Mechs they could capture, or other riches. The Liberation team Evans's unit was supposed to meet up with, had been causing the Star League no limit of grief.

Evans's mission to support them was almost over before it began. His twenty four man team had jumped onto the world and began maneuvering to meet the Liberation unit. There was no telling how long the enemy had been tracking their movements, but once most of the unit was in an open Johnstone, disaster struck. Two Warrior Helos flew over the horizon, opening their autocannons up before the platoon knew what was happening. Evans had just made the tree line on the other side, doing his duty as a point man. They shells thudded around his position, throwing him to the ground. He looked on in horror as his team was cut down in mere seconds.

A veteran sergeant, his intestines spilling from his shredded body, stood on one knee and lifted a SRM. Though he was dying, the man was going to do his duty to its last and squeezed the trigger. The two missiles leaped from their launcher, and homed in on one of the helicopters, it made the first missile miss high, but the other impacted the Warrior right in its tail. The sergeant's dying shot was also his greatest, as the rotors exploded in a metal spray. The helicopter auto gyrated down and crashed into the planet’s surface.

Still lost in the past, Evans looked at the sleeping form of the younger Mechwarrior in his bed. He knew she should,’would’ get past the pain and the shock. She would even get past the fear of her own death as well. It would take time, and while he could be there for her, he couldn't lead her to the solution. For him, it had been continuing the fight and getting payback. The fact that he got his beloved Wolf Trap, ‘Warbeast’ during those brutal days was another salve to his soul. Jamila would find her own way, Evans was confident of that.

For now, he had his own, more immediate problems. When the Lance had returned to Ascella, the moon above the Combine planet’s capital, Tarawa City, they were allowed some R&R. Unfortunately, that was not going to be long, and Dragon Watch Lance was in bad shape. More to the point, the whole Razan’s Ronins Regiment was in bad shape. The Ronins, on paper, were supposed to be a reinforced Regiment of 36 Mechs, 36 Combat tanks, 2 companies each of 120 special force infantry – 1 armored and 1 unarmored, a battalion of support vehicles, 10 VTOLs, 18 Aerospace fighters, 6 DropShips, 2 JumpShips, and a WarShip. The ULTRA War had been rough, resulting in more than a quarter of the elite combined arms unit being injured or killed. To make it worse, when Yorii was captured, a significant number of troops, included a full Regiment of infantry defected and returned to their native region.

‘Mechs themselves were actually easy to replace. Both Aboss and Jamila were given new machines to replace their old ones. In fact, because of their special Modern Innovated Tactics force status, both got replacement models for the very ‘Mechs they had lost. What was much harder to replace was pilots.

Training new warriors was a time consuming ordeal, and officers were even rarer. The best the command could do was to give Evans a new pilot, a young Heishi (Private) named Serina Ketola. The girl showed promise, and was lighting fast in the Panther, but that still left Evans with a whole new headache. For the time being, as the Dragon Watch XO, he was in charge of the Lance. For the last couple of months, Evans had trained his new lance as best he could, but he still felt unready. Moving through the bedroom, he quickly crossed into his small living room. Sitting down at his desk, he reviewed his e-mails. It was going to be a full day, and if he couldn't sleep, he might as well get to work.

Jamila looked through the covers as Zach walked away. She had woke up when he moved from the bed, but she didn't want him to know she was awake. For the moment, she just wanted to see the man who she had come to rely on, not only as a leader, but as a friend and lover. He always seemed so serious and stern when he knew other people were watching. The only exceptions were when he was rushing into battle, in the throes of passion, or when he thought that no one was looking. It was touching to see him like this and Jamila didn't want to ruin it.

He was seven years older than her, 23 years standard in fact. But he had been a warrior since 16, moving through mud, blood and pain. That was probably one of the things that drew her to him, the way he was so stern and hard except during the moments when being human really mattered. She let him leave the room, and slowly drifted off back to sleep, smelling him in their sheets.

WORD COUNT 1329

NPC
Go-chu (Corporal)
Jamila Shani
Call Sign: Ferret
Dragon’s Lair Lance
Kiridashi Company
Ronin Legion Battalion
Stinger STG 5T
Long Range Support
Razan’s Ronins Mixed Arms Regiment
DRACONIS COMBINE

Name: MyKayla
Rank: Sho-ka (Master Sergeant)
Callsign: Sy-Berian Starr
Lance: Dragon Sword
Company: Katana
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Military Hardware: Daboku DCMS-MX92-E
Role: Assault
Unit: Razan’s Ronins Mercenary Regiment
House: DRACONIS COMBINE
Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Rank: Colonel
Callsign: 'Iceman'
MH: Steele Dagger Spec Ops BA
Role: DEST
Assignment: CO Battle Armor Regiment
Platoon: Black Ops
Company: SWAT
Battalion: HQ Battalion
Regiment: Smilodon
RESTLESS SOULS MERCENARY DIVISION

User avatar
Iceman
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:51 pm
affiliations: Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Callsign: 'Iceman'
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Kage BA (DEST)
Battalion: DEST
Company: Shadow
Platoon: PA(L) DEST Platoon Alpha
Assignment: Breach
Role: Executive Officer
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Re: Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

Postby Iceman » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:27 pm

DC-PA-06-07 #04

Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
2245 Listhill Way
Tanaka Kintaro’s Residence
Monday March 18th 3095 23:15pm Local

If Sho-sa (Major) Tanaka ‘Iceman’ Kintaro had thought the paperwork was never ending before when he ran just a Battalion, he now realized it had been just a drop in the bucket. After all of their pain on the previous mission Razan’s Ronins had managed to earn quite a bit of military hardware and was once again growing ... by leaps and bounds. Now, as the Executive Officer over all of Razan’s Ronins Regiment, he had more responsibility then ever before. Oddly enough, despite his occasional complaints he actual found that it suited him. Once a workaholic always a workaholic he supposed.

Signing off on one set of transfer orders to accept new recruits into MWR Battalion he turned to the next set of papers. It was with a bit of relief that he realized the to do pile was now considerably smaller than the pile of completed forms. With a bit of luck he might even be done with this before midnight. The weeks just before a new mission were always the busiest but Tanaka knew he had no reason to complain. There most recent layover had been measured in months rather than weeks and after the hell of the last mission, couldn't have come at a better time.

He refused to think on that though. Dwelling on past disasters, no matter how hard they had been for the unit, was a sure path to depression. They learned what they could from it, grew from the experience, and used it to do better next time. It was the only way to handle the stress of a mercenary life.

At least while they were still on Ascella he had the opportunity to do some of his work from his home office. That had let him spend even more time with his family ... and speaking of family, after a few moments, Tanaka realized he was being watched. Looking up from the desk he saw his wife Alethea watching from the open doorway. She wore a fuzzy bathrobe, slippers and an odd little smile that told him she was plotting mischief.

“You been there long?” he asked, wondering just what she was thinking. She had a quirky sense of humor sometimes which certainly kept him on his toes.

“Just a couple of minutes,” she replied with a bit of a grin. “If I had been an enemy soldier though, you would have been done for.”

Laying the pen aside it was Tanaka's turn to smile.

“I usually turn all the paranoia off at home you know. Would hate to wake up shooting in the middle of the night because I heard the cat downstairs.”

‘Damned cat made too much noise anyway’, he thought to himself, though he wouldn't ever say it out loud. Alethea and the boys loved the silly thing, though he couldn't say why. He had always been more of a dog person himself.

“Well, I promise not to do anything awful to you then ... unless you ask nicely.”

She made her way across the room and sat on an edge of the desk that wasn't covered with papers.

“Though I did lay out the toys if you've a mind to use them sir ....”

Tanaka blinked once at the husky tone of voice she had slipped into. It had taken him awhile to come to terms with some of her more exotic tastes but in the end he had found them to his liking as well. It was the 31st century after all, even if he had a somewhat repressed Buddhist upbringing on a backwater planet.

“The boys?”

“At a friend’s house tonight,” she said, slipping from the desk to sit on his lap now. “And before you ask I'm not wearing a thing under this robe either .... it seemed only fitting since you would be leaving again soon ...”

Tanaka nodded and smiled. He kissed her then and let the rest of the paperwork slip from his mind. There would be plenty of time for it come the morning.

“Alright then,” he finally said in a low tone. “Go on upstairs and wait for me .... put on the blindfold though. I'll be up in a moment.”

She smiled, rising slowly from his lap and heading for the stairs. Tanaka watched her go, deeply appreciative of the physical charms his wife had. This would be a night to remember he realized .... one to keep him warm on the lonely nights of whatever planet this next mission took them too.

WORD COUNT 815

Name: Tanaka Kintaro
Callsign: ‘Iceman’
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Nighthawk PA(L) XXIII
Platoon: Alpha (Infiltration)
Company: Shadow
Battalion: DEST
Assignment: Regimental XO
Role: Infiltration
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE




DC-PA-06-07 #05

Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Red Light District
The Dirty Mug Bar
Monday March 18th 3095 23:30pm Local

Ryan Rasmusen was one of a very rare breed. It was unusual that an ‘MechWarrior would reach the age of retirement without having been crippled or driven totally around the bend mentally. Not only had Ryan managed that feat but he had managed to save enough money during his years in the cockpit to start a business of his own ... and to make it thrive!

The Dirty Mug was one of a group of bars and other businesses on Ascella, within the Ronin’s Keep's sphere of influence, that catered to the pilots enlisted in the Razan’s Ronins. In the years since it had opened Ryan had become quite adept at not only business but also at the subtle art of bar tending. As such he had become quite skilled at reading clues about people.

The young man at the end of the bar for example told him a lot of things without speaking a word. He was young obviously, and seemed new to the Ronins. Ryan could tell he was shy and felt out of place. Since the front of the bar was quiet it was time for his good deed for the day.

“Your new here, aren't you?” he asked with a smile. “Part of the latest recruitment drive?”

“Yes sir,” the young man replied, giving Ryan an odd look. He seemed to be both grateful for someone to talk to and somewhat suspicious as well. Just like someone who had no friends in a new place the bar tender supposed. “Just got done with my basic training not too long ago. Still trying to fit in and find my way.”

Studying the young fellow, who was still in uniform, Ryan could tell a few things about him. He was Gunjin (Private First Class) Tupak from Black Dragon Lance, a Cavalry Lance in Scimitar Company. At least that's what his name tag and uniform insignia indicated.

“I'm not a sir,” Ryan said with a good natured grin. “And the Ronins are a good unit to hook up with ... and you've come to the right bar. Most of my patrons are from theunit, you know. Now .... let me guess here Tupak ... your kind of shy and haven't gotten on well with your lance mates yet?”

Tupak blushed a bit, which Ryan had to guess was his natural state when dealing with strangers. The Ronins were very welcoming as a rule but sometimes could overwhelm a timid person a bit. He wouldn't be here if he was a coward but it did seem the young fellow needed a bit of a hand to fit in. When he didn't respond right away Ryan decided to take matters into his own hands.

“Come on then Tupak, I'm going to help you out here. Carry that keg for me will you?”

He pointed towards a keg on the other end of the bar and motioned for the younger man to follow. Tupak did, though he hesitated briefly. Soon enough he fell into step behind Ryan who was still talking.

“First thing you need to see is the rules of the bar,” the older man said, indicating a poster tacked up on the wall of a hallway, lined with several doors, that wound it's way to the back of the large building.

No Spitting

No Saluting

Don't touch the waitresses

No fighting till after 9 pm

Donate generously to the fine jar

Tupak studied the sign for a moment and shot a questioning look towards Ryan. The bartender gave him a patient look before he elaborated.

“I don't want to have to clean up after you goobers spitting on my floor ... this is an enlisted man's bar so no saluting of course ... the waitresses are all my daughters and nieces so watch your manners .... we shoo the people with tender sensibilities out of here by nine so no trouble till after that .... and finally donate generously so that I can pay the fines for whatever mischief you clowns get into ... though your own bail is on your head!”

Tupak listened attentively, alternating between amused and appalled it seemed. Finally he just smiled at the end of the explanation and merely nodded. It seemed to Ryan as if the kid was loosening up a bit which pleased him.

“Now as for all this, most of the regulars hang out with their own little clique of friends. Some of them are here so regularly that they have reserved rooms for when they come in. I have plenty of room to spare since this building is a renovated hanger you know .... but anyway, this is the Wall of Honor gang.”

Without further ado he pushed the nearest door open. Where there had been raucous laughter and loud conversation before the room suddenly went quiet as everyone looked up to see who was coming in. Seeing Ryan they relaxed a bit but all eyes strayed to Tupak with some suspicion.

“More beer for you boys,” Ryan announced. “I charged it to your tab. Since no one had yelled for any for awhile I figured you were going dry ... or were getting too maudlin in front of the wall.”

There were six men sitting around a single table that had cards and chips scattered upon it. They all wore uniforms, or at least parts of uniforms. No one else had on their rank insignia but from the various over shirts and jackets scattered about the room it was clear that these were all enlisted men to the Ronins of some degree. Cigar smoke and the smell of beer was thick in the air.

“Who is the kid?” asked one of the men at the table. He was a big, burly fellow and didn't look at all friendly. Tupak stared at the man even as Ryan replied.

“A fellow Ronin ... just like you guys ... and a ‘MechWarrior besides. I figured you guys wouldn't want a fellow pilot to drink alone.”

For a moment all was quiet as these six men stared at the new comer. Then, without warning the large men who spoke began to laugh. The others were starting to grin and soon joined in the laughter as well. Tupak gave them a confused looked and then turned his gaze towards Ryan who was chuckling as well. Shaking his head the bartender regarded the younger man again.

“They're alright. Just yanking your chain a bit. Really ... they don't bite.”

Taking the keg off of the younger man's hands Ryan set it on another table nearby and turned once again to face the group.

“He seems like an OK kid. Just finished his basic and all. Maybe you lot can tell him what being a ‘MechWarrior in Razan’s Ronins is all about.”

The large man who had spoke earlier nodded.

“Sure Ryan. It's not like it's a state secret or anything. Pull up a chair kid. Whats your name?”

“Nicolas Tupak,” the younger fellow replied. His voice was a little less timid but he still wasn't totally sure of himself or the situation.

“Well Tupak, I'm Shujin (Master Sergeant) Orvald ‘Doomguide’ Kress, Dragon Claw Lance of Katana Company in Ronin Legion Battalion. These mugs are Go-chos (Corporals) Brand and Roadley, along with Heishis (Privates) Ribbe, Nakagawa and Boone ... good Ronin to a man. There are a few others that hang with us that aren't here. Aboss and Chickamoto are on a girls day shopping trip, Wakamoto is in the brig and ..... say .... where the hell is Evans again?”

One of the others, Boone, muttered something about him getting married but Kress waved it off.

“Well, no matter. He'll be back for a drink after his honeymoon.”

Tupak tried to soak all that in but became a bit confused.

“Girls day? Some of the female soldiers hang out here?”

It wasn't clear if he was so much surprised as hopeful.

“Well, not normally,” one of the others, Ribbe, replied. “They aren't girls but they are a couple if you know what I mean. We don't judge ... though we might tease a bit. Both damned fine ‘MechWarriors so that's all we care about.”

“Tell him about the wall,” Ryan prompted.

“Ah yeah,” Kress said, as if remembering something that had been forgotten. Clearly he liked to talk once he got started. Standing then the large man strode over to the wall and admired it for a moment. It was hung with a few dozen photos. Some had a red X in the corner of the picture. Others had a blue X instead while some had green X.

“These are our friends who aren't with us anymore. The ones with a red X, well ... that's kind of self explanatory. Those with a blue X got promoted up to officers or transferred out of the Ronins. We see them sometimes and they are always welcome to come by of course ... but you know you have to hang by your buds. Us ‘Mech Jocks in the trenches have to stick together and look out for each other.”

Tupak studied the wall, apparently noticing that there were a lot more red X's then any of the other colors.

“What about the green ones?”

“Those are the smart ones who retired,” Kress said somberly. “At any rate that's what we do here. We drink and carry on while we can .... you know ... a ‘MechWarriors life isn't a certain thing. We drink toasts to those who came before and look after those still alive.”

Sergeant Kress seemed poised to continue talking and Ryan noticed that Tupak was listening attentively. The others were also throwing out comments here and there so things seemed pretty normal with the crew. With that the bartender slipped quietly from the room. It was as he hoped; they seemed to be taking Tupak under their wing which was good for the young fellow and good for them as well. The ‘Mech Cadre had suffered some pretty heavy casualties in the Ronin’s last few engagements and there was no reason to believe that would change. If they were going to have a hard life though the least he could do, as a sort of unofficial morale officer, was to help them find their way while they were still able.

A little later, cleaning glasses at the bar Ryan thought he heard an old song from his own soldiering days from the back room. He smiled, realizing he also heard Tupak's voice raised among the rest. It seemed the Wall of Honor gang had a new recruit. Good for him ... and good for them. It was a job well done by Ryan's reckoning.

WORD COUNT 1850

Name: Orvald Kress
Callsign: ‘Doomguide’
Rank: Shujin (Master Sergeant)
Hardware: No Dachi NDA-1K
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Dragon’s Claw
Assignment: Striker
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE



DC-PA-06-07 #06

Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Catalca
Instanbul
Southern Peninsula

Tuesday March 19th 3095 08:45am Local

Nebraska Nobrinsky saw the orders, they looked legit. He knew they were and why he was asked to be given this assignment. It was not a job awarded to someone who liked the media. This was a job, only a professional law enforcement officer would do and do well.
It was not glamourous or even mildly exotic. It was backbreaking schedule of almost constant shabby hotels, where only an unmarried man would be able to take it. Wife needed time as well. They liked regular visits. He wasn’t there to get names in papers or grab headlines. He was there specifically as a scent dog. He brought others attention to point, not taking part directly unless there was hell to pay.
Scenery changed but even he knew it would be getting pretty boring, pretty damn quickly. He would have no constant supervisor; instead he would make contact, see the Captain and other constabulary and then move on. It was his working the scene, like a detective that landed those big jobs. He could handle that. He didn’t like assassination attempts. You do too many headliners and someone is pissed, and wants to make a name for themselves and guess who pays the piper.
He landed in the city of Instanbul, his first for this case. He walked off, it was a meet and greet time and he looked around. He spotted the gate guard and walked over. He flashed his badge. “Captain in?”
“How would I...”
“Call him, I am a ROM marshal. Need to speak him.”
“Wait here.”
He saw the Captain’s vehicle arrive and he walked over. “Your place, please.”
“No chit chat?”
“Bored as hell. Better yet someplace we can eat and have a beer and talk about some cases. Nebraska Nobrinsky, but everyone calls me ‘Chuck’.”
“Sam Ogilve. Come on, wife runs one of the restaurants in town and I have a backroom for chats when needed.”
He sat down and a woman delivered food and soda pop. He looked down and said his prayers quietly, before picking up the silverware.
“Well?”
“Spent 20 years wearing the badge in DES, Explorer Corps. Unmarried, I have a custom Prowler. PPC, and twin small pulse with ECM, Active Probe, wheeled and even has a bull dozer blade, for entry where required.”
He ate some. “Precentor XXV Lilly Lafferty has me doing bird dogging. I locate problems and she finds solutions where she can. She’s noticed on a number of planets where the Zhanzheng de guang and U.L.T.R.A. has been there was increased forced prostitution camps, other places that make Buchenwald during World War 2 Nazi Germany, look like pleasure retreats. Extermination camps, and some other nefarious ones. If we can prove cause and effect we can limit further expansion of them because they are not obeying the rules of law.”
“Please those didn’t happen...”
“Bullshit. Look at Loric in 2979. Marik wanted the cache there but didn’t know where it was. So they convinced the local governor to let them come in and bred the Steiner out of the populace while they searched. Youngest in those forced prostitution camps was 5. Oldest was 58. I only know about that because my grandfather was on Tukayyid in ’52. He was in the unit ‘Free Beer for Life’. He met people who were there. Half of ROM’s marshal force had showed up, well little more than half. Marik champions freedom, but the first thing that happens, he declares martial law, no freedom. Steiner, has political generals, so does Liao, Draconis and Davion to all different degrees. Look at the yakuza siding against the Coordinator. I know a lot of people who’d sell the old lady just to makes ends meet. They whore her out gladly if they could find someone who would pay.”
“Know a lot of guys like...”
“Exactly, part of the human condition. Now all I do is look at reports and flag them for others. Like the connection between Marik, Zhanzheng de guang, and U.L.T.R.A. Some say it is just coincidence. Others looked at it and saw patterns. Marik keeps the fingers in and causes problems for everyone else. Sore losers. Now, we made a connection because a case on point was Telos IV. That system had a refueling station, U.L.T.R.A. commanded and Zhanzheng de guang was the understudy. At the asteroid mining facility, where they were caught in the act less than 3 months ago, stealing everything they could get their hands on. I mention it because there was a Space Defense System there and they didn’t know about it. My unit, the Razan’s Ronins disabled it and the dumb sons of bitches, Zhanzheng de guang and U.L.T.R.A. had forced prostitution camps, and were doing something weird. One report says possible extraction of a person’s endorphins and spinal fluid. There is a new drug out called ‘White Dreams’. Boosts a person’s mind speed, but is 100 percent addictive plus 40 percent may develop the human version of mad cow disease. Spinal fluid and brain cells been banned even in animal feed since the 1990s. Cows started dropping. Took them a while to realize some people were grinding up cow parts and slipping it back into the feed for cows and other animals. Even seen cases where Deer developed the same problem from licking bones, for salt. Humans are meat eaters, our eyes are in the front, we have some strong acid, but we aren’t even in the same league as a wolf or crocodile. Those can dissolve bones down to nothing. Their system can handle that we can’t. See they are almost entirely meat eaters. We like diversity. Even when we switch to an all meat diet, our body chemistry doesn’t change.”
He drank, “I mention this because the donors are all fatal. Commonly used to conceal their work is crematoriums, just like the Nazis did. It was estimated Germany killed a minimum of 3.5 million dead, and that is not the total. Not even close. They gave people whom they decided were deemed unfit, slightly retarded or some religious backgrounds, forced sterilization. No choice, no appeal, and more had instant lobotomies if they complained.”
“Lobotomies?”
“They’d drill into the skulls, stick in a screwdriver and scramble the brains. They couldn’t complain after, used as Drudges. People who were forced to move carts for mining. They can follow orders but can’t think for themselves. It got a little messy.”
“Saying that been happening here?”
“Saying keep your eyes open. E10M is how some disguise Zhanzheng de guang. It is upside down. We have had reports of places opened, what looks like storage lockers and on the pallets inside was money, pallets worth. ‘If found out it would bottom out the economy.’ When you start seeing that, maybe they are up to something nefarious. Sure as hell aren’t friends.”
“Nope. You sure.”
“I can have Precentor XXV Lilly Lafferty clear you for some reads. Weird but damn. Makes it real glad I work for ComStar, not against them.”
“He won’t...”
“Unless he needs someone to collaborate something.”
“Interesting idea. Now then you sure about the SDS?”
“Telos is now the prefecture command. Warships patrol the damn thing. Yes, they did find drones, both the dropship and the modified Stingray.”
“You sure?”
He pulled out his Nakjama pistol removed the capacitor and handed it over. The Captain looked, he didn’t see a serial number. He broke it open and looked at other parts. “Covert Ops...”
He took it back and he laid the badge on the table. The Captain noticed the badge cover had markings for knife and laser, but it was the badge, he saw hidden computer security chips. Once you seen them you recognize the subtle patterns. He replaced the capacitor and he took the badge back. “I need to set up with you an email account. Preferably one based in satellites.”
“Why?”
“I am roving. If you need something flag it, and I get the same reports you send to others. I will compare them to others I collect for faster analysis. Some jackass back home said we needed confirmation. Double the damn work and double the paperwork, but it is a check we can use. We, if we detect a pattern soon enough we can send someone even a merc unit to handle the situation as needed. Turnaround time is 30 days, minimum. I’m here just visiting the planets cities in this area, means a turnaround time can be as short as 2 weeks. You send a request up and you better have some pull or thirty days before someone is sent to verify... long damn ass time. Some places it is a bit longer.”
“6 months tops.”
“You have some pull. If anyone asks, I am a merchant trying to set up a small permanent cargo for this continent. Catalca, stuff. This would be cover for the meet and greet and also the constant contact. I or my fellow associates will only speak to you and only in private. I’d like an email account accessed by satellites and when I come back we can check. Urgent replies, we will send someone over to get the cargo. We will pay for the cargo, not just the… pay ahead directly to you or whomever. Covers cost of fuel, means we can devote more time and money to other places, or get others doing this as well. Which means more cargos paid for, up - front. We take the risk of sitting on some cargo, and any profit, whatever it is, if any, covers fuel. Do you have a locally available commodity? Fish, beef, wood, something we can use…”
“Grumbly Oil, used to have someone come regularly for that. We harvest it from the fish, used to be used for perfumes but they stopped buying that about 50 years ago.”
“How much you got?”
“I… I’ll need to ask. We use it for fuel oil now. Sort of.”
“Ah?”
“Cash or codex?”
“Cash please.”
“I’ll need to visit the cargo plane. And thank you.”
“If I can?”
“A 100 tons, be too much?”
“That little?”
“Trust me, might be carrying it a while, got fourteen other cities for this loop.”
“Good enough, a 100 tons, 300 Ryu per ton.”
“Three thousand Ryu coming up. Might make it an even ½ million, the rest for you for thanks for making this work. I know it is a lot to do. Figure… do you also have some ammo?”
“Fifty cal sniper or .45 cal, is what I prefer.”
“I’ll take a shipment, covers the cost to you nicely.”
He walked down to the Captain, Sam Ogilve, he had four semi - truck tanker cars, each with wheels.
“When you deliver get the tankers back and return them.”
“Right.”
He shifted and handed over one duffle bag of cash. He paused and handed a second one to the Captain.
“Covers the deposit and the ammo.”
“Right…”
He moved up and he took it, he had men walk it to the ramp, dozen ammo cases and he smiled.
“Anything else?”
“Email…”
He wrote his undercover email address and the password. “How do we talk?”
“I’ll use this and make a draft and leave it there. I will view the draft and send you a reply.”
The next city was just that, another city. He spoke almost the same words to Captain Daffy Driscoll. He shifted. “Been collecting cargo, cover. Any businesses here?”
“Got a cosmetic company…”
“Ask them to come over. I am using it as cover. Me or my associates, wink, wink, nod, nod. Won’t deal with anyone but you. Inform them I have some Grumbly Oil for sale.”
Sarah Smith walked over, “Sorry we don’t normally buy from…”
“A 100 tons in 4x 25 ton oil truck. A 1000 Ryu per ton. Total would be a million Ryu. Can you handle that or do I…”
“Hell yes.”
“I’ll need the tankers back. Cash, please.”
He took it and counted it before them and then bagged 300 thousand in one and 700 thousand in the second bag. “Thank you, I’ll wait here for the tankers. Captain, do you know any cattle ranchers?”
“Few, need some beef?”
“Frozen please just hanging. Three thousand Ryu.”
“Why so little?”
“Might be a while before I visit someone who wants to buy it. I will pay for the load, cash money. We will always pay for cash right on the spot.”
“Sarah why…”
“What were we paying for Grumbly oil 50 years ago?”
“Twenty - five thousand Ryu a ton.”
“Really just bought 100 tons for a thousand Ryu per ton.”
The old lady there smiled. “This is the good stuff. How much?”
“A 1000 Ryu per ton.”
“Tons?”
“A 100. Roughly 1 million Ryu total”
“Bring back the old formula, you know for novelties and such. Prefer her handling the incoming. Great work.”
“Thank you.”
Nebraska Nobrinsky
Call sign: Chuck
Gunsho (sergeant)
DEST Battalion
Transport Company
DEST Rapid Response Lance
Prowler – ‘Nose Guard’
Razan’s Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Word Count: 2199












DC-PA-06-07 #07

Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
Saebeth River
Governor’s Mansion
Tuesday March 19th 3095 21:45pm Local

Tai-sa (Colonel) Onishi ‘Rough Ryder’ Razan, Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) Reece ‘Buddha’s Fist’ Kimura, and Sho-sa (Major) Tanaka ‘Iceman’ Kintaro were received with cool courtesy at Tai-sho (General) Ashida Deyama’s headquarters in an imposing mansion on a wooded hill above the spaceport. They passed through an ascending hierarchy of receptionists, functionaries, under chiefs, chiefs, and executive chiefs of staff until at last they were ushered into the Green Room, where Ashida Deyama burrowed his way through a sheaf of hardcopy printouts and official looking documents. Onishi found herself wondering if they had been heaped there merely to impress them with the General's importance to the Dieron Military District, as there could be no other reason for that inefficient paper mountain.

The General peered over his papers, frowning. "My people tell me your need for an audience was urgent," he said, without preamble. "What is it? I'm a busy man."

"Tai-sho (General)." Tanaka gave the proper bow of one schooled by long experience at court. "It is indeed surprising to see someone of your rank place himself in the midst of such ... confusion. I know well the amenities of Al Na’ir. This outpost has few. The Tai-sho (General) presents a refreshing departure from standard procedure."

Onishi grinned inside but kept her face a carefully neutral mask. She'd never known that the Sho-sa (Major) had such talents with the sweet oil of flattery.

The Tai-sho (General)'s frown transformed into a smile, and he nodded graciously. "My duty calls me to many uncomfortable spots, it's true. But, when one's duty is the good of his people ..." He spread his hands helplessly. "Well, what can I do for you, gentlemen and lady?" Listening to him, Onishi realized that the Tai-sho (General)'s own courtiers must be such sycophants that he no longer could distinguish the fake from the true.

"A formality only, Tai-sho (General). We are bound to report to you, as the nearest representative of the Tai-sho (General) over the Dieron Prefecture and as the district military commander, a change of plan in the counter invasion of Dieron. We ..."

"What-what-what?" Deyama's sputter might have been the clicking of an empty auto cannon. "Change? Change? What change?"

"We have reason to believe that our original plan, which called for a direct assault on New Leon, may be a trap. Our new plan calls for a landing along the Coast Road and at the fringe of the Black Sea north of the Highland Peninsula. That will place us in the best possible position to . . . “

"Commanders." The Tai-sho (General)'s momentary affability had vanished. His eyes were cold. "I do not believe that Tai-shu (Warlord) Isoroku Kurita makes a habit of having his plans questioned . . . changed! . . . by his subordinates! I happen to know how much thought went into these plans. I know. I was there! Every factor was considered . . . the terrain, the probable strength and disposition of the Free Worlds’ forces, psychological factors, everything! What makes you three think you can rewrite all that planning" . . . his fingers snapped like a pistol shot . . . "just like that?"

"Tai-sho (General) Deyama," Tanaka said calmly. "I regret that we have displeased you, but I must inform you that we have already made the decision . . . and implemented it. Our orders from the Tai-shu (Warlord) are quite specific in this. We are to keep the Tai-sho (General) apprised of developments, to seek your council ... but being the Premier Modern Innovated Tactics Regiment, the interpretation and implementation of Tai-shu (Warlord) Isoroku Kurita’s plans are left to Tai-sa (Colonel) Razan’s discretion."

"Interpretation, yes. But for Buddha’s Sakes man, this isn't interpretation. It's wholesale murder!"

"Tai-sho (General)?"

"You said that the north of the Black Sea is your intended drop zone?"

"At the fringe of the swamp, yes, Tai-sho (General). There are grasslands there, and ..."

"That whole area is a quagmire, fool! Your ‘Mechs will set down and keep going down . . . lost in the ooze, without a trace! A regiment could be swallowed up in there, just stepping out onto what they thought was solid ground! Or don't you realize just how heavy a BattleMech is?"

"Tai-sho (General), I assure you ..."

"You're doing nothing of the sort! Do you realize that your failure on Dieron will reflect back on me, the supreme commander of this Prefecture? I cannot approve such hair brained idiocy." Ashida seemed to struggle with himself. His face softened, but his eyes remained cold and hard. "Commanders. Such a change . . . and now, of all times! . . . is an open invitation to disaster. You all come from military backgrounds! You must understand this! Think of the confusion! Think of the chaos if even one of your battalions flounders in the quicksand and mud of the Black Sea Swamps! That whole area is a death trap. Believe me, we considered all these things in the first stages of our own planning!”

"It's true that I cannot command you on this. Why the Tai-shu (Warlord) gave direct command to someone other than the supreme military commander of this Prefecture is not for me to say ... but I strongly . . . strongly! . . . recommend that you adhere to the original plan! Tai-shu (Warlord) Isoroku Kurita had such brilliance! A lightning approach! A dashing strike from the sky at the Free Worlds League strongholds! A savage thrust to secure the planet's capital and principal port, followed by a wide ranging sweep to secure the entire planet, leaving no pockets of resistance. No floundering in the swamps, no half measures. That, you Ronins, is the mark of strategic military brilliance!"

"Tai-sho (General) ..." Tanaka paused. "Tai-sho (General), certainly, we must consider what you have said most carefully.”

The Tai-sho (General) stood behind his desk, leaning on it heavily, his cold eyes level with Onishi's own. "Good. And consider this carefully, too. You have proven yourself a worthy, able officer. An error of this magnitude would most certainly have unfortunate repercussions on a most promising career. You would be ... finished ... done for. I ... I speak as a friend, MiLady, and as an advisor."

Onishi bowed. "The Tai-sho (General) is kind. We understand your position and appreciate your Bretanness. Believe me, Tai-sho (General), we will carefully reconsider our position before committing ourselves irrevocably."

"See that you do, Ma’am. Good day."

Tanaka was momentarily startled by Onishi's sudden change of tactics. She had sounded so sincere that it wasn't until they were walking from the chamber and Tanaka caught a wink from the Tai-sa (Colonel) that he realized that Onishi's last words had been an act.

"You old smoothie," he murmured, pitching his voice low so that only Onishi and Reece could hear.

For an answer, Onishi rolled her eyes toward the ornate and gold trimmed ceiling. It was a relief to get into the fresh night air of Ascella once more.

WORD COUNT 1230

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE














DC-PA-06-07 #08

Draconis Combine
Dieron Military District
Al Na’ir Prefecture
Ascella
Tarawa City
Askahr
Southern Peninsula
SpacePort
Wednesday March 20th 3095 18:00pm Local

No soldier looks forward to a strike against a major city, because ‘street to street’ combat can turn a skillfully defended urban area into a death trap. Nevertheless, when word trickled down the Razan’s Ronins line of command that the Regiment would not be dropped into New Leon and the auxiliary spaceport as originally planned, the troopers and ‘Mech Warriors greeted the news with complaints and grumbling instead of relief.

Soldiers are a superstitious lot, and have been ever since the first savage threw the first rock. They have an automatic tendency to suspect that the enigmatic and godlike decisions coming down from the remote High Command might somehow alter fate, putting a man here, directly in the path of an incoming round, instead of there, where he could have survived. After all, it was not usually the higher - ups who had to put their butts on the line. Even the veteran NCOs, who might have breathed a small sigh of relief that they would not be dropping directly into a hot strongpoint, could only shake their heads and curse the blind fumbling’s of Higher Authority. Why couldn't those brass heavy paper pushers leave well enough alone, without stirring everything and everybody up?

But the changes were made. Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) Johnny Yee reported that new navigational fixes had been recorded for three distinct peaks in the ridge around the Pass, and the drop zones could now be positively identified and homed on. Unit commanders down to individual lance commanders and platoon leaders reported that troop assignments had been re - set, new 'Mech assembly points positioned and confirmed, and primary targets reassigned. Contingency planning and logistical support evaluations were continuing, but these chores could be carried out aboard the DropShips. Within twenty hours of the visit by Sho-sa (Major) Tanaka ‘Iceman’ Kintaro, Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) Reece ‘Buddha’s Fist’ Kimura, and Tai-sa (Colonel) Onishi ‘Rough Ryder’ Razan to Tai-sho (General) Ashida Deyama's Field headquarters, the first DropShips carrying elements of Razan's Steel Dragon Battalion had already boosted from Ascella and were hours outbound on their way to the system's nadir jump point.

Onishi herself had remained behind to parry any possible official or bureaucratic delays Tai-sho (General) Deyama might create because he was displeased. The 5th Sword of Light were still ostensibly under the Tai-sho (General)’s command even though they had been temporarily reassigned to Tai-sa (Colonel) Evgeni Morgan by Coordinator Hohiro Kurita himself. Though powerless to stop the invasion, the Tai-sho (General) of the Dieron Prefecture could find a myriad of ways to hamper the assembly and loading of his own troops. An order to loyal unit commanders simply to slow down the boarding process or to lose the clearance orders for a vital shipment of munitions could delay the unit's departure for days, even weeks.

Razan's solution was equally simple, though risky. She made sure that Ashida would not interfere with the new plan for the counter invasion by solemnly informing the Tai-sho (General) that after all and after careful consideration, the Razan’s Ronins High Command Staff had decided to stick with the old plan.

Tanaka considered this strategy dangerous as well as dishonest, knowing that Tai-sho (General) Deyama would be furious and humiliated when he finally learned that they had lied to him. Having an influential and powerful leader like the Tai-sho (General) of a military district for an enemy was not going to be amusing. It was these wheels within wheels within wheels, rather than the prospect of battle, that was keeping Tanaka awake at night.

But Onishi was too busy to worry for long. Once her own unit was scheduled for loading, she found herself in a running, three - sided battle with the Ascella Technical Officer and the temporary Chief of Procurement in the wake of the Ronin’s departure.

A Ha Otoko 2 in Katana Company, Ronin Legion Battalion of Ronin’s Regiment, died right on the landing Field in the shadow of the Overlord Class DropShip, Heaven Scent, that it was preparing to board. An old, old fault in a leg servo unit finally shorted an actuator circuit board too often patched instead of replaced.

The leg locked, freezing the 'Mech in place and blocking access to the DropShip's number one hold.

Though replacing a circuit board is not particularly difficult, the repair meant removing the Ha Otoko's leg at the knee, a procedure that required a Mobile Field Base Vehicle or a full maintenance facility, at least. The Ronin’s MFB gantry was already broken down and stored, and Base Procurement refused to provide a new circuit board unless the crippled 'Mech could be brought to the base’s maintenance center some two hundred meters across the field. A request for a deployed Jifty gantry was refused: why should that gear be broken out when maintenance blocks were open just across the field?

Unfortunately, the base Field Technical Services Division could spare no transports for the three hours' work needed to lower the 'Mech onto a flatbed crawler and carry it across to Maintenance. Proper authorization to redetail a transport and crew had to come from the base commandant, and he was at an official briefing with His Grace the Tai-sho (General) and would not be available until that evening . . . or possibly tomorrow. ‘So sorry’, they said, ‘but we are really very busy and could you call back later? Or you might check with the Logistical Staff at the airport, eighty klicks from here. They might have a transport, and if you could get authorization...’

Meanwhile, the other three 'Mechs of the Ha Otoko's lance were scheduled to board through the blocked hatch, and the entire loading schedule was falling behind. After two hours of fruitless tail - chasing, Onishi arrived at the only possible solution. She had the two heaviest of the waiting 'Mechs drag the crippled, sixty five ton Ha Otoko across the field to the maintenance center and leave it there, laid carefully and squarely across the access way leading to the building's underground VIP garage.
If the major in charge of the Technical Services Division wanted to get home for supper that evening, the 'Mech would have to be repaired that afternoon, transport or no transport.

It was, and loading proceeded almost on schedule.

As boost time approached, the scene became even more chaotic and hectic. The port facilities of Ascella were a hive of activity focused on the squat shapes of the DropShips . . . Unions and her Overlord, mostly . . . resting in their blast pits surrounded by the lacelike traceries of loading gantries and crane supports. Somehow, hundreds of tons of food, water, munitions, and spare parts had to be directed from storehouses around the planet to the proper ship at the proper time.

The physics of mass and mass distribution were unforgiving of the schedules and problems of ship supply officers. If each ton of supplies was not positioned precisely, the ship would not respond as expected when the captain later tried to cut in a control jet to vector clear of incoming missiles or to maneuver through a turbulent atmosphere. Worse, if those tons of supplies were not stored in the proper order, ground troops queuing up to draw ammo might be told that their supplies lay somewhere on the far side of 400 tons of dried meat and a case of BattleMech leg actuator circuits.

Finally, after ten hours of grueling work, the last 'Mech was somehow winched into its transport niche and locked down, the last liter of reaction mass had been pumped into tanks and the hollow, partitioned spaces between bulkheads and decks, and the last squad of infantry had filed aboard and found the narrow, padded ledges that would be their homes for the next several weeks. Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) Reece had departed the day before with the Steel Dragon Battalion aboard the Gazelle Class DropShip, the Tempest Fury. With the threat of official delay from the Tai-sho (General) Deyama's office removed, Onishi’s Executive Officer, Sho-sa (Major) Tanaka, boosted to rejoin the unit hours later aboard the Wyvern, the Ronin’s Aurora Class Spec Ops Transport.

Onishi was left to send the final messages required by protocol and formal etiquette . . . one to Tai-sho (General) Ashida Deyama stating that the original battle plan had, after all and after much careful consideration, been changed; and another that went by diplomatic paths to Tai-shu (Warlord) Isoroku Kurita himself, explaining the change and describing the friction generated between the Razan’s Ronins command staff and the Tai-sho (General) of the Dieron Prefecture. Onishi had composed this last with some measure of relief. ‘Let Isoroku deal with him’, she thought. From now on, I'll just have to worry about ULTRA BattleMechs!

Messages transmitted, Onishi stepped aboard the Union Class DropShip, the Black Ronin, commandeered from the Ronin’s Flying Dragon Wing and stared for the last time across the nearly deserted plain, that was Ascella's largest port facility. All of the Ronins other ships had already boosted, and the only humans visible were isolated groups clustered here and there trying to assess the blast damage caused by the departing DropShips. Trash and debris . . . paper by the ton, discarded equipment cases and cargo crates, the scattered refuse of a thousand men, the skeletal frameworks of partly dismantled cranes and gantries . . . littered thefield, creating a haunting image of loneliness and desolation.

Ascella was the inner world of an M0 dwarf. The laws of Kearny-Fuchida drive dictated that the star's two jump points would be seven tenths of an astronomical unit out, the zenith point above the star's north pole, the nadir point above its south pole. At a constant 1 G boost, with time out for a mid course flip, the trip from world to jump point would take thirty six days.

With an effort, Onishi shook the lingering depression from her thoughts, turned, and boarded the Black Ronin. Twenty minutes later, the DropShip rose into the sky atop a flaring flame of fusion heated plasma.

WORD COUNT 1733

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE
Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Rank: Colonel
Callsign: 'Iceman'
MH: Steele Dagger Spec Ops BA
Role: DEST
Assignment: CO Battle Armor Regiment
Platoon: Black Ops
Company: SWAT
Battalion: HQ Battalion
Regiment: Smilodon
RESTLESS SOULS MERCENARY DIVISION

User avatar
Iceman
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:51 pm
affiliations: Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Callsign: 'Iceman'
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Kage BA (DEST)
Battalion: DEST
Company: Shadow
Platoon: PA(L) DEST Platoon Alpha
Assignment: Breach
Role: Executive Officer
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Re: Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

Postby Iceman » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:31 pm

DC-PA-06-07 #09

Draconis Combine/Contested
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Lambrecht
Nadir JumpPoint
Vigilant Corvette Class WarShip
The RF MacCreary
Deck 17
Cargo Hold
Sunday April 26th 3095 1030am Local

Tai-sa (Colonel) Onishi ‘Rough Ryder’ Razan didn’t go straight to the shuttle that would take her to the Heaven’s Fist, the Razan’s Ronins Overlord Class DropShip. Instead, she made her way down to the RF MacCreary’s number two cargo deck, deck 17. As a corvette, the vast WarShip was designed to fight other combat vessels rather than haul DropShips. DropShips and other small craft were the only way of traveling from deep space to a planet’s surface. No WarShip ever built was capable of landing, or grounding, as warriors tended to call it. At the same time, no DropShip was capable of making star spanning leaps through the netherworld of hyperspace. It was an imperfect system, but then it was an imperfect universe.

Loaded in the RF MacCreary’s forward cargo bay were the ‘Mechs being transferred from the Vega Military Hardware Depot intended for Evgeni Morgan’s, 49th Dieron Regulars’ command lance, As Onishi reached the forward cargo bay, a pair of Razan’s Ronins marines, Shujins (Staff Sergeants) Chisan Chong and Joseph Fadem, dressed in heavy ballistic plate, Kanazuchi, Assault battle armor, snapped onto guard. As soon as the men realized that the newcomer was Tai-sa (Colonel) Onishi Razan, and not an aggressor, their postures changed from readiness to rigid attention. Onishi returned their formal salutes and passed through the cargo bay into one of the small secondary access tunnels flanking the main access way. These tunnels were essentially long air locks connecting the RF MacCreary to her ‘spine’. The secondary access ways were intended for the passage of personnel and small items of cargo. Larger payloads were moved between the vessels through the main tunnel. At the other end of the access way, which led into the RF MacCreary’s engineering deck, a single Razan’s Ronins crewman, Shujin (Chief Petty Officer) Beth Roelands, met her.

“Good afternoon, Tai-sa (Colonel). Can I help you?”

“No, MidShipMen Roelands. Thank you, I’m all right.” Onishi heard herself say. Her tone was as hollow and lifeless as an empty shell casing. She saw a look of concern cross the young soldier’s face. The Petty Officer had apparently picked up the note of anguish and loss in Onishi’s voice. The expression of worry was a natural human reaction.

Onishi forced a smile, which she realized probably looked like a death rictus, given her mental state. “I just wanted to take a look at Hitomo Muromachi’s ‘Mech, that’s all.”

“Yes Ma’am.” Beth seemed unconvinced about the condition of Onishi’s sanity. “I think it’s in Bay Four, upper deck. I can check for you.”

“No, sweetie. Don’t bother. I’ll find it.”

Giving the Shujin (Chief Petty Officer) what she was sure was another death like grin, Onishi stepped aboard the RF MacCreary’s starboard elevator and punched the button for the upper cargo bay. As the doors closed, she caught a glimpse of Beth looking concerned and leaning against a control console.

‘She’s probably about to call for that straight jacket’, Onishi thought ruefully.

When the lift doors opened again, she was met by a sight that never failed to awe her. Bathed in the harsh glow of the work lamps illuminating the bay, four huge BattleMechs stood as though at attention. Massive combat machines, mostly bipedal and humanoid in form, BattleMechs mounted as much armor and firepower as a battalion of conventional tanks. ‘Mechs had ruled the battlefield for centuries, ever since the first successful combat test more than six hundred years before. The armies of the Inner Sphere had believed that their ten meter tall war machines were the pinnacle of military technology.

Then came the Clans and they learned they were wrong.

When the Clans first swept in across the Periphery in 3050, they brought with them a level of technology that the Inner Sphere had believed lost. The invaders had apparently spent their self imposed exile improving their military technology. Clan ‘Mechs, called OmniMechs by their owners, were faster and better armored than their Inner Sphere counterparts. Designed around modular weapons systems, they could be fitted out with a mix of lasers, PPCs, missile launchers, and quick firing autocannons to meet the specifics of a particular mission. Like those of the Successor States, Clan ‘Mechs were usually bipedal, and weighed from twenty to one hundred tons.

Onishi walked past the ICA technicians who were tinkering with the innards of a tall, gaunt - looking Black Knight. The heavy ‘Mech’s design was an old one, stretching back to the time of the Star League. Weighing seventy-five tons, the Knight mounted a PPC, backed up by a six pack of lasers. Like good race car mechanics, who were never satisfied with the machines under their care, the techs had pulled a number of access panels from the Knight’s armored surface and were going over its systems, trying to coax just one more gram’s worth of performance out of the war machine.

All by itself, in a transport cubicle that seemed too small to contain its 100 ton bulk, stood Hitomo’s Daishi. The Japanese word, meaning “Great Death”, had supposedly been given to that particular ‘Mech type by a member of the Yakuza, the criminal underground operating in the largely Japanese Draconis Combine. Though it was later learned that Clan designers had christened the design Dire Wolf, the name Daishi stuck. It became the standard reporting name all across the Inner Sphere. Whatever you called it, the machine was one of the largest and most powerful Clan OmniMechs. This one had been captured during the Clan invasion. Hitomo, through long, hard practice, had learned to pilot the enemy built ‘Mech as well as he could any Inner Sphere design.

Onishi pulled herself up a narrow steel ladder, which was part of the cubicle’s service gantry, and swung herself into the black and gold Daishi’s cockpit. Powered down as it was, the machine seemed no more dangerous than a ground car or a private aircraft. Carefully, she ran her hands over the controls, touching each in sequence, as though she were going to bring the ‘Mech to life.

Power plant to preheat.

Gyro to active.

Sensors and targeting systems to standby.

Escape system armed.

Onishi had went through the start up procedure so many times that she could almost see Hitomo doing it. There was so much of Hitomo still in the Daishi’s cockpit. An open pack of mints rested on the narrow lip surrounding the front view screen. The advanced neuro helmet tucked into a cubbyhole behind the command couch lacked the unit crests and bellicose nicknames and slogans that most helmets sported. Instead, it bore the simple inscription “Hitomo”.

Something glittered faintly in the shadows next to the ‘Mech’s primary weapon control panel. Onishi reached out and picked up a gold locket. It looked, to her untrained eye, to be made of real gold. The soft luster and exquisite craftsmanship told her that it was probably a family heirloom.

Touching the tiny catch, she opened the locket. Inside were a pair of old fashioned photographs. On the left was an image of Kym Muromachi, Hitomo’s wife. Her jet black hair was shot with silver, and there were a few lines on her face, but she was still as beautiful as the day Hitomo had wed her. The second picture wrenched Onishi’s heart. It was the image of a handsome young boy holding his brother’s hand who was about five years old. Onishi recognized them as easily as she did Kym. They were Dante Muromuchi and Hitomo Junior, Hitomo’s two sons.

It was not often these days that a soldier ever actually had to face the human cost of warfare. Even looking at a battlefield after a bitter and bloody fight, all Onishi saw were the burned out wrecks of BattleMechs. The dead were viewed as objects to be disposed of and the wounded as assets to be repaired. As cold and cruel as that sounded, she knew that such detachment was necessary, especially in a commander. Otherwise, a soldier would lose her will to fight. Onishi Razan had never thought she would lose that detachment. There, in that cold cockpit alternately lit garishly by the flare of welding torches and then plunged into an oppressive semi - gloom, she felt the first creeping edges of an emotion that she had never experienced before.

Grief.

When Omi Kurita passed away, there was a sense of national loss and mourning. When her own uncle died of pancreatic cancer, it was a mercy. When Onishi Razan informed the command staff of Hitomo’s death, shock had insulated Onishi from the initial pain. But now, seeing the wife and family Hitomo had left behind, the full impact of the Sho-sa (Major)’s death came crashing down on her. Hurriedly, she locked the Daishi’s cockpit hatch from the inside. Then she let her head drop helplessly against the control panel. Great, wracking sobs shook her. How long she sat there, mourning the senseless killing of the 49th Dieron Regular Sho-sa (Major) and grieving for his family, Onishi Razan couldn’t say. When at last she undogged the hatch, the cargo bay was quiet. The ISA techs had gone. The overwhelming grief that had consumed her had also passed. In its place was weariness, and an emptiness that might never again be filled. There was something else, a coldness, a bitterness in the core of her soul, which she had never known before. It was some moments before she could put a name to the feeling. It was a hunger for revenge.

Onishi grasped the swing bar above the hatch with tear stained hands, preparing to leave the cockpit, then stopped. Quickly, she turned in the narrow confines of the cockpit and snatched the locket.

“Goodbye, Hitomo,” she said aloud. “I’m going to get that son of a bitch. And when I do, I’m going to break his neck with my own hands.” Lifting the gold case with its tiny images, she stared into the faces of the family left behind.

Then Onishi Razan snapped the locket shut and pulled herself out from the cockpit.

WORD COUNT 1739

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE





DC-PA-06-07 #10

Draconis Combine/Contested
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Athenry
Nadir JumpPoint
Vigilant Corvette Class WarShip
The RF MacCreary
Deck 3
Bridge
? May 4th 3095 05:43am Local

Onishi Razan looked across her office at the glowing numbers on the bulkhead mounted clock. Oh five forty three, a quarter to six in the morning. It felt as though she hadn’t gotten to sleep at all. She had been staying aboard the RF MacCreary rather than shuttling back and forth between the Razan’s Ronins flagship, the Overlord Class Heaven’s Fist and the Razan’s Ronins command DropShip ever since she had heard about Hitomo Muromachi’s death. The nights she had spent in her office. The grief and sense of loss she felt over the Muromachi family’s death weighed heavily upon her, but as the second in command . . . no, she amended, as the MIT Operations Area’s commander . . . she couldn’t give in to her emotions.

It had been much the same when her uncle had died. Tai-sa (Colonel) Kenneth B. Razan, former commander of the 4th Amphigean Light Assault Group, he had been one of the best honored warriors the outfit had ever seen. Physically, he was almost a negative image of his niece. Where Kenneth was tall, dark skinned, and well built, with the muscles of a decathlete, she had been short, light complexioned, and possessed of a runner’s build. Onishi believed, however, that she had inherited the Tai-sa (Colonel)’s thunderous voice and innate ability to inspire troops, as well as his warrior’s skill and deep love for the Combine. This closeness with him had sometimes caused tension between Onishi and her only cousin, Gergory, who exhibited no interest in becoming a warrior, developing instead a passion for history.

At times, Onishi still felt the emptiness at her side, where her uncle had so often stood. Now, that hollow, echoing space was enlarged, magnified by the loss of a man who, in a few short months, she had come to respect as an ally. Pushing aside the feeling, Onishi closed her eyes again, trying to will herself back to sleep, but sleep, like a disobedient pet, refused to come.

“Dammit!” She jerked apart the sleep harness’ fastenings. Free of the restraining nylon web, she roughly wadded the blanket into a ball and shoved it into the tiny locker beneath her bunk. “Lights!”

The RF MacCreary’s central computer responded to her barked command in less than a second. It boasted ‘state of the art’ voice recognition software and brought the lush mounted overhead illumination strips to life, and the room was flooded with eye straining light.

A second sotto voce curse sounded in the quiet office as Onishi screwed her eyes shut against the glare.

‘No sense in lying here not sleeping’, she thought, as she rummaged in an upright locker for a fresh uniform. I might as well get up and try to get some work done.

But concentration proved to be just as elusive as sleep. Half an hour’s worth of desultory pecking at the keys of her computer console yielded little more than three deleted documents and a mounting feeling of blind anger. Unfortunately for Onishi, there was no outlet for channeling her emotions. There wasn’t even a real object for her anger. She was angry at Hitomo for dying and for leaving her alive to tell Tai-sa (Colonel) Evgeni Morgan. She was angry at the assassins, who had taken the life of a decent commander and a good and decent family man with this senseless slaughter. He deserved to die as he had lived, with Honor. She was angry at herself for the feelings of frustration and loss she couldn’t seem to control. She was even angry at her uncle who, like Hitomo, had died, leaving her behind.

“Faaugh,” she growled, slapping the computer’s power stud without going through the normal shut-down procedure. Snatching up a green nylon duffel bag and her uniform jacket, she stormed out of the office, heading for the RF MacCreary’s central elevator bank.

The RF MacCreary, like all WarShips, was laid out around the central shaft of the Kearny - Fuchida jump drive. The K - F drive was the heart of the system, scientists had developed for traveling instantly between the stars nearly a thousand years before. Massive energies generated by the drive literally tore a hole in the fabric of space, through which the WarShip was hurled. It was possible to travel thirty light years in a single jump, with the ships departing and arriving at carefully plotted zenith or nadir “jump points” above or below a system’s sun.

There were two drawbacks to the system, however; the incredible amounts of energy needed to power a K - F drive could not be created quickly. Giant solar energy collectors, called jump sails, were required to gather solar radiation, which was then shunted into massive storage coils, from whence the energy could be tapped to power the drive. The problem was that it took a number of days to build up a sufficient charge.

A WarShip’s own fusion plant could be used to power the drives, but it took just as long to build up a charge as it would using a sail. Within the last decade the Inner Sphere had been populating the more busier solar systems with recharge stations. “Hot - loading”, as it was sometimes called, was possible, but was not recommended. Quick charging the drive could be done in as little as sixteen hours. The problem was that, for every hour shaved of the normal recharging time, the risk of charge loss, or even the destruction of the delicate K - F drive core, increased dramatically.

The second drawback to interstellar operations lay in the sheer size of the vessels themselves. With the smallest JumpShip measuring nearly three hundred meters in length and massing some ninety thousand tons, it was virtually impossible for a JumpShip to land on a planet’s surface. Most lacked any kind of maneuvering drive more powerful than attitude control thrusters. To deal with the problem of interplanetary and intra system travel, a second type of vessel, the DropShip, was developed. These spacecraft, some massing up to one hundred thousand tons, were employed to ferry troops, vehicles, and cargo from the JumpShip to a planet’s surface.

Until recently, JumpShips used by the Inner Sphere had been unarmed transports; most still were. With the coming of the Clans, a new Brand of JumpShip was developed. Bigger, with thicker, armored skins and potent weapons, WarShips. WarShips used the same Kearny - Fuchida system, but had the added feature of powerful maneuvering drives. Most of the Inner Sphere’s WarShips had recently been built from scratch, some using new designs, others constructed from plans dating back to the Star League. A few, the RF MacCreary included, had been hidden away by ComStar in the asteroid belts of uninhabited systems. They were brought out when the Clans threatened to overrun the Inner Sphere.

Because of their construction, JumpShips and WarShips were both laid out around the K - F drive core. Most systems, the ship’s elevators included, which had to service all areas of a vessel, were usually laid out alongside the core.

When the lift car arrived, Onishi stepped aboard, sliding through as soon as the doors began to open. Without looking, she stabbed the touchpad next to the door, selected Deck Seven, then leaned heavily against the elevator car’s side.

The trip took only a few seconds. When the doors hissed open again, she had regained some of her accustomed calm. Moving quickly along the deserted corridor, she soon found herself facing a steel door that bore a small red sign reading, “Grav Deck 1. Exercise Caution Upon Entry.”

In response to her touch on the lockpad, the door slid aside. With practiced ease, Onishi slipped through the opening, executing an odd forward somersault. Suddenly, the magnetic boots she wore to counteract the lack of gravity aboard a WarShip in space had become a hindrance.

The RF MacCreary’s two grav decks were the only places aboard the massive WarShip where one could be free of the effects of weightlessness. In most parts of the ship, the RF MacCreary’s decks were laid out across the vessel’s hull, with “up” and “forward” being the same direction.

Grav decks . . . large, doughnut like sections set on ring mounts encircling the vessel’s hull . . . were rotated at a speed sufficient to produce what was called “rotational gravity”, which was, in reality, centrifugal force. In these areas, the deck was actually the inner face of the ship’s outer hull, and “up” was toward the vessel’s central core. This artificial gravity was approximately one G force, mimicking an environment that would be comfortable to most humans.

Onishi clambered down the short ladder just below the hatch and hopped lightly to the deck beneath. Swiftly, she unfastened the magnetic boots, an action that gave her a strange feeling of lightness. Stuffing the boots into her duffel, she made her way barefoot along the corridor toward a door labeled “Women’s Locker Room”. The deck shifted almost imperceptibly under her feet as she walked, reminding her that the corridor also doubled as a jogging track for off duty crewmen. She had other things in mind.

Like the elevator and the jogging track, the locker room was uninhabited. Onishi was glad to have the place to herself. At 0650, most of the RF MacCreary’s crew and engineers were standing watch, preparing for the day’s duties, or asleep. Selecting a locker at random, she tossed her boots into it. Swiftly, she stripped off her uniform, exchanging the maroon tunic and black pants for dark green sweats with a faded Razan’s Ronins crest silkscreened onto the front of the hooded shirt. A pair of battered sneakers completed the outfit.

Moving quietly through a connecting door, Onishi entered one of the RF MacCreary’s small, but well equipped, gymnasiums. At the far end hung a heavy canvas bag, suspended by a chain, from the exercise room’s overhead. A meter and a half in height and half a meter across, the bag showed signs of heavy use. A thick rubber mat covered the floor beneath the bag. Stepping up to the bag, Onishi pulled a pair of worn leather gloves out of her sweatshirt’s kangaroo pocket and pulled them over her hands. The gloves had a layer of padding over the knuckles.

Onishi took up a front stance, her left foot a bit in front of her right, her shoulders relaxed, torso erect. Exhaling through her mouth, she brought her hands up into a guard position, leading slightly with her left. Then, as though responding to a signal that only she could hear, she lashed out with her right fist. The impact produced a flat slapping sound. The bag swayed slightly. A second punch followed the first; a third; then, a short hooking kick, as she dropped back half a step to give her strike space to develop.

More blows rained on the bag. Her breath came in short bursts. Sweat beaded on her forehead, threatening to run into her eyes. A contemptuous toss of her head shook it away. Her face, which had begun the exercise calm and impassive, twisted into an angry mask of exertion.

After a short time, Onishi halted her assault on the bag as suddenly as she had begun. She wiped her face with the hem of her sweatshirt, thankful that she had the gym to herself.

The workout had helped. She still felt a little lost, but the overwhelming sense of despair that had kept her from sleep was gone. She checked the shockproof chronometer on her wrist. Twenty minutes after seven. There wouldn’t be any point in returning to her cabin now. By the time she showered and dressed, it would be just about the time she usually got up. With a short laugh and a shrug, she headed for the locker room. The physical exertion of the workout had helped her put the situation in perspective.

Thirty minutes later, Onishi Razan strode through a set of pneumatically operated doors onto the RF MacCreary’s bridge.

As a Vigilant Class Corvette, the RF MacCreary was one of the few of her kind in the Inner Sphere. Nearly two hundred thirty meters long, excluding her jump sail, and massing over one hundred forty thousand tons, she was the largest vessel in the Razan’s Ronins Wakayama AeroSpace Assault Battalion. Her hide was thickly layered with armor and bristling with weapons.

Onishi had seen the mighty WarShip often enough from the outside, through the bridge view screen of the Oo-Suzumebach I - Class Small Craft, the Indomitable that shuttled her back and forth between the Heaven’s Scent and the RF MacCreary. The ship’s size and appearance reinforced the impression that she was a powerful combat vessel, though her bulk gave no hint of her speed and maneuverability. Such an impressive fighting ship should have an equally impressive captain, Onishi thought. Going by appearances, the commander of the RF MacCreary didn’t fit the picture.

She had first met Georgi Draganov on Chara, the Lyran Alliance planet where the various units of Task Force Immediate Freedom had rendezvoused for staging and training before jumping off on that mission. Back then, the man had failed to impress her. Draganov was about average height, with a full head of, salt and pepper hair that fell lankly across a high, domed forehead. He reminded her of a low level tax examiner rather than the commander of a warship.

Though she had not been aboard the RF MacCreary when the Corvette, escorted by the 'Heart of Dieron' Assault Ship Squadron, had unexpectedly run into a small flotilla of WarShips belonging to the Free World’s League a few short weeks ago, Onishi had learned how very wrong she’d been about Draganov’s ability to lead a battle fleet. In its first engagement with the FWL enemy, the Squadron had handed the Free World’s League a stunning defeat. They had even managed to capture one enemy warship, a Tracker - class surveillance corvette named Logan, relatively intact, all without losing a single squadron vessel.

“Commander on deck,” a petty officer shouted.

“As you were,” Onishi said, following the age old tradition. The idea was to forestall any crewman who might be coming to attention, although, from long experience, she knew that no attempt at a salute would be made by the bridge personnel. Still, it was a tradition that stretched all the way back to the ‘sail and steam powered blue water navies’ of Terra’s distant past, and the Razan’s Ronins revered tradition. If any of the bridge crew were aware of her presence, they hid it well.

“Morning, Tai-sa (Colonel). Sleep well?” the dark smudges under Draganov’s unremarkable brown eyes showed that he had not. “Morning, Dai-i (Commander),” Onishi answered. “No, I didn’t sleep well, and neither did you, it would appear.”

“Hmm,” Draganov said noncommittally.

“Oh, God, I hate what I’ve got to do now,” Onishi said reluctantly. Then, taking a deep breath, she said, “Open a channel to all task force ships.”

“Channel open,” the comm technician, Chu-i (Lieutenant) Mary Yamamoto, responded.

First giving herself a moment to collect her thoughts, Onishi then signaled and began to speak.

“Attention, all commands. This is Razan’s Ronins Actual. By now, you have all heard that Sho-sa (Major) Hitomo Muromachi is dead. His death signals a full fledge rebellion across the Dieron Prefecture.” She paused, cleared her throat and continued.

“In accordance with mission orders, as of now, oh eight hundred hours, the fourth day of May, three thousand ninety five, I am assuming command of 'Heart of Dieron' Assault Ship Squadron. All ship captains and unit commanders will so note in their ship’s or mission logs.”

“Memorial services for Sho-sa (Major) Muromachi will be held in a day or so, here aboard the RF MacCreary. Following that service, I will want to meet with the command staff to resume operational planning.”

“That is all.”

Her quick nod toward the communication console signaled the Chu-i (Lieutenant) to close the channel.

She turned to Draganov and said, “Dai-i (Commander)? I’d like you to accompany me to my quarters. It’s time we opened the safe.”

Draganov nodded unenthusiastically. “Mister Morishita, you have the conn,” he said.

“Aye, sir. Third Officer has the conn.”

Draganov turned back to Onishi with a rueful expression. “Let’s get this over with,” he muttered.

WORD COUNT 2759

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE






DC-PA-06-07 #11

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Athenry
Nadir JumpPoint
Vigilant Corvette Class WarShip
The RF MacCreary
Deck 3
Bridge
? May 11th 3095 05:43am Local

News of the contract accepted by the Razan’s Ronins quickly made the rounds of the fleet. All of the Ronin’s ships picked it up and recorded it. Several of those recordings had been copied, and the copies made their way into the hands of individual soldiers, some of whom had plans to exploit what was coming to be known as the “Dieron Rebellion” for their own enrichment. Thankfully, each of the unit commanders was eager to deal with profiteers.

For Tai-sa (Colonel) Onishi ‘Rough Ryder’ Razan, however, the contract prompted entirely different questions.

“So what are you telling me, Dai-i (Commander)?” she asked Georgi Draganov, seated at the desk in the center of the RF MacCreary’s ready room. Like most large WarShips, the RF MacCreary boasted a relatively spacious combination cabin, office, and lounge adjacent to the main bridge. Called the Captain’s ready room, it was the sole province of the ship’s commanding officer. Though Draganov had offered it to both Onishi and both Battalion Commanders, each had declined, for the same reasons. The lower ranking Sho-sa (Majors), and later Onishi, as Razan’s Ronins commander, had chosen to occupy the RF MacCreary’s flag suite, one deck below. The ready room was traditionally for the ship captain’s use, and none of them had wanted to deny Draganov that privilege.

“What I’m telling you, Tai-sa (Colonel), is that I’m not sure,” Draganov shot back in exasperation. “I’m not a commtech, I’m a ship’s captain. I don’t think I could give you more than a thumbnail sketch of how half the systems on this bridge work, let alone the whole ship. Beyond that, I simply couldn’t tell you how hyperspace communications work, as opposed to rational space communications.”

“I do know that there’s some connection between HPG communications and Kearny - Fuchida jump drives, but that’s about it. I can surmise that the same technology that opens a ‘gate’ in the fabric of the universe for a JumpShip to move through is used by a hyper pulse generator to send interstellar messages.”

“Once a ship is back in rational space, it has to rely on the same technology they were using back in the twentieth century to send their little bug ships to Luna and back. I’d have to guess that R - space communications are the same way. We use an HPG to send messages between systems, but we’re stuck with radio, laser, and microwave communicators when we’re in - system.”

“Part of the problem with HPG messages is their limited range. Sure the signal is transmitted almost instantly, but it does have a range limit, about fifty light years. So, without a series of HPG equipped relay ships, Tai-sa (Colonel) Evgeni Morgan’s contract would never have reached the MRBC.”

“Do you realize that if Muromachi hadn’t been killed, we’d have jumped out of this system long before the contract ever got here, and it’s going to take a long time for that signal to reach the next nearest human outpost. It was blind luck that we were around to hear it.”

“Yeah, ‘luck’.”

Onishi’s answer revealed a level of dispirited weariness that surprised Draganov.

“Tai-sa (Colonel), is something wrong?”

“No, Draganov, not really. It’s just that the past few days are starting to catch up with me. And now this.” She tapped the hardcopy printout of the contract. Onishi shivered. “It just gave me the creeps.” She shuddered again, this time with the decisive shake of one throwing of an uncomfortable garment. “How soon do we jump?”

The sudden change in Onishi’s demeanor seemed to take Draganov by surprise. “As soon as you give the word, Tai-sa (Colonel). The engines are all charged up, and we’re ready at any time.”

Onishi inhaled deeply, then blew the air out again in a long breath. “All right, let’s go,” she said. “The sooner we’re away from this system, the better I’m going to like it.”

In many ways, the RF MacCreary’ bridge was identical to the control deck of every other JumpShip Onishi Razan had ever seen. The main difference was its size. Where the average transport type JumpShip, like the Razan’s Ronins’ own Invader Class Red Storm, had a bridge supporting only a few control stations, the RF MacCreary boasted over a dozen. The center of her spacious control deck was dominated by a high resolution holo tank. Smaller vessels seldom had the space to install such a device. The three dimensional laser generated image of the Razan’s Ronins, its ships hanging motionless in space above the system’s A3II sun, was easily six meters across.

Surrounding the tank’s raised platform were a series of smaller flat screens and three - dimensional monitors displaying everything from the current tactical situation to the status of the jump sail. A second battery of instrument panels ran around the outside of the bridge deck. These were occupied by still more WarShip techs and engineers going about their routine tasks. The most alert of the bridge personnel were the six ISA Techs peering closely at the various ‘waterfall’ displays linked to the ship’s sensors. Given their current position so far from the planet, early detection of an incoming WarShip could spell the difference between life and death for the men and women of Operation Sunrise.

“Commander on deck. Captain on deck.”

Onishi had long since grown accustomed to the age old shout raised by the Go-cho (petty officer), Cade Nakamura, stationed next to the bridge door. But, up until a few days ago, that honor had been Draganov’s, not hers.

Draganov seemed not to have noticed the salute. Instead, he went straight to work. “I have the conn,” he barked.

“Captain has the conn,” replied the RF MacCreary’s second officer, Tai-i (Lieutenant Commander) Asha Amesen.

“Report all contacts.”

“Sir, my only contacts are those of the Razan’s Ronins.” the officer in charge of the sensor technicians, Kashira (Senior Chief Petty Officer) Jason Ubora, didn’t look up from his master panel as he gave his report.

At Draganov’s command, another bridge tech, Go-chu (Petty Officer) Maurice Tablang, opened a communications channel.

“All commands, this is ‘Spanner’. Recall Combat Air Patrol and prepare for jump. Report when ready.”

Slowly, the ships comprising the Wakayama Aero Assault Battalion, the Ice Dragon Wing, and 'Heart of Dieron' Assault Ship Squadron checked in with the flagship. The first was the Red Storm, an Invader Class JumpShip built under the DMM Subsidy Program. The JumpShip, along with the elite troopers of the DEST platoons, were the MRBC’s integral contribution to the task force. The other half of Operation Sunrise military strength had been dedicated to the Dieron Operation, the brunting phase of the operation, 'Heart of Dieron' Assault Ship Squadron.

Onishi found a place where she could observe the goings on without being in the way. Though she had witnessed a WarShip’s preparations for jump many times before, from both the RF MacCreary and the Red Storm, the organized chaos of the operation never failed to amuse and astound her.

Amuse, because, for all the drama of the moment portrayed in countless holovids, the entertainment industry never seemed to get it right. Nowhere were the steely eyed men and women sitting tensely at their consoles. No frenetic cries rang across the bridge, reporting as various systems came on line.

A casual observer would find the scene anti climactic, after a steady diet of techno thrillers. Calm, self assured professionals relayed their reports to and through the appropriate officers. They spoke quietly into head set microphones.

What astounded Onishi about the jump preparations was the fact that Dai-i (Commander) Draganov and his officers were able to make sense of the dozens of brief reports forwarded to their stations not only from those men and women around them, but from every other ship in the fleet. Her astonishment turned to disbelief when she noticed that Draganov seldom consulted the repeater displays set in his command console. He seemed to be keeping track of the many, sometimes conflicting, reports in his head.

When the last vessel had checked in, Draganov turned to face Onishi. “All stations report manned and ready, Ma’am.”

“Good.” Onishi took no offense at the honorific. She knew that tradition reaching back to the blue water navies of Terra dictated that all officers aboard a combat vessel be referred to as ‘Sir or Ma’am’, regardless of their rank. “Let’s get away from here.”

“Aye, Ma’am.” Draganov bobbed his head in acknowledgment. Then, turning to face his console, he began rapping out the orders that would eventually send the 140,000 ton WarShip hurtling across thirty light years through a tear in the fabric of space.

“To all commands, initiate jump procedures. Mrs Mavis, lock course into the navputer. Mister Hakui, engage the K - F drive.”

“Course plotted and laid in.”

“K - F drives charged and on - line, sir.”

“Sound the horn.”

In response to Draganov’s order, a raucous klaxon honked three times.

In the miniature world of the holotank, a scarlet flare of light bloomed and vanished in less than a second, leaving flash bulb afterimages swimming before Onishi’s eyes. More crimson flashes dotted the projection as the WarShip’s powerful computers translated the electromagnetic and tachyon flares of all the departing JumpShips of the Razan’s Ronins and the ‘Heart of the Dragon’ Assault Squadron into a visible light display.

“Ma’am, we are ready to jump.”

Onishi nodded sharply. “Jump.”

“Aye, Ma’am. Jump,” Draganov repeated. Gesturing to the chief engineering officer, he snapped, “Mister Hakui, activate Field initiator. Jump.”

“Initiator active, sir.” the officer’s fingers danced across the control panel. “Jump in five … four … three … two … one … Jump!”

WORD COUNT 1676

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE
Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Rank: Colonel
Callsign: 'Iceman'
MH: Steele Dagger Spec Ops BA
Role: DEST
Assignment: CO Battle Armor Regiment
Platoon: Black Ops
Company: SWAT
Battalion: HQ Battalion
Regiment: Smilodon
RESTLESS SOULS MERCENARY DIVISION

User avatar
Iceman
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:51 pm
affiliations: Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Callsign: 'Iceman'
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Kage BA (DEST)
Battalion: DEST
Company: Shadow
Platoon: PA(L) DEST Platoon Alpha
Assignment: Breach
Role: Executive Officer
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Re: Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

Postby Iceman » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:33 pm

DC-PA-06-07 #12

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Kokuryu-kai Stronghold
Hayakawa Market
Thursday October 3rd 3095 15:30pm Local

Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Joe Dean's lanky frame was fully extended on the rope for what seemed too long on the way down. Hanging from a hovering Suzaku helicopter, Dean was a full 70 feet above the streets of New Leon. His goggles had broken, so his eyes chafed in the thick cloud of dust stirred up by the bird's rotors.

It was such a long descent that the thick nylon rope burned right through the palms of his leather gloves.
The rest of his squad, had already roped in. Nearing the street, through the swirling dust below his feet, Dean saw one of his men stretched out on his back at the bottom of the rope.

He felt a stab of despair. Somebody's been shot already! He gripped the rope hard to keep from landing on top of the guy. It was Hojuhei (Recruit) Soetsu Tamura, at 18 the youngest Commando in his Squad, a kid just months out of a Vega high school. He was unconscious and bleeding from the nose and ears.

The raid was barely under way, and already something had gone wrong. It was just the first in a series of worsening mishaps that would endanger this daring mission. For Dean, a ’New Booty’ from La Blon, in the Kessel Prefecture, leading men into combat for the first time, it was the beginning of the longest day of his life.

Just 13 minutes before, three miles away at the Razan's Ronin’s base on the Nishijima beach, Dean had said a Hail Mary at liftoff. He was curled into a seated position beside the helicopter crew chief, the knees of his long legs up around his shoulders. Before him, arrayed on both sides of the sleek Attack Chopper variant A, Suzaku helicopter, were Dean's two Squad, five men in tan, desert camouflage fatigues and six in Tornado PA(L). He had worried about the responsibility. Eleven men. He had prayed silently during Mass at the mess hall that morning. Now he added one more.

. . . Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.

It was mid - afternoon, October 3rd, 3095. Dean's Squad Four and nine were part of a Battalion of Razan’s Ronins unarmored infantry assisting a PA(L) Battalion that was about to descend on a gathering of Black Dragon Society clan leaders in the heart of New Leon, Gaspar. This ragtag clan, led by Tai-sho (Warlord) Fujimoto Hamasaki, had challenged the Arm of the Dragon.

Today's targets were two top Hamasaki Chu-i’s(Lieutenants). Shadow Company’s PA(L) Troopers, the Ronin's elite close quarters unit, would storm the target house and capture them. Then four helicopter loads of commandos, who pulled double duty as the Ronins Combat Engineers and Firefighters, including Dean's men, would rope down to all four corners of the target block and form a perimeter. No one would be allowed in or out supported a lance of ‘Mechs.

Waiting for the code word to launch, which today was "Omi,'' they were a formidable armada. Four Light Battle ‘Mechs, a Pack Hunter II, a Hermes HER-4K, a Stinger STG-5T, and a Locust LCT-5T. The helicopter assault force included about 60 Commandos and 56 PA(L) troops in 10 helicopters. Idling at the airport was a convoy of 10 vehicles with soldiers who would ride three miles to the target building and escort the indigenous (Indigs for short) prisoners and the assault team back to base.

The swell of the revving engines had made the tarmac tremble. The Commandos were eager for action.
Bristling with grenades and ammo, gripping the well oiled steel of their weapons, they felt their hearts race under their flak vests. They ran through last minute mental checklists, saying prayers, triple-checking weapons, rehearsing their choreographed moves. They had left behind canteens, bayonets, night vision devices (NODs) - anything they felt would be dead weight on a fast daylight raid.

It was3:32 p.m. when the lead Trireme pilot, Sho-ko (Master Chief Petty Officer) Michael Afrane, announced: ''Phukkin’ Omi!''

And the swarm of black copters lifted up into an embracing blue vista of Tatsuyama Ocean and sky. They eased out across a littered strip of white sand and moved low and fast over the breakers.

New Leon spread beneath them in ruins. The last five years of the ULTRA war had reduced the once picturesque Kuritan port to a post apocalyptic nightmare. The standard of living even before the war on Dieron was surprisingly low for a major industrial world, because Hohiro Kurita's policy of restricting travel within the Combine prevents the Dieronese from seeing how much of their productivity is taken from them and how little is imported in return. The cramped cities stuck between towering mountains make the planet a hotbed of resistance to Kurita rule, perhaps, the most discontented Kurita world outside the Rasalhague Military District. The few paved avenues were crumbling and littered with mountains of trash and debris. Those walls and buildings that still stood in the heaps of gray rubble were pockmarked with bullet scars and cannon shot.

In his bird, code named Rainbow 75, Dean silently rehearsed the plan. When his Squad Four touched the street, the Tornado PA(L)s would already be taking down the target house, arresting the Indigs inside.

Then the Mercenaries and their prisoners would board the ground convoy and roll back for a sunny Sunday afternoon on the beach.

It was the unit's sixth mission since coming to Dieron in early June. Now Tai-sa (Colonel) Onishi ‘Rough Ryder’ Razan, their commander, was taking a calculated risk in sending them in daylight into the Hayakawa Market area, a hornet's nest of Tai-sho (Warlord) Fujimoto Hamasaki supporters.

The Tornado and Nighthawk PA(L) rode in on Cavalry and Suzaku helicopters, choppers small enough to land in alleys or on rooftops. In the bigger Triremes, Commandos dangled their legs from the doorways. Others squatted on ammo cans or sat on flak proof panels laid out on the floor. They all wore Draconis Combine Infantry Armor Kits, standard ballistic plate armor vests and thick ballistic armor helmets with a Military Communicator; AV 7 v Flash and 50 pounds of gear and ammo.

Stripped down, most Commandos looked like teenagers (their average age was 19). They were products of rigorous selection and training. They were fit and fast. With their buff bodies, distinct crew cuts sides and back of the head shaved clean and grunted Hooah greeting, the Commandos were among the most
Gung ho soldiers in the DCMS Army.

Inside Rainbow 75, Dean was anxious about being in charge. He'd won the distinction by default. His platoon sergeant had been summoned home by an illness in her family, and the guy who replaced him
had suffered an epileptic seizure.

Now, as they approached the target site, he felt more confident. They had done this dozens of times.
By the time the Triremes had moved down over the city, the Cavalry’s with the PA(L) troops were almost over the target. The mission could still have been aborted. But the only threat spotted by the Crow Scout helos was burning tires on a nearby street.

Indigs often burned tires to summon militia. These, it was determined, had been set earlier in the day.

"Two minutes,'' came the voice of the Rainbow 75 pilot in Dean's earphones. Two advance Cavalry Helicopters armed with rockets then made their "bump,'' or initial pass over the target.

It was3:43 p.m.

Cameras on the two Crow VTOLs and orbiting Cobra Command variant VTOL, relayed the scene back to the commanders at the Joint Operations Center on the beach. They saw a busy New Leon neighborhood, in much better shape than most. The landmark was the Empyral Citadel, a five - story white building, one of the few large structures still intact in the city. Three blocks west was the teeming Hayakawa Market.

In front of the Citadel ran Pioneer Avenue, a paved, north - south avenue crossed by narrow dirt alleys.
At the intersections, drifting sand turned rust orange in the afternoon sun. One block up from the Citadel, across Pioneer, was the target house. It was flat roofed with three rear stories and two front stories. It was shaped like an L, with a small courtyard enclosed by a high stone wall. In front moved cars, people and donkey carts.

Conditioned to the noise of the copters by months of overflights, people below did not stir as Crow Choppers made a first swift pass, looking for trouble. Seeing none, the four PA(L) Helicopters zoomed down to Pioneer Avenue, disappearing into swirling dust as the Tornado PA(L) leaped from their helicopters and stormed the house. Next came the Triremes with the Commandos.

Dean's copter hovered just above the brown storm. Waiting for the two Triremes, it seemed to the Shujin (Staff Sergeant) that they hung there for a dangerously long time. At 60 tons, a still Trireme was a big target. Even over the sound of the rotor and engines the men could hear the pop of gunfire.

The 3 inch thick nylon ropes were coiled before the doors. When they were finally pushed out, one dropped down on a ground car. This delayed things further. The pilot nudged his aircraft forward until the rope dragged free.

"We're a little short of our desired position,'' he told Dean.

They were going in a block north of their assigned corner. Still, that wasn't crucial. The Shujin (Staff Sergeant) thought it would be a lot safer on the ground. "No problem,'' he said.

"We're about 100 meters short,'' the pilot warned.

Dean gave him a thumbs - up. He would be the last man out.

When it was his time to jump, the strap on his goggles broke. Flustered, he tossed them and sprung for the rope, forgetting to take off his earphones. He jumped, ripping the earphone cord from the ceiling.
In the excitement, time slowed. All his movements became very deliberate. He hadn't realized how high they were. The slide down on the rope was far longer than any they'd done in training. Then, on his way down, Dean spotted Soetsu Tamura splayed out on the street at the end of the rope.

Dean's feet touched down next to the fallen Commando, and the crew chief in the copter released the rope. It fell twisting to the road. As the Suzaku moved up and away, the noise eased and the dust settled. The city's musky odor bore in.

Hojuhei (Recruit) Roy Kobayashi, Squad Nine's medic, was already at work on Tamura. The kid had one eye shut. Blood gurgled from his mouth. Kobayashi inserted a tube down Tamura's throat to help him breathe. Gunsho (Sergeant) Steve Lalitha, a Tornado medic, started an IV. Tamura hadn't been shot, he'd fallen. He'd somehow missed the rope and plummeted. He was still alive, but unconscious. He looked pretty busted up. Dean stepped away. He took a quick count of his Two Squads.

His men had peeled off as planned against the mud stained stone walls on either side of the street. That left Dean in the middle of the road with Tamura and the medics. It was hot, and sand was caked in his eyes, nose and ears. They were taking fire, but it wasn't very accurate. Oddly, it hadn't even registered with the Shujin (Staff Sergeant). You would think bullets clipping past would command your attention, but he'd been too preoccupied.

Now he noticed. Passing bullets made a snapping sound, like cracking a stick of dry hickory. Dean had never been shot at before. As big a target as he made at 6 foot 4, he figured he'd better find cover. He and the two medics grabbed Tamura under his arms, and, trying to keep his neck straight, dragged him to the edge of the street. They squatted behind two parked ground cars.

Kobayashi looked up at Dean. "He's litter urgent, Shujin (Staff Sergeant). We need to extract him right now or he's going to die.''

Dean shouted to his radio operator, Gunsho (Sergeant) Victor Gjermundsen and asked him to raise Sho-sa (Major) Reid Mediate on the company radio net. Mediate, the Commando commander, had roped in with two Chu-i’s (Lieutenants) and the rest of Squad ten to the block's southeast corner.

Minutes passed. Gjermundsen shouted back to say he couldn't get Mediate.

"What do you mean you can't get him?'' Dean asked.

Neither man had noticed that a bullet had severed the wire leading to the antenna on Gjermundsen's radio. Dean tried his walkie-talkie. Again Mediate didn't answer, but after several tries Mediate's Chu-i (Lieutenant), Francis Adrian, came on the line.

The Shujin (Staff Sergeant) made a particular effort to speak slowly and clearly. He explained that Tamura had fallen and was badly injured. He needed to come out. Dean tried to convey urgency without alarm.

So when Francis said, "Calm down,'' it really burned Dean. This is one hell of a time to start sharp shooting me.

The Small arms fire was getting heavier. To the officers watching on screens in the command center, it was as if their men had poked a stick into a hornet's nest. It was an amazing and unnerving thing to view a battle in real time. Cameras on the surveillance Cobra Command VTOL circling high over the fight captured crowds of Indigs erecting barricades and lighting tires to summon help. People were pouring into the streets, many with weapons. They were racing from all directions toward the spot where orbiting helicopters marked the fight. There wasn't much the Joint Operating Command could do but watch.

Dean's men had fanned out and were shooting in every direction except south toward the target building. He saw crowds of Indigs way up Pioneer to the north, and others, closer, darting in and out of alleys, taking shots at the Commandos. They were coming closer, wary of the Mercenaries guns.

The Commandos had been issued strict rules of engagement. They were to shoot only at someone who pointed a weapon at them, but already this was getting unrealistic. Those with guns were intermingled with women and children. The Indigs were strange that way. Whenever there was a disturbance in
New Leon, people would throng to the spot: men, women, children; even the aged and infirm. It was like some national imperative to bear witness. And over this summer, the Ronin’s missions had stirred up widespread hatred.

Things were not playing out according to the script in Dean's head. His Squad was still in the wrong place. He'd figured they could just hoof it down Pioneer, but Tamura's falling and the unexpected volume of gunfire had ruled that out.

Time played tricks. It would be hard to explain to someone who wasn't there. Events seemed to happen twice normal speed, but from inside his personal space, the place where he thought and reacted and watched, every second seemed a minute long. He had no idea how much time had gone by. It was hard to believe things could have gone so much to hell in such a short time.

He kept checking back to see if the ground convoy had moved up. He knew it was probably too soon.
It would mean that things were wrapping up. He must have looked a dozen times before he saw the first
Heavy wheeled APC - the wide bodied wheeled vehicle that replaced the Firestorm as the Ronin’s armored transport ground vehicle for this mission - round the corner three blocks down. What a relief! Maybe the boys are done and we can roll out of here.

He radioed Chu-i (Lieutenant) Francis. "Listen, we really need to move this guy or he's going to die. Can't you send somebody down the street?''

No, the APCs, could not move to his position.

Kobayashi, the medic, spoke up: "Listen, Shujin (Staff Sergeant), we've got to get him out.''

Dean summoned two of Squad Four's, his PA(L) squad, Gunsho’s (Sergeants), rock solid Detrick Hertzel and 6 foot 5 Daniel Kogawa. He addressed Kogawa, shouting over the escalating noise of the fight.

"Gunsho (Sergeant), you need to move him down to those APCs, toward the target.''

They unfolded a compact litter, and with Hertzel and Kogawa in front and medics Kobayashi and Lalitha in back, they took off down the street. They ran stooped. Lalitha was still holding the IV bag connected to the kid's arm. Kogawa didn't think Tamura was going to make it. On the litter he was dead weight, still bleeding from the nose and mouth. They were all yelling at him, "Hang on! Hang on!'' but, by the look of him, he had already let go.

They would run a few steps, put Tamura down, shoot with their KA 23 Subguns, then pick him up and carry him a few more steps, then put him down again.

"We've got to get those APCs to come to us,'' Kobayashi said finally. "We keep picking him up and putting him down like this and we're going to kill him.''

So Hertzel volunteered to fetch an APC. He took off running on his own.




Draconis Combine/ULTRA Contest
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Nishijima beach
Joint Operation Center Base
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:15Local

After the helicopter force had moved out over the beach, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Nyta Sundara had waited several minutes in her APC with the rest of the ground convoy at the base. Hers was the lead APC in a column of 10 vehicles due to it having the heaviest frontal armor at two and half tons. They were to drive to a point behind the Empyral Citadel and wait for the D boys (PA(L) armor) to wrap things up in the target house, which was just a five - minute drive from the base.

Nyta, a born again Christian from Chesterton in the Federated Suns, knew New Leon better than most guys at the compound. Her platoon had driven out as escorts on water runs and other details daily. The stench was what hit her first. Garbage was strewn everywhere. People burned trash on the streets. They were always burning tires. They burned animal dung for fuel. That added to the mix. On this Draconian planet people spent their days lounging outside their shabby rag huts and tin shacks. There were gold toothed women in colorful robes and old men in loose, cotton skirts and worn, plastic sandals.

When the Combat Engineers searched the men, they would often find wads of the addictive khat plant they chewed to get high. When they grinned their teeth were stained black and orange. In some parts of town the men would shake their fists at the Firefighters as they drove past.

It was hard to imagine what interest the Draconis Combine had in such a place. But Nyta was just 36, a mercenary, and it wasn't her place to question such things. Today her job was to roll up in force on Pioneer Avenue, load up Indig prisoners, the PA(L) teams and the Commandos, and bring them back out.

She had the Mjolnir gun trailer crew in her vehicle: Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Valery Vikstrem, Go-chu (Corporal) Irene Diaz and a battalion favorite, Gunsho (Sergeant) Danny Lu was a big, powerful kid from Benjamin in the Draconis Combine - he had that thick native Japanese accent - who used his hands a lot when he talked. Lu was just born funny. He loved practical jokes. He had bought tiny charges that he stuck in guys' cigarettes. They'd explode with a startling ‘Pop!’ about halfway through a smoke. Most people who tried that kind of thing were annoying, but people laughed along with Lu. His cutting impression of Sho-sa (Major) Mediate was a highlight of the little skits the Commandos sometimes put on back in the hangar.

Nyta and the rest of the column timed their departure so they wouldn't arrive at the Citadel before the assault on the target house had begun. Then they immediately got lost. Nyta, who was leading the convoy, took a wrong turn and watched with alarm as the rest of the vehicles drove in a different direction. She'd found her way back, but only after the rest of the vehicles had already moved up to the target house to load prisoners. They were loading them on board the 20 ton trucks. They had a cargo capacity of 13 tons each. Plenty of space for all the prisoners.

One of the vehicles in the in the vehicle column was a Packrat LRPV, Gespent variant, and transported a group of Commando soldiers and a DEST KAGE Battle Armor Squad, that served as the elite armored unit on this op. They raced on ahead of the convoy to join the assault force, which had found 24 Indigs in the house and were handcuffing them. As the Packrat approached the house, DEST Agent Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Vincent Blanchard heard a shot and felt a hard impact on his right hip. He cried out. Hojuhei (Recruit) Nathaniel Furukawa, a commando in Blanchard's Packrat, opened up Blanchard's armor and examined his hip, then gave Blanchard good news.

The round had hit smack dab on the KAGE suit’s armor baffle. It had shattered the baffle, but the armor had deflected the bullet. Furukawa pulled several bloody fragments of the baffle out of Blanchard's hip, and bandaged it up. Blanchard limped out, took cover, and began returning fire.

In the mounting gunfire, they were startled to see a Tornado PA(L) running toward them down Pioneer
Road. It was Detrick Hertzel. He quickly explained Tamura's condition, and pointed back to where the others were waiting. He jumped into the Packrat, and they drove up a block to where the young Hojuhei (Recruit) waited on the litter with Gunsho (Sergeant) Kogawa and the two medics.

They set Tamura in the back of the DEST Packrat and got permission to take him back to the base immediately.

Nyta and her companion APC had just found their way back to the main convoy and were ordered to escort the DEST Packrat back to the base. The Packrat had no big gun on top. Nyta's APC had a quad 50 caliber machine gun, and her companion APC had two 50 cals and an SRM six launcher, which could rapidly fire big, rocket - like rounds, in salvos of six. The three - vehicle column began racing back to base through streets now alive with gunfire and explosions.

This time Nyta knew which way to go. She had mapped a return route that was simple. Several blocks south of Pioneer was a main road that would take them all the way down to the beach, where they could turn right and drive straight into the base.

But things had worsened. Armed street fighters were sprinkled into the crowds of civilians. Roadblocks and barricades had been erected. The APCs drove around and through them, with Nyta in the front vehicle and Tamura in the middle Packrat. Kobayashi, the medic, was holding up the IV bag for him with one hand while firing his Subgun with the other.

They started taking fire. A DEST Agent in Tamura's Packrat shot down two Indig gunmen who ran right up to the rear of the vehicle as they moved past an alley. At every intersection came a hail of rounds.
People were shooting from rooftops and from windows and from all directions.

Up in Nyta's APC, she instructed her Mjolnir Gun crew, to concentrate all their Subgun fire to the right, and to leave everything to the left to her 50 cal gunner. They didn't want to drive too fast, because a violently bumpy ride couldn't do Tamura any good.

Lu turned his gun toward an Indig standing on the street just a few feet away. They both fired at the same time, and both fell. A round tore into Lu's forehead and the exit wound blew blood and brain out the back of his skull. His body flopped over into the lap of Go-chu (Corporal) Irene, who cried out in horror.

"Lu's hit!” Irene screamed.

Just then, over the radio, came the voice of Chu-i (Lieutenant) Michal Naero, leader of the APC platoon.

“How are things going?”

Nyta ignored the radio, and shouted back over her shoulder at Irene. "Calm down! What's wrong with him?'' Nyta couldn't see all the way back to the infantry bay.

"He's dead!'' Irene shouted.

"How do you know he's dead? Are you a medic?'' Nyta asked. She turned for a quick look over her shoulder and saw that the whole rear of her vehicle was splattered red.

"He's shot in the head! He's dead!'' Irene screamed.

"Just calm down,'' Nyta pleaded. ``We've got to keep fighting until we get back.''

‘To hell with driving carefully’. Nyta told her driver to step on it, and she hoped the others would follow. They were close to Highway 161, a main east/west highway. Nyta saw Light Anti - Vehicle Rockets flying across the street now. It seemed as if the whole city was shooting at them. They drove wildly now, shooting at both sides of the street.

Inside Nyta's APC, Chu-i (Lieutenant) Naero's voice came across the radio again. ”How's it going?”

"I don't want to talk about it," Nyta said into the radio.

Naero didn't like that answer. “You got any casualties?”

"Yeah. One." Nyta tried to leave it at that. So far nobody on their side had been killed, as far as she knew, and she didn't want to be the one to put news like that on the air. Men in battle drink up information as if downing water; it becomes more important than water. Unlike most of these guys, Nyta had been to war before, in the 5th Succession War and with the Ronin’s on Telos IV, and she knew soldiers fought a lot better when things were going their way. Once things turned, it was real hard to reassert control. People panic. It was happening to Irene and the other chick in her APC right now. Panic was a virus.

“Who is it and what's their status?” Naero demanded.

"It's Lu."

“What's his status?”

Nyta held the microphone for a moment, debating with herself, and then reluctantly answered: "He's dead!"

At the sound of that word, all radio traffic stopped. For many long seconds afterward, there was silence.

WORD COUNT 4397

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE






DC-PA-06-07 #13

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Nishijima beach
Joint Operation Center Base
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:20pm Local

With badly injured Hojuhei (Recruit) Soetsu Tamura on board, the little convoy sped out of the treacherous side streets of New Leon to a wide road, and for a stretch the firing abated. As they approached the sea, well south of the target building, the road was mobbed with the Indigenous population. In the lead Heavy Wheeled Armored Personnel Carrier, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Nyta Sundara's heart sank. How was she going to get her three APCs back to base through all these people?

Her driver slowed to a crawl and leaned on the horn. Nyta told him to keep moving. She threw out loud but harmless flash - bang grenades. Then she told her 50 - gunner to open up over people's heads. The sound of the big gun scattered most of the people, and the column sped up again. They may have even run over some people. Nyta didn't look back to see.

About three miles north, near the Empyral Citadel, the PA(L) troopers had 24 Kokuryu-kai prisoners handcuffed and ready for loading on the main ground convoy. Among them were the primary targets of the raid, two Kokuryu-kai clan leaders.

Nyta's three - vehicle convoy had left to get emergency treatment for Tamura, a young Commando who had fallen out of a helicopter. On the way they'd been badly shot up. In the back of Nyta's APC, Gunsho (Sergeant) Danny Lu had been shot dead.

Now they came up behind a slow - moving pickup truck with people hanging off the back. It would not pull over, so Nyta told her driver to ram it. A man with his leg hanging off the back screamed as the
APC hit. As the truck veered off the road, the man curled into the back bed, clutching his leg.

They passed through the gates of the beachfront Ronin compound with a tremendous sense of relief and exhaustion. They had run the gauntlet. Dazed and blood - splattered, they piled out. Nyta had expected to find the calm safety of the home base. Instead, the scene was frantic. People were racing around on the tarmac. She heard a commander's voice on the speaker box, shouting, "Pay attention to what's going on and listen to my orders!''

It smelled like panic. Something had happened.

Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Drew Tsiaris and Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Carol Ponce, Ailette Rescue PA(L) pilots, members of the medical staff, ran to the middle Packrat to get Tamura off, who was on his way to a long and difficult recovery. They didn't know about Lu.

Nyta grabbed Drew as he went past.

"Look, there's a dead in the back of my vehicle; you need to get him off.''





Draconis Combine/ULTRA Contest
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Kokuryu-kai Stronghold
Hayakawa Market
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:20pm Local

Back in the city, at Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Joe Dean's intersection, things continued to go wrong for Squad Nine. First Tamura had fallen out of the helicopter. Then they had roped in well off target. And now they were pinned down on Pioneer Avenue, a block north of their proper position at the northwest corner of the target block.

Two of Dean's men, Hojuhei (Recruit) Quincy Short and Heishi (Private) Keith Holden, were crouched behind ICE ground cars across the street. For some reason, the steady gunfire didn't frighten Short. It turned him giddy. He was goofing off with Holden, making faces and grinning, as rounds kicked up dirt between them, shattering the windows and blowing out the tires of the cars. Holden was a sight. He had blood smeared on his face, having accidentally smacked himself with his weapon coming down the fast rope.

Short was a 23 year old recruit from Irian in the Free Worlds League, who had gotten bored working at a rubber plant. Now he was pointing his KA 23 Subgun at people down the street, aiming at center mass, and squeezing off rounds. People would drop, just like silhouettes at target practice.

When they started catching rounds from a different direction, Short and Holden ran to an alley. There, Short came face to face with a Dieronese woman. She was staring up at Short and trying to open a door. His first instinct had been to shoot. The woman's eyes were wide with terror. It startled him, that moment. It cut through his silliness. This wasn't a game. He had been very close to killing this woman. She got the door open and stepped inside. Short took cover behind another car, his gun braced against his shoulder. He was picking targets out of the hundreds of Indigs moving toward them.

As he fired, he felt a painful slap on his left hand that knocked his weapon so hard it spun completely around him. His first thought was to right his gun, but when he reached out he saw that his left thumb was lying on his forearm, attached by a strip of skin. He picked up his thumb and tried to press it back to his hand.

Holden called to him. "You all right, Quincy? You all right?''

Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Dean had seen it, the KA 23 spinning and a splash of pink by Short's left hand. He had seen Short reach for the thumb, then look across the road at him.

"Don't come across!" Dean shouted. There was withering fire coming down the road. "Don't come
across!"

Short heard the Shujin (Staff Sergeant) but started running anyway. He seemed to be getting nowhere, as if in a dream. His feet seemed heavy and slow. He dove the last few feet.

The Shujin (Staff Sergeant) was still contending with the crowd. Men would dart out into the street and spray bursts from their Ceres Arms Striker Carbine, then take cover. Dean saw the flash and puff of smoke of Rocket - Assisted Grenade (RAG) being launched their way. The grenades came wobbling through the air and exploded with a long splash of flame and a pounding concussion. The heat would wash over them and leave the odor of powder.

At one point, such a great wave of fire from Indigs tore down the road that it created a shock wave of noise and energy that Dean could actually see coming. The Razan’s Ronins Command Staff had expected some resistance on this raid, but nothing like this.

When the Light Class Stinger walked past, Dean stood and stretched his long arm to the north, directing it to the Kokuryu-kai gunmen. He watched the Nighthawk Squad hanging on to the ‘Mech via magnetic clamps, readying their Mauser 960 Assault System and then saw the Stinger’s Long Range Missile Launchers spout lines of flame and fragmentation missiles at targets up the street. For a few minutes, all shooting from that direction stopped. To Dean's left, Heishi (Private) Mikeal Sato was prone on the ground and firing his Compact Grenade Launcher, a KA 23 with a grenade - launching tube under the barrel. Seconds after Short had dived in, Sato turned and grabbed his shoulder.

"Oh, my God, I'm hit,'' Sato said. He looked up at Dean.

Sato scooted over against the wall next to Short with one arm limp at his side, picking small chunks of debris from his face.

Dean squatted next to both men, turning first to Sato, who was still preoccupied, looking down the alley.

"Sato, tell me where you're hurt,'' Dean said.

"I think I got one in the arm.'' With his good hand, Sato was fumbling with the breech of his grenade launcher.

Dean impatiently reached down and opened it.

"There's a guy right down there,'' Sato said.

As Dean struggled to lift Sato's vest and open his shirt to assess the wound, the Heishi (Private) shot off a grenade round one - handed. The Shujin (Staff Sergeant) could see the fist - sized round spiraling toward a tin shack 40 meters away. When it hit, the shack vanished in a great flash of light and smoke.
Sato's injury did not look severe. Dean turned to Short, who looked wide - eyed, as if he might be lapsing into shock. His left thumb was hanging down below his hand.

Dean grabbed the thumb and placed it in the dazed Hojuhei (Recruit)'s palm. "Quincy, hold this,'' he said. "Just put your hand up and hold it, buddy.''

Short gripped the thumb with his fingers.

Heishi (Private) Wade Sundstrom came running up to tend to the wound. When he saw Short's thumb, he dropped the field dressing to the ground. Short reached into Sundstrom's kit with his good hand, removed a clean dressing, and handed it to him. His injured hand stung. It felt the way it did on a cold day when you hit a baseball wrong.

"Don't worry, Hojuhei (Recruit) Short, you're going be OK,'' Sato said.

With Sato hurt, Dean had only Heishi (Private) Zigmund Ozaki covering the alley to the east with his
SAW (squad automatic weapon).It was a modified KA 23 Subgun into a light machine gun with the addition of a heavier barrel, bipod and high – capacity, linkless - feed ammo drum and a Laser Sight. Ozaki was a boisterous 22 year old from Junction in the Draconis Combine, and the battalion's arm wrestling champ. Dean kneeled beside Ozaki behind a car and fired his KA 23. It occurred to Dean that this was the first shot he'd fired.

It was hectic. Dean tried to stay calm. This was his first time in charge. He had three Commandos injured, one critically, and he'd managed to get him out. Neither Short's nor Sato's wounds were life-threatening. Glass shattered and showered on Dean and Ozaki. An Indig had run out to the middle of
Pioneer Avenue, just a few yards away, and opened up on the car. Ozaki dove down behind the rear wheel on the passenger side and shot him with a quick burst from his SAW. The Indig fell over backward in a rumpled heap.

Dean radioed to Sho-i (Lieutenant sg) Francis Adrian, the Executive Officer of the Combat Engineers Platoon, that he had taken two more casualties.

From across the street, Heishi (Private) Holden shouted, "Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Dean! Brusse has been shot!''

Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Stanislav Brusse, the machine gunner, had been crouched behind a car hulk and a round had evidently skipped off the car or ricocheted up from the road. Dean saw Holden stoop over Brusse to tend to the wound. The machine gunner was not screaming. It didn't look too dire.

"Shujin (Staff Sergeant)?''

Dean turned wearily to Ozaki.

"A BattleMech just went down.''

WORD COUNT 1815

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE
Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Rank: Colonel
Callsign: 'Iceman'
MH: Steele Dagger Spec Ops BA
Role: DEST
Assignment: CO Battle Armor Regiment
Platoon: Black Ops
Company: SWAT
Battalion: HQ Battalion
Regiment: Smilodon
RESTLESS SOULS MERCENARY DIVISION

User avatar
Iceman
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:51 pm
affiliations: Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Callsign: 'Iceman'
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Kage BA (DEST)
Battalion: DEST
Company: Shadow
Platoon: PA(L) DEST Platoon Alpha
Assignment: Breach
Role: Executive Officer
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Re: Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

Postby Iceman » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:36 pm

DC-PA-06-07 #14

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:25pm Local

Akiyama Arido heard the Mercenary BattleMechs stomping around the city, so close that the big tree that stood in the central courtyard of his stone house was uprooted and knocked over. Arido was 18 but looked five years younger, a slip of a man with thick, bushy hair. Arido rushed outside when the BattleMech passed by. He heard shooting to the west, near Pioneer, the big road that passed before the Empyral Citadel three blocks west. Arido ran toward the noise. The sky was dark with smoke.

The air around Arido sizzled and cracked with gunfire. Above him were huge BattleMechs, some with lines of flame spitting from their guns. He ran two blocks with his head down until he saw several big Mercenary twenty ton trucks and Heavy Wheeled Armored Personnel Carriers, with missile launchers and machine guns mounted on top of them, shooting everywhere.

The PA(L) Troopers wore body armor and helmets with view plates. Arido could see no part of them that looked human. They were like futuristic warriors from a FedSuns movie. People were running madly, hiding from them. There was a line of Kokuryu-kai men in handcuffs being loaded onto big trucks. On the street were dead people and a dead donkey splayed out in front of its water cart.

The scene terrified Arido. As he ran back to his house, one of the BattleMechs walked past him, peering at rooftop level. It made a rackety blast, and heat from its fusion reactor swept over the dusty alley like a violent storm. Through this dust, Arido saw a Kokuryu-kai militiaman carrying a Heavy SRM Launcher
- it was portable - step into the alley and drop to one knee. The militiaman waited until the ‘Mech had passed by. Then he tilted the SRM up and fired at the ‘Mech from behind. Arido saw a great flash from the back end of the launcher and then saw the SRMs explode into the rear of the BattleMech, cracking the left rear armor plating.

The body of the ‘Mech started to spin, so close to Arido that he could see the pilot inside struggling at the controls. The pilot could not hold it, and the BattleMech started to fall. It was tilted slightly toward
Arido when it hit the roof of his house with a loud, crunching sound, and then slammed on its side into the alley with a great, scraping crash in a thick cloud of dust and rock and smoke.

The BattleMech had destroyed part of Arido's house; he feared his family had been killed. He ran to the crash and found his parents and eight brothers and sisters trapped under a big sheet of tin roof. They had stepped outside and were standing against the west wall when the BattleMech hit and the roof came down on them. They were not badly hurt. Arido worked his way past the downed BattleMech, which had fallen to the alley on its right side so that the feet faced him. He helped pull the roof off his parents and brothers and sisters. Afraid that the BattleMech would explode, they all ran across a wide, rutted dirt road to a friend's house three doors up. There they waited.

There were no flames and no explosion. Soon Arido came back to guard his house. In New Leon, if you left your house open and undefended, it would quickly be looted.

Smoke had stopped rising from the BattleMech when he returned. He ran into his house and stood in the courtyard by the uprooted tree and saw that the wall where the BattleMech had crashed was gone; it was just a heap of stones and dusty mortar.

Then, standing inside his house, Arido saw a wounded Nighthawk armored soldier climb out of the crumpled wreckage, and then another Nighthawk with a Mauser 960. Arido turned and ran back out a side door and hid behind an old white Mao - Heng Charioteer on the dirt street. He slipped down and crawled under it, curling himself up into a ball, trying to make himself small.

When the Nighthawk with the gun rounded the corner he saw Arido under the car. Seeing that Arido had no weapon, the armored soldier moved on. But first he stopped alongside the car - Arido could have reached out and touched the soldier's armored boots - and pointed his gun at a Kokuryu-kai man armed with a Striker Carbine across the street from the car.

The two men fired at the same time but neither fell. They went to shoot again but the Indig's carbine jammed and the Mercenary didn't shoot. He ran closer, over to a wall across the road, then fired. The bullet made a hole in the Indig's forehead, and he toppled. The Mercenary ran over and shot him three more times as he lay there. Then a big Dieronese woman came running from a narrow alley, right in front of the soldier. Startled, he quickly fired his weapon. The woman fell face forward, dropping like a sack, without putting out her arms to break the fall.

More Indigs came now, with guns, shooting at the Nighthawk Trooper. He dropped to one knee and shot many of them, but the Indigs' bullets also hit him but mostly pinged, harmlessly, off his armor.

Then a Suzaku VTOL landed right on Belt Line Road, the street in front of Arido's house. It seemed impossible that a helicopter could fit in so narrow a street. It was a ‘Chiisai Fusero‘ (Little Bird), the Mercenary’s fast, tiny and highly maneuverable copter. Its rotor blades were just inches from the walls of Arido's house and the house directly across the road. The roar of the Suzaku was deafening, and dust swirled around in the VTOLs rotor wash. Arido couldn't breathe. Then the shooting suddenly got worse.

The Suzaku’s gunner was leaning out of the VTOL and aiming its forward mounted mini guns up the street behind where Arido was hiding. Another airman ran from the VTOL toward the Stinger that had just went down. The shooting got even worse then. It was so loud that the sound of the Suzaku and the guns was just one continuous roar. Bullets were hitting and rocking the old car that was shielding Arido. He curled himself into a ball and wished he was someplace else.





Draconis Combine/ULTRA Contest
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Nishijima beach
Joint Operation Center Base
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:25pm Local

At the Joint Operations Center next to the airport, cameras on three surveillance helicopters had captured close - up and in color the crash of the BattleMech, code name Sunset 3. Tai-sa (Colonel) Onishi Razan and her command staff had watched it live: pilot Go-chu (Corporal) Jamila Shani's city camouflaged ‘Mech was running smoothly, then a shudder and puff of smoke near the rear center torso armor, then an awkward counter – rotation as Sunset 3 fell, making two slow turns clockwise, cockpit up until its belly bit the top of a stone building and its front torso was cast down violently, right arm snapped off and went flying, its center mass smashing into a narrow alley on its side against a stone wall in a cloud of smoke, dust, and debris.

There wasn't enough time for anyone to consider all the ramifications of that BattleMech's sudden end, but the sick, sinking feeling that came over every officer watching on screen went far beyond the immediate fate of the five men on board, the pilot and the four Nighthawks hitching a ride.

The Ronin’s six - month long mission to Dieron, handed off by DCPS Liaison Tomoe Katsuie to Tai-sa (Colonel) Evgeni Morgan, the latest symbol of the nation's commitment to a New Draconis Order, had just taken a crippling hit. The ambitious nation – building hopes of DCMS bureaucrats were lying in a twisted hunk of smoldering metal, plastic, and flesh in an alley in northern New Leon on Dieron.

The Ronins had heavier vehicles and ‘Mechs that they could have sent on this Op but Onishi was trying to stay within her contract’s objectives. And her number two Primary objective clearly states they are to minimize damage to the infrastructure. Well the streets and road ways of New Leon were only rated for 35 ton capacity so she had decided not to send anything over 30 tons just to be safe. Her Ronins were booted off Dieron the last time they were here by Governor Paolo Verellas for causing damage to the Spaceport. She didn’t want to go through that again anytime soon.

WORD COUNT 1502

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE





DC-PA-06-07 #15

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:30pm Local

Just after he had leveled the Dieronese crowd with his 50 caliber, squad Portable Machine Gun, leaving the street strewn with bodies, gunner Go-chu (Corporal) Nolan Economopoulos heard the approach of a Battlemech. It was Sunset 3, Go-chu (Corporal) Jamila Shani's ‘Mech.

Go-chu (Corporal) Jamila was a funny gal whom everybody called ‘Sophia’ because she affected the hair, walk and talk of her musical idol. There were guys in her unit who had known ‘Sophia’ for years but would scratch their heads if you asked them about somebody named Jamila Shani. Her exploits were legendary. She had piloted secret missions behind enemy lines during the 5th Succession war, piloting an Ebony light class ‘Mech in stealth mode, to knock out Tancred Sandoval's Cruise missile sites in the Draconis March.

On this mission, Jamila's Stinger had escorted a Squad of Firefighter Commandos to the mission site and was now performing roving perimeter security around the target area in central New Leon. The ‘Mechs had to keep moving because if not, they made for big stationary targets for Heavy SRM Launchers. Speed was their friend. The ‘Mech's two Nighthawk Gunsho’s (Sergeants) were blasting targets with their Heavy Grenade Launchers, and two Tornado snipers on the rear were picking off Kokuryu-kai gunmen. Every time the sleek black ‘Mech ran by, it gave the guys on the ground a good, protected feeling the boys called "a warm and fuzzy'.'

As Jamila's Battlemech passed by, Economopoulos's eye caught the distinctive flash and puff of an SRM
- Short Range Missile. He saw the missile climb into the BattleMech's rear armor. Then came a thunderclap. The ‘Mech's rear armor cracked, the gyro stopped spinning with an ugly grinding sound, and a chug – chug - chug coughing followed. The whole BattleMech shuddered and started to spin - first slowly, then picking up speed.

"Oh, my God, you guys. Look at this!'' Economopoulos said to the Commandos crouching with him.

"Look at this!''

Jamila's ‘Mech moved directly over them, spinning faster now.

Go-chu (Corporal) Dave Waton, gasped, "Oh, Jesus.'' He fought the urge to just stand and watch the ‘Mech go down. He turned away to keep his eyes on his corner, watching for Kokuryu-kai gunmen.

Economopoulos couldn't stop watching. The Stinger started to tilt as it hit the top of a house, then flipped over as it crashed into an alley, on its side.

"It just went down! It just crashed!'' The disbelief in Economopoulos's voice echoed the feelings of every soldier on the corner.

"What happened?'' called Tai-i (Captain) Duane Johnson, the Squad Two leader, who came running.

"A ‘Mech just went down!'' Economopoulos said. ``We've got to go. We've got to go right now!''

He knew the four PA(L)s riding on the ‘Mech and the Battlemech pilot needed help immediately - before the Indigs got to them.

Word spread wildly over the radio, voices overlapped with the bad news. There was no pretense now of the deadpan calm of radio transmissions, the mandatory military monotone that said everything was under control. This was dreadful shock. Voices rose with surprise and fear.

“We got a Battlemech going down! We got a Battlemech going down!”

“We got a Battlemech crashed in the city! Sunset - Three!”

“Sunset - Three down!”

It was more than a BattleMech crash. It was a blow to the sense of invulnerability in all the young men on the ground. The Battlemechs and the helicopters were their trump cards. The BattleMechs, even more than the Commando’s rifles and machine guns, were what kept the enemy gunmen at a distance.

Economopoulos saw smoke and dust rising from the crash three blocks east. He saw crowds of Indigs running in that direction, and guns poking out of windows nearby. He spotted two boys running toward him, one with something in his hand. He dropped to one knee and felled them both with a burst from his Squad Portable Machine Gun. One had been holding a stick. The other got up and limped for cover.

Economopoulos's buddy Waton was feeling the same urge to run toward the crash. When another Lance's Battlemech had gone down two weeks earlier, the dead pilot was mutilated by the crowds. In the hangar the Combat Engineers had talked about it. They were determined that such a thing would never happen to their guys.

But now they had to get permission on the radio from Sho-sa (Major) Reid Mediate, the Combat Engineer Commando commander. Mediate understood the urge to go help, but if Firefighter Squad Six left, the security perimeter around the target building would break down. He tried to get on the command network, but the calls were coming so thick and loud now he couldn't be heard.

"We need to go!'' Economopoulos shouted at Tai-i (Captain) Duane Johnson. "Now!''

Economopoulos started running at the same moment Mediate called back. The Sho-sa (Major) had decided to authorize it himself.

Johnson ordered half of Firefighter Squad Six to stay at the target house. He took the other half - seven men - with him to the Battlemech crash, running full trot to catch up with Economopoulos.




Draconis Combine/ULTRA Contest
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:30pm Local

It had taken Kashira (Senior Chief Petty Officer) Aissa Noah, piloting a Cavalry VTOL with the call sign Sunshine 21, a few minutes to find the crash. Shujin (Master Sergeant) Romana Gronseth, piloting Battlemech call sign Sunset One, the Light Class Pack Hunter, already in the area, had helped guide her in.

“Two hundred meters. One hundred meters. You are coming over it right and low. Just passed it.”

Aissa banked hard left and then flew in. Landing in the big intersection closest to the downed
Battlemech would have been easier, but she didn't want to sit down where she would make a fat target from four different directions. So she'd eased her ‘copter onto the street called Beltline Road and set it down on a slope between two stone houses.

Aissa saw dark smoke choking the interior of the downed Battlemech, and she knew just looking at it that her friends ‘Sophia’ and Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Donald Miller, a Tornado PA(L) Pilot, were probably dead.

Indigs were coming at them. Both Aissa and her gunner, Sho-ko (Master Chief Petty Officer) Gale Streng, fired with handguns. Then Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Jimmy Pane, a PA(L) sniper who had climbed out of the Battlemech wreckage, appeared alongside Aissa' cockpit. It was Pane who had encountered Akiyama Arido, the slender Dieronese teenager who had hidden beside the old car nearby.

Now, over the din of the helicopter, Pane signed the words, "I need help.'' Pane had been shot through his armor in the meaty part of his left shoulder. The wounded David Gauss Rifle sniper had dragged his injured PA(L) buddy Gunsho (Sergeant) Kimitada Lu, from the wreckage and positioned him against the wall with his weapon. While propped there, Lu had been shot again.

Aissa hopped out and followed Pane to the downed Battlemech, leaving her gunner, Gale, to control the Cavalry Attack Helicopter and provide cover up the alley.

Seconds after Aissa left, Tai-i (Captain) Johnson rounded the corner and came upon the Cavalry VTOL.

Gale nearly shot him. When Gale lowered her weapon, the startled Tai-i (Captain) tapped his helmet, indicating he wanted a head count on casualties. Gale didn't know.

Economopoulos and the other Firefighter Commandos behind Johnson went after Aissa and Pane. They saw that Lu, the gung - ho sniper everybody called ’Bull’s Eye’, had a bad gut wound. His David Light Gauss Rifle was on his lap and a KA 23 Subgun was on the ground in front of him. Lu, a devoutly religious man, had told his mother before leaving for Dieron, "A good Buddhist soldier is just a click away from heaven.''

Economopoulos found three Kokuryu-kai bodies beside Lu. There was a woman and two men. One of the men was still breathing and trying to move, so Economopoulos pumped two finishing rounds into him. He then got down behind the bodies for cover while Aissa and Pane pulled Lu uphill to the Cavalry VTOL. Economopoulos picked up Lu's Subgun and slung it on his back.

The rest of the squad fanned out to form a perimeter. Aissa and Pane were having trouble dragging
Lu, so Aissa stooped and lifted him with both arms, and placed him in the troop bay door of the
Cavalry ‘chopper. Then she helped the wounded Pane into the helicopter.

Aissa examined Lu. He had been shot in the belly, just under his armor plate. His eyes were gray and rolled up in his head. He was still alive, barely, but Aissa knew there was nothing she could do for him. He needed a Medic immediately. Aissa climbed back into her pilot’s seat. On the radio she heard the command from Chu-i (Lieutenant) Kyle Kennebrew in the Cobra Command VTOL overhead.

“Twenty - one, come on out. Come out now.”

With intensifying fire, there was a real risk that the Cavalry would be damaged and get stranded on the ground. Pane and Lu needed doctors. The pilots would have to leave the rest of Sunset Three’s PA(L)
Squad behind and hope the Commandos could hold on until more help arrived.

Aissa grabbed the stick and told Gale, "I have it.''

Aissa told the command network, "Twenty - one is coming out.''






Draconis Combine/ULTRA Contest
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Target Area
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:35pm Local

Mechwarrior Shujin (Master Sergeant) Romana Gronseth was moving her Pack Hunter up behind Gunsho (Sergeant) Dave Pusti 's Hermes when the SRM hit. The two ‘Mechs were supposed to be opposite each other in patrol around the target area in New Leon, but Pusti's Sunset Two hadn't been in the formation long enough to get in sync. Pusti was still struggling to take the spot vacated by Jamila Shani's Stinger, which lay smoldering on the ground after being shot down minutes earlier.

Romana, piloting the Pack Hunter designated as Sunset One, was closing in fast from behind when she saw the hit to Pusti's Hermes’ waist mantle. The SRM blew off a chunk of it. Romana saw all the oil dump out of the mantle in a fine mist, but the ‘Mech stayed intact, and everything seemed to still be functioning.

" ‘Two’, are you OK?'' Romana radioed to Pusti.

The Battlemech was a big machine. Pusti's Hermes weighed 34 tons with Nighthawk Squad and gear, and the waist mantle was underneath where he sat up in the cockpit. Romana's radio call came before Pusti had even sorted out what had happened. He heard Romana explain that he had been hit by a Heavy SRM fired by Indigs, and that there was damage to the waist area.

"Roger,'' Pusti radioed back, coolly.

He didn't feel anything unusual about the Battlemech at first. He did a quick check of his multi – function display and his damage read outs and saw that all the readings were OK. His magnetic clamped Tornado Squad, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Ionela Bretan, Gunsho’s (Sergeants) Justice Keter , Malavika Yamura and Dallas Johnstone, were unhurt. So after the initial shock, he felt relief. Everything was fine. Romana told him he had lost his oil and part of the mantle on the waist actuator, but the sturdy Battlemech was built to run without oil for a time if necessary, and it was still holding steady.

Pusti had faith in his ‘Mech, but it had absorbed a strong impact. The air mission commander, Sho-i (Captain) Daniel Taylor, who had seen the hit from the command – and - control helicopter circling above, told him to take the ‘Mech back to the base. Sunset Two was out of the fight.

Pusti pulled out of his left - turning patrol pattern and pointed back to the Mercenary's airfield, about a
Four - minute trot southeast. He could see it off in the distance against the coastline. He noted, just to be safe, that there was a big green open area between him and the airfield, so if he had to stop sooner, he had a place to park his Hermes. But the ‘Mech was piloting fine.

Pusti was the calm, collected type - a true pro. He had been with the secretive 160th SOMR (Special
Operations ‘Mech Regiment), the Night Stalkers, long enough to be a veteran of dangerous, stealth - piloting, night missions in the War of Benjamin and the invasion of Inurzun Prefecture.

He had learned to conduct himself with such discipline that many of his neighbors on Oshika, near the
Night Stalkers' base in Fort Campbell, didn't even know what he did for a living. His own family often didn't know where he was. In fact, he'd been given just two hours' notice of his assignment to Dieron. There had been just enough time to drive home and spend 15 minutes with his wife, Lorrie, and his baby son, Joey, and to explain that he would have to miss the child's first birthday three months later.

Sometimes it seemed that all he did was pilot missions, or train for them. Practice defined the lives of the Razan Ronin’s pilots. They practiced everything, even crashing. Their moves in the electronic maze of their cockpits were so well - rehearsed they had become instinctive.

Now Pusti steered his crippled Battlemech southeast through New Leon, toward the Tatsuyama Ocean and the base. His Lance CO, Romana, made a quick decision to follow him. Romana's Pack Hunter had been providing cover for the target building and the crash site, where the Stinger Battlemech piloted by
Jamila Shani had gone down from an SRM hit. Romana had seen a rescue team rope in at Jamila's downed ‘Mech, and the forces around the target building were getting ready to leave. Prioritizing quickly, she decided she would see the four Tornado PA(L)s on Pusti's crippled ‘Mech at least part of the way safely home.

Romana followed the Hermes for maybe a mile, to a point where she felt confident it would make it back. She was preparing to turn around when Pusti's waist mantle, the whole assembly - the pelvic joint and two or three feet of the vertical leg shaft assembly - just turned into a blur and evaporated.

Inside the Hermes, Pusti and his Tornado Squad Leader, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Ionela Bretan, felt the ‘Mech’s frame begin to vibrate rapidly. They heard the accelerating, high - speed whine of the dry pelvic joint in its death throes. Then came a very loud bang.

With the top half of the leg shaft gone, a big weight was suddenly dropped off the Hermes chassis’ back end, and its center of gravity pitched forward.

As the cockpit lunged down, the Light ‘Mech began to spin. After a decade of piloting, Pusti's reactions were instinctive. To make the Hermes swing left meant pushing gently on the left pedal. He now noticed he had already jammed his left pedal all the way to the floor and his ‘Mech was still spinning rapidly to the right. The rotation of the gyro wanted to make the BattleMech spin that way, and without a waist mantle there was no force to stop it.

The spin was faster than Pusti ever imagined it could be. Details of ground and sky blurred, the way patterns do on a spinning top. Out the cockpit he saw only blue sky and brown terrain.

They were about 75 meters away when Romana saw the Battlemech spin 3 or 5 times in the seconds before it hit. It all happened too fast. Pusti was trying to do something at the controls. Ionela, somehow had the presence of mind to do exactly the right thing.

In crash simulators, pilots are taught to eliminate torque by shutting off the reactor. But the controls for the fusion power plant were on the inside of the cockpit, so Ionela had to fight the spin's strong centrifugal force and breached the cockpit canopy with her laser. In those frantic seconds she managed to flip the engine switch to idle and it was in the process of shutting down and was halfway off.

Pusti shouted into his radio, “Going in hard! Sunset Two going down!”

He screamed his Tornado Squad Leaders name when he saw her reaching inside the cockpit, “Ionelaaaa!”

Romana was amazed to see the falling ‘Mech's spin rate suddenly slow. And just before impact, the cockpit of the ‘Mech came up. Whether for some dynamic reason or something Pusti or Ionela did
inside the cockpit, the falling Hermes leveled off.

With the spin rate down to half what it had been, and with the ‘Mech fairly level, the Battlemech made a hard but a hull down landing.

Landing hull down was critical. It meant there was a chance the four women hitching a ride on the Hermes were alive.

WORD COUNT 2883

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE









DC-PA-06-07 #16

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:40 pm Local

Circling in her Pack Hunter around Gunsho (Sergeant) Dave Pusti's downed Hermes, too afraid to stop and render aid lest she became the next target of SRM fire, Mechwarrior Shujin (Master Sergeant) Romana Gronseth saw that Pusti had been lucky. His ‘Mech had fallen not into one of the many stone buildings in central New Leon, but into a warren of flimsy tin huts.

The Hermes hadn't hit anything hard enough to breach its Jolassa - 328 Ferro – Fibrous armor. A BattleMech is built with shock absorbers in its arms and legs to withstand a terrifically hard impact, so long as it lands in a controlled position. And Pusti's Light Class Hermes was indeed hull down.

In other ways, Pusti and his four man (woman) Tornado Squad were less fortunate. The crash site was about a mile from the PA(L) Teams and Commando Squads on the ground near the downtown target site. Pusti had been shot down while taking the place of Go-chu (Corporal) Jamila Shani’s Stinger, which had crashed only a few blocks from the Razan Ronin’s troops.

The only airborne search – and - rescue team had already fast - roped down to Jamila's ‘Mech, so there would be no easy way to reinforce Pusti's crash site. If there had been an irremediable flaw in this mission, it was this lack of a second rescue force. Nobody had taken seriously the prospect of two
BattleMechs going down. While the Ronins DID possess three Cobra VTOL M.A.S.H. units, and two PA(L) Ailette Rescue Teams, they still only had one PA(L) Aerie Salvage Team. They would require at least a second salvage team to make two full units. On her Hunter Dedicated TTS infra red targeting and tracking system, Romana could already see Indigs spilling into alleyways and footpaths, homing in on the newly downed ‘Mech.

Romana slowed her ‘Mech down to a walked and caught a glimpse of Pusti in the cockpit, pushing at a section of armor that had caved in around his legs. Romana was relieved to see the Hermes pilot was alive.

She steered the Pack Hunter close enough to catch the frustrated look on the face of Pusti's Tornado Squad Leader, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Ionela Bretan. Ionela had been in a ‘Mech crash like this one on a training mission several years before. It had broken her leg and crunched her back, and she had been involved in a legal battle over it ever since. To Romana, the look on Ionela's face down there said, I can't believe this has happened to me again! Then, underneath the torso of the crumpled Hermes, Romana saw movement. This told her that at least one of the other Tornado pilots, either Gunsho (Sergeant) Malavika Yamura or Gunsho (Sergeant) Dallas Johnstone, was still alive.





Draconis Combine/ULTRA Contest
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Southern Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:45 pm Local

At this point, 16:45 p.m., command conditions were on overload. Most of the Commandos and PA(L)s inserted at the target building were moving to the site of Jamila's downed BattleMech, where the air - rescue team had already roped in.

The situation report from the Cobra command helicopter sounded beleaguered.

“We are getting a lot of RAG, LAW, and SRM fire. There's a LOT of fire. We are going to try to get everyone consolidated at the northern site [Jamila's crash] and then move to the southern site [Pusti's crash].”

Clamped to the exterior of the Pack Hunter, Sunset One, Romana had, in addition to her two Tornado Snipers, three Nighthawk PA(L)s: Machine gunners Gunsho (Sergeant) Bianca Koman, and Go-chu’s (Corporals) Katherine Sulaiman and Frida Roesdahl. With Indigs closing in, she knew Pusti's downed squad wouldn't last long. They were injured and shaken, not fresh and focused like her gals.

Romana's machine gunners and the snipers were now picking off armed Indigs. Romana would slow down to a crawl, and the wash of her fusion reactor would force the thickening crowds back. But the men with RAGs were slower to take cover, and her snipers were picking them off.

Romana also noticed that every time she slowed down now, she was drawing more and more SRM fire. She heard the ticking of shrapnel plinking against the thick Ferro - Fibrous walls of the Pack Hunter’s Royal - 7a armor. A couple of times she saw a glowing arc where a round would hit one of her Anti – Battle Armor Bods (B-Pods), which would spark and trace a bright line as her legs moved.

Romana's Pack Hunter and helicopter gunships, Suzakus and Cavalrys, were holding the crowds back. Romana and the circling pilots worked the radio, pleading for immediate help. They were repeatedly assured that a rescue by the hurriedly assembled ground convoy was imminent.

But the onsite air commander, Chu-i (Lieutenant) Kyle Kennebrew, realizing that it was taking too long to get the new column up and moving, approved Romana's request to put two of her Nighthawk's three PA(L)s on the ground. The idea was for them to give first aid, set up a perimeter, and help Pusti and his Tornado Squad hold off the Indigs until the arrival of a rescue force.

This was not a hopeless mission. One or two properly armed, well – trained armored soldiers could hold off an undisciplined enemy indefinitely. Bianca and Katherine were experts at killing and staying alive. They were career soldiers trained to get hard, ugly things done. They were DEST. Katherine had enlisted at 17; her husband and children on Unity, in the Draconis Combine. Bianca was an outdoors type from Teniente who loved her Pit Bull Medium truck and her hunting rifles.

When the PA(L) squad leader, Kashira (Sergeant Major) Barbara Ogawa, gave Katherine the word that she and Bianca were going in, Katherine grinned and gave an excited thumbs - up. Romana damn near brought her Pack Hunter to a dead stop in a small clearing, using her jump jet wash to knock down a fence and blow away debris. She inched along at about ten kilometer per hour and the two women jumped.

Bianca got tangled on the magnetic clamp connecting her to the Pack Hunter and had to be blasted free. Katherine took a spill as she ran for cover. Bianca stood motioning with her hands, indicating their confusion. They were crouched in a defensive posture in the open.

Romana dropped the ‘Mech down to one knee and tried to whisper over her loud speakers, pointing the way with her ‘Mech’s right arm. Kashira (Sergeant Major) Barbara popped a small smoke marker from her perch on the right shoulder of the Pack Hunter in the direction of Pusti's Hermes. Bianca and Katherine ran to the smoke. The last thing the squad leader saw as the Pack Hunter stood up and pulled away was both women signaling thumbs - up.






Draconis Combine/ULTRA Contest
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Southern Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:45 pm Local

Gunsho (Sergeant) Dave Pusti came to and felt something was wrong with his right leg. He had been knocked cold for at least several minutes. He was seated upright in his command couch, leaning slightly to the right. The plexiglass cockpit of his Hermes was shattered, and there was something draped over him, a big sheet of armor.

The BattleMech seemed remarkably intact. The fusion bottle had not been breached. Pusti's seat, which was mounted on shock absorbers, had collapsed down to the floor. It had broken in the full down position and was cocked to the right. He figured that was because they were spinning when they hit. The shocks had collapsed, and the spin had jerked the seat to the right.

It must have been the combination of the jerk and the impact that had broken his femur. The big bone in his right leg had snapped in two on the edge of his seat.

The thirty ton Hermes had flattened a flimsy hut. No one had been inside, but in the next hut a 2 – year -old girl, Mia Chinen, lay unconscious and bleeding. A hunk of flying metal had taken a deep gouge out of her forehead. Her mother, Li Chinen, had been splashed with something hot, probably coolant fluid, and was severely burned on her face and legs.

The dazed Tornado pilots checked themselves over. Ionela Breten's left tibia was broken. Pusti did some things he later could not explain. He removed his neural helmet and his gloves. Then he took off his watch. Before piloting a ‘Mech he always took off his wedding ring because there was a danger it could catch on rivets or switches. He would pass the strap of his watch through the ring and keep it there during a mission. Now he removed the watch and took the ring off the strap, and set both on the dashboard.

He picked up his weapon, a TK Enforcer Auto Pistol, a little Lyran automatic pistol that fired 9mm rounds. The MechWarriors called them ``IPs,'' or ``indig - poppers,'' a reference to the nickname ``Indigs'' the Ronin’s had bestowed on the wiry Kokuryu-kai militiamen.

Ionela was trying to explain what happened during the crash. ``I couldn't get them all the way off,'' she told Pusti, explaining her struggle to turn off the reactor as the ‘Mech started to spin out of control. Ionela said she had reinjured her back. Pusti's back hurt, too. They both figured they had crushed vertebrae.

Pusti could not pull himself out of the wreckage. He pushed the piece of ferro fibrous sheet of armor away and decided to defend his position through the broken plexiglass of the Hermes’ cockpit.

Pusti saw that Ionela was about to push herself out. That was the last time he saw her. And just as
Ionela disappeared from view, Bianca and Katherine, the Nighthawk PA(L)s, showed up.

Pusti was startled by their arrival. He didn't know either woman well, but he recognized the crest on their armor. He knew that they were Ronin. He felt an enormous sense of relief. He didn't know how long he had been unconscious, but it had evidently been long enough for a rescue team to arrive.

His ordeal was over. He had been thinking about getting the radio operating, but now, with his rescuers at hand, there was no need.

Bianca and Katherine were calm. They reached in and lifted Pusti out of the ‘Mech gently, one taking his legs and the other grabbing his torso, as if they had all the time in the world. They set him down by a tree.

He was not in great pain. Pusti was in a perfect position to cover the whole right side of the BattleMech with his skinny - popper. Behind him the front of his Hermes was wedged tightly against a tin wall, closing off any easy approach from that side.

He could see that his Tornado Squad had taken the worst of the crash. They didn't have the shock absorbers on the outside. He watched them lift Malavika Yamura from the center torso. She had blood all over her armored leg, and was talking but making no sense.

Then Katherine and Bianca moved to the other side of the Hermes to help Dallas Johnstone, the other
Nighthawk pilot. Pusti couldn't see what was happening. He assumed they were attending to Johnstone and setting up a perimeter, or looking for a way to get them out, or perhaps looking for a place where
A Cobra M.A.S.H. helicopter could set down and load them up.

Indigs were starting to poke their heads around the corner on Pusti's side of the ‘Mech. He squeezed off a round, and they dropped back. His gun kept jamming, so he would eject the round, and the next time it would shoot properly. Then it would jam again.

He could hear more shooting from the other side of the BattleMech. It still hadn't occurred to him that
Bianca and Katherine were the entire rescue force. There was no big rescue team - other than the emergency ground convoy, which was still forming at the airport base two miles away.

Pusti also did not know, none of them did, that only 110 meters or so away, pilots Sho-ko (Master Chief Petty Officer) Gale Streng and Kashira (Senior Chief Petty Officer) Aissa Noah were waiting. The same team that had set the Cavalry VTOL down near the first crash site to help Jamila Shani's downed squad had now set their helicopter down again - to help Pusti and his squad.

Aissa and Gale were aiming their weapons at alleyways leading to the clearing, expecting a crowd of
Indigs to show up any second, and hoping that Bianca and Katherine would arrive with Pusti and his
PA(L) Squad. They were eager to load everybody up and hustle out of there.

Romana, patrolling the area, had seen Bianca and Katherine lift Pusti and then Yamura and Johnstone out of the Hermes center torso. She knew they weren't going to be able to carry them to where Aissa's Cavalry was waiting.

She got on the radio and explained to Aissa and Gale that the girls had set up a perimeter around
Pusti's Hermes. They had badly wounded squad mates. They could not make it to the Cavalry.

They were going to have to hang on until the ground force arrived.

After waiting on the ground about five minutes, Gale and Aissa reluctantly asked for permission to leave and refuel. The Cavalry Attack ‘Chopper was running low on fuel, and they were vulnerable. They lifted off, leaving the Ronin at crash site two, to their fate.







Draconis Combine/ULTRA Contest
Dieron Military District
Dieron Prefecture
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Southern Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:45 pm Local

Pusti's Hermes had crashed in Valley Ranch, a crowded neighborhood just south of where Doku Kime lived on a street of rag huts and tin - roofed shanties. Kime was an armed bandit and gunman for hire, but on this day he had thrown his entire gang of 26 street fighters into the citywide effort to fight off the unwanted Razan’s Ronins Mercenary invaders.

The instant Pusti's BattleMech hit the ground, Kime saw everyone around him reverse direction.

Moments before, the crowd on the streets and the fighters had been moving north, over to where the first BattleMech had crashed. Now everyone was running south. Kime ran with them, a goateed veteran soldier waving his weapon and shouting.

``Turn back! Stop! There are still men inside who can shoot!''

Some listened to Kime, for he was known as a militia leader. Others ran on ahead. Ali Hussein, who managed a pharmacy near where the BattleMech crashed, saw many of his neighbors grab guns and run toward the wreck. He caught hold of the arm of his friend Cawale, who owned the Black Sea restaurant.
Cawale had a rifle. Hussein grabbed him by both shoulders.

``It's dangerous. Don't go!'' he shouted at him. But there was the smell of blood and vengeance in the air. Cawale wrestled away from Hussein and joined the running crowd.

Minutes later, as Kime and his men reached the second crash site, they saw Cawale sprawled dead in the dirt, just four paces in front of the BattleMech. The ground all around was littered with the bodies of
Indigs. As Kime had expected, the Mercenaries around the crashed BattleMech were still very capable of fighting.

He tried to hold the crowd back, but they were angry and brazen. He wanted to find a way for his
militiamen to get clear shots at the Mercenaries, but it was difficult to approach the small clearing where the BattleMech lay. The Mercenaries were consummate professionals and had every approach covered with deadly automatic-weapons fire.

Kime waited for more of his men to catch up so that they could mount a coordinated attack.

…………………………….

Pusti still thought things were under control. His leg was broken but it didn't hurt. He was on his back, propped against a supply kit next to a small tree, using his weapon to keep back the occasional Indig who poked his head into the clearing.

He could hear firing on the other side of the Hermes. He knew Ionela Breten, his PA(L) Squad Leader, was hurt but alive. And somewhere were the two Tornado PA(L)s and his friend girl, Dallas Johnstone. He wondered if Dallas was OK. He figured it was only a matter of time before the ground vehicles showed up to take them out.

Then he heard one of the girls - it was Katherine Sulaiman - shout that she was hit. Just a quick shout of anger and pain. He didn't hear the voice again.

The other lady, Bianca Koman, came back around to Pusti's side of the ‘Mech.

"Are there weapons on board?'' she asked.

The Tornado PA(L)s carried KA 23 Subguns. Pusti told her where they were kept, and Bianca stepped into the cockpit, rummaged around and returned with both rifles. She handed Pusti Katherine's weapon, a KA - 23 special - operations Subgun configured for close - combat by swapping in a shorter barrel and fitted with a Sound and Flash Suppressor & Laser Sight, loaded and ready to fire. She didn't say what had happened to Katherine.

"What's the support frequency on the survival radio?'' Bianca asked.

It was then, for the first time, that it dawned on Pusti that they were stranded. He felt a twist of alarm in his gut. If Bianca was asking how to set up communications, it meant she and Katherine had come in on their own. They were the entire rescue team. And Katherine had just been shot!

Pusti explained standard procedure on the survival radio to Bianca. He said there was a channel Bravo, and he listened while Bianca called out. Bianca asked for immediate help, and was told that a reaction force was en route. Then Bianca took the weapons and moved back around to the other side of the Hermes.

Pusti felt panic closing in now. He had to keep the Indigs away. He could hear them talking behind a wall, so he fired in that direction. It startled him because he had been firing single shots, but this new weapon was set on burst. The voices behind the wall stopped. Then two Indigs tried to climb over the nose end of the cockpit. He fired at them, and they jumped back. He didn't know whether he had hit them or not.

A man tried to climb over the wall, and Pusti shot him. Another came crawling from around the corner with a weapon, and Pusti shot him, too.

Suddenly there was a mad fusillade on the other side of the BattleMech that lasted for about two minutes.

He heard Bianca shout in pain. The shooting stopped.

High overhead in the surveillance helicopters, worried commanders were watching on video screens.

“Do you have video over crash site number two?”

“Indigenous personnel moving around all over the crash site.”

“Indigenous?”

“That's affirmative, over.”

The radio fell silent.

Terror washed over Pusti like nothing he had ever felt. He could hear sounds of an angry mob. The crash had left the clearing littered with debris, and he heard a great shuffling sound as the Indigs pushed it away. There was no more shooting. The others must be dead. Pusti knew what had happened to
Mercenary’s who had fallen into the hands of angry Indigs. They did gruesome, horrible things. The rumor around the hangar was that they'd played soccer with the heads of a couple of downed MechWarrior pilots earlier this summer. That was in store for him now. His second weapon was out of rounds. He still had a pistol strapped to his side, but he never even thought to reach for it.

It was over. He was done.

An Indig stepped around the nose of the Hermes. He seemed startled to find Pusti lying there. The man shouted, and more Indigs came running. It was time to die. Pusti placed the empty weapon across his chest, folded his hands over it, and turned his eyes to the sky.

WORD COUNT 3436

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE
Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Rank: Colonel
Callsign: 'Iceman'
MH: Steele Dagger Spec Ops BA
Role: DEST
Assignment: CO Battle Armor Regiment
Platoon: Black Ops
Company: SWAT
Battalion: HQ Battalion
Regiment: Smilodon
RESTLESS SOULS MERCENARY DIVISION

User avatar
Iceman
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:51 pm
affiliations: Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Callsign: 'Iceman'
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Kage BA (DEST)
Battalion: DEST
Company: Shadow
Platoon: PA(L) DEST Platoon Alpha
Assignment: Breach
Role: Executive Officer
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Re: Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

Postby Iceman » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:39 pm

DC-PA-06-07 #17

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:40 pm Local

On the crowded streets people surged with anger around Gunsho (Sergeant) Dave Pusti's downed Hermes.

They wanted to kill these Mercenaries who had fallen from the sky and opened fire on their friends and neighbors. And despite furious gunfire from the soldiers around the downed BattleMech, people continued to move in that direction.

In the months since the Razan’s Ronins came, they had been swooping over the city at all hours of the night and day, blowing the tin roofs off houses and roping in to shoot and arrest Kokuryu-kai clan leaders. It was an insult to New Leon. On this day all the hatred had come to a boil, and many were already dead.

At the wreck site, Tornado machine gunners, Gunsho (Sergeant) Bianca Koman and Go-chu (Corporal) Katherine Sulaiman, were fending off the crowd, waiting for the promised rescue convoy of ground troops. Doku Kime, the neighborhood militia leader, had been trying to keep the angry crowd back. Now he didn't have to work as hard. The Kokuryu-kai bodies strewn around the clearing and the deadly accurate fire from the Mercenaries did that.
Doku Kime stayed back himself. There was time. The Mercenaries were surrounded. He waited until about a dozen of his men joined him, and then they fanned out to find good positions for a coordinated assault.

On the side of the BattleMech he could see, there were two PA(L) armored soldiers and the pilot who were firing. Another Mercenary lay dead or badly wounded. At Kime's signal, his men opened fire all at once on the Mercenaries. After a furious exchange of fire that lasted at least two minutes, the Mercenaries stopped firing.

The crowd followed Kime and his men into the clearing.

The mob descended on the Mercenaries. Only one was still alive. He shouted and waved his arms as the mob grabbed him by the legs and pulled him away, tearing at his clothes. People with knives hacked at the bodies of the dead Mercenaries. Others in the crowd pulled and tore at the dead men's limbs. Soon people were running, shouting and cackling, parading with parts of the Mercenary's bodies.

When Kime ran around the feet of the BattleMech, he was startled to find two other Mercenaries. One, stretched on the ground, looked badly wounded or dead. The other, the Hermes pilot, was still alive. The man did not shoot. He set his weapon on his chest and folded his hands over it.

The crowd surged past Kime and fell on both men. Those who went for the pilot began kicking and beating him, but the bearded militia leader felt suddenly protective of the man. He grabbed the pilot's arm, fired his weapon in the air and shouted for the crowd to stay back.

One of his men struck the pilot hard in the face with his rifle butt, and Kime pushed him back. The pilot was at their mercy. It occurred to Kime that this Ronin was more valuable alive than dead.

Razan’s Ronins had spent months capturing his fellow Dieronesians and holding them prisoner. They would be willing to trade them, perhaps all of them, for one of their own.

Kime and some of his men formed a ring around the pilot to protect him from the mob, which sought only revenge. Several of Kime's fighters tore off Pusti's clothing. The Hermes pilot had a pistol strapped to his side, and a knife, and the Kokuryu-kai were afraid he had other hidden weapons. They knew the
Ronin pilots also wore beacons in their clothing so that the Rescue Choppers could track them, so they stripped him.

Pusti kept his eyes on the sky. The Dieronese were screaming things in a dialect that he couldn't understand. His nose was broken, and the bone around his eyes was shattered from the blow to his face.

When they started pulling off his clothes, they were unfamiliar with the plastic snaps on his gear, so
Pusti reached down and squeezed them open. His boots were yanked off, then his coolant vest and his tee shirt. A man started unzipping his shorts, but when he saw that the pilot wore no underwear (for comfort in the battlemech’s phenomenal heat) he zipped the shorts back up. They also left on his silver Razan’s Ronin’s dog tags. All the while he was being kicked and hit.

A young Kokuryu-kai leaned down and grabbed at the green ID card Pusti wore around his neck. He stuck it in Pusti's face and shouted in Japanese that Pusti could understand, ``Ronin, Ronin, you die in New Leon!''

Then someone threw a handful of dirt in his face, and it filled his mouth. They tied a rag or a towel over the top of his head and eyes, and the mob hoisted him up, partly carrying and partly dragging him. He felt the broken end of his femur pierce the skin in the back of his right leg and poke through.

He was buffeted from all sides, kicked, hit with fists, rifle butts. He could not see where they were taking him. He was engulfed in a great chorus of hate and anger. Someone, he thought a woman, grabbed his penis and testicles and yanked at them.

And in this agony of fright, Pusti suddenly left his body. He was no longer at the center of the crowd.
He was in it, or above it, perhaps. He was observing the crowd attacking him, apart somehow. He felt
no pain. The fear lessened, and he passed out.






Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Central Courtyard
Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095 16:40 pm Local

For the Combat Engineers and Firefighter Commandos left behind at the Guanajuato airport base on the beach in Nishijima, the battle seemed immediate and distant at the same time. Unlike the commanders at the Joint Operations Center nearby, they couldn't watch the fight unfold on video screens.

All they had was the radio, and that was enough. They could tell the mission had gone to hell. The
Snatch – and - grab mission had clearly become a pitched battle. They heard the voices of men who never got rattled shouting with fear and cracking with emotion. Their best friends, their brothers, were trapped and dying.

They heard the radio describe Jamila Shani's Stinger going down, and then Dave Pusti's Hermes. The fight really hit home when Gunsho (Sergeant) Danny Lu's APC rolled in, all shot up and mangled. Lu had been shot in the head and killed. His vehicle had been part of a convoy carrying Hojuhei (Recruit) Soetsu Tamura, who fell from a Trireme at the start of the mission. Tamura looked awful. His eyes were closed, his mouth was bloody, and he wasn't moving.

No one was more fired up than Hojuhei (Recruit) Kieth Norli, a husky blond kid from the Outworlds Alliance. The Commandos called him "Adonis.'' He had the words Combat Engineer Commando tattooed twice on his bulging left deltoid.

Earlier that day, Norli had felt miserable when his buddies had suited up for the mission. He couldn't go because he had a cast on his arm. He had banged up his elbow a few days earlier wrestling with a
Battlearmor Tai-i (Captain), Cheong Chan, who had flung him down.

Now word came that the remnants of Lu's convoy were to be joined by fresh Commandos and vehicles from the base. They were going to fight their way to the Pusti site and rescue the pilot and his PA(L) Squad.

Not everyone was as eager as Norli. Hojuhei (Recruit) Jordan MacGlashan, hearing the distant gunfire and the radio traffic, had a sick feeling. MacGlashan and Norli were both Commandos from the Outworlds Alliance, and were friends, but they were quite different. MacGlashan was slender and quiet, with a bad case of asthma. He had shrapnel in his legs from a night mission a few weeks earlier. Until then he had been as gung ho as the rest of the guys, but his wounds, while minor, had cracked his Hoo-ah spirit.

MacGlashan was dismayed by the confusion of shouting and shooting. It seemed to him that everybody was using the radio twice as much as usual, as if they needed to stay in touch, as if talk were a net to prevent their free fall. As much as it made Norli want to join the fight, it made MacGlashan want to be someplace else. He dared not show it. His stomach was churning, and he was in a cold sweat. “Do I have to go out there?”

Seeing Lu dead and Tamura busted up brought things into immediate and dire focus. ‘What are we
doing in this place?’ Then MacGlashan got a good look at Heishi (Private) Jori MacDonaugh. Lu had dropped dead in Jori's lap inside the heavy wheeled APC. Jori rode the whole way back bathed in her dead friend's blood.

As Jori emerged from the Armored Personnel Carrier now, her eyes were red. She looked at MacGlashan and choked out, "Lu's dead.'' Jori was crying, and MacGlashan felt himself start to cry and he realized, I do not want to go out there. He was ashamed, but that's how he felt.

He looked at the Tornado and DEST KAGE suits who had climbed off the little convoy. These guys were like machines. They were already rearmed and ready to charge back out. There was no hesitation
whatsoever. But the Commandos were all shaken, to a man.

Jori lost it. "I can't go back out there!'' she shouted. "I can't! They're shooting from everywhere!''

Even those Commandos who remained composed felt the same way. How could they go back out into that? They'd barely escaped with their lives. The whole damn city was trying to kill them!

The commander of Lu's tiny convoy, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Nyta Sundara, felt her own heart sink.
Her vehicles were all shot up. Her men were freaking out.

One of the KAGE battle armor pilots guys pulled her aside."Look, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant), you need to clean your vehicle up,'' he said, pointing to the blood - splattered APC. "If you don't, your guys are going to get more messed up. It's going to mess them up. They're going to get sick.''

Nyta strode over to her Commandos.

"Listen, men. You don't have to do this if you don't want to. I'll do it myself if I have to. But we have to clean this thing up right now because we're fixing to roll right back out. Everybody else go resupply. Go
get yourselves some more ammunition.''

Nyta asked her 50 - gunner, "Will you help me clean up? You don't have to.''

The gunner nodded glumly. Together they set off for buckets of water. Norli saw all this, and it made him wild with anger.

"I'm going out there with you guys,'' he said.

"You can't, you're hurt,'' said his team leader, Go-chu (Corporal) Oliver Stone.

Norli didn't argue. He was wearing gym shorts and a T - shirt. The rest of his gear had been packed away for his medevac flight back to the capitol of Dieron, Salamanca, where the Razan’s Ronins DropShips were grounded, the next day. He ran into the hangar, pulled on pants and a shirt, and began grabbing stray gear.

He found a ballistic plate armor vest that was three sizes too big for him and a helmet that lolled around on his head like a salad bowl. He grabbed his SAW, his squad automatic KA – 23 Subgun weapon, and stuffed ammo into his pockets and pouches. He raced back out to the convoy with his boots unlaced and his shirt unbuttoned.

"I'm going out,'' he told Stone.

"You can't go out there with that cast on your elbow,'' Stone said.

"Then I'll lose it.''

Norli ran back into the hangar, found a pair of scissors, and cut straight up the inside seam and flung the cast away. Then he came back and climbed onto an APC.

Stone just looked at him and shook his head. "OK,'' he said.

MacGlashan saw Norli's response and admired him enormously for it, and felt all the more ashamed.
He had donned his own vest and helmet, and taken a seat in the back of an APC, but he was mortified.
He didn't know whether to feel more ashamed of his fear or of his sheep like acceptance of the orders.
He had decided he would go out into New Leon and risk his life, but it wasn't out of passion or solidarity or patriotism. It was because he didn't dare refuse. He showed none of this.

As the other Commandos were about to board the APCs, Jori pulled Nyta aside.

"Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Nyta, I can't go back out there,'' Jori said.

The Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) knew this was coming. All the troopers watched for her response. Nyta was a model Commando: strong, unassuming, obedient, tough and, above all, by the book. There was no doubt that, of all of them, Nyta fit the unit's mold better than anyone else. She was like the prize pupil in class. The officers loved her, which meant that at least some of her troops regarded her with a slightly jaundiced eye. With Nyta challenged like this, they expected her to explode.

Instead, she pulled Jori aside and spoke to her quietly, trooper to trooper. Nyta tried to calm Jori, but
Jori was calm. Jori had made a calculated decision, a perfectly rational one. She'd taken all she could take. She'd just been married a few months before. She was not going to go out there and die.

Jori repeated very deliberately, "I can't do it.''

However steep a price a soldier would pay for backing down like that - and for a Commando it would be a steep price indeed - Jori had made a decision.

"Listen,'' Nyta said. "I understand how you feel. I'm married, too. Don't think of yourself as a coward. I know you're scared. I'm scared. . . . I've never been in a situation like this, either. But we've got to go. It's our job. The difference between being a coward and a Ronin is not whether you're scared, it's what you do while you're scared.''

Jori didn't seem to like the answer. She walked away. As they were about to pull out, Nyta noticed to her relief, that Jori had raced back towards the column of departing vehicles and climbed on board the next APC with the rest of the men.

WORD COUNT 2501

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE










DC-PA-06-07 #18

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Lost
Thursday October 3rd 3095

Gunsho (Corporal) Daniel Ohashi shot a chicken. In the melee that began as soon as the nine - vehicle ground convoy turned the corner at the Empyral Citadel, Ohashi had seen people running, men with Ceres Arms Striker Carbines firing wildly, and chickens flying. He had opened up from the turret of his Heavy Wheeled APC with the powerful .50 – cal machine gun, and one of the rounds turned a chicken into a puff of feathers.

Everything was getting blown apart in this battle - brick walls, houses, cars, cows, men, women,
children. Ohashi felt besieged and disoriented. Anything seemed possible. He had already torn a man apart with the .50 - cal, and he'd mowed down a crowd of men and women who had opened fire on the
convoy.

Ohashi's APC was the last vehicle in the column. With all the gunfire and chaos around them, it was
impossible for the Commandos in the vehicles to tell what was going on. But they all understood that this quick mission into New Leon was developing into the gunfight of their lives.

The convoy's original mission had been to load up 24 Kokuryu - Kai prisoners seized in the raid and haul
them back to the airport base, along with commandos and Nighthawk & Tornado teams around the target house. The plan changed dramatically when Jamila Shani's Stinger went down four blocks east of the target house.

Most of the men fighting in the vehicles didn't know it, but they had just been given new orders. Kyle
Kennebrew, a Ronin Halbred Company Chu-i (Lieutenant) in the command Cobra helicopter, instructed the convoy to load up the prisoners, as planned. But instead of returning to base, they were to wind their way through New Leon's narrow streets and rescue Jamila and her PA(L) squad. All this while guarding two dozen prisoners and taking fire that was getting more intense by the minute.

Lost and wandering in New Leon's confusing alleyways, they badly needed guidance. They were
directed by officers watching from above on video screens, Chu-i (Lieutenant) Kennebrew in the command bird at 3,000 feet, and Sho-sa (Force Commander) Lucille Alicata, the pilot in an Aquarius Escort Small Craft about 1,000 feet higher than the helicopters.

Before they could carry out their revised orders, Dave Pusti's Hermes was shot down about a mile south of the convoy. The orders changed again. Now they were told to continue as planned to Jamila’s crash site. But after that they were to load up the soldiers who had rushed to Jamila's aid, and then fight their way to the Pusti site a mile away.

But the convoy itself needed help. To an extent the commanders didn't realize from watching on their screens above, the men in the vehicles were getting hammered.

Ohashi had been one of the first men hit. It happened just after he had seen an LAW Rocket launched from a crowd of Somalis. He watched the rocket explode on one of the Ronins twenty – ton trucks, disabling it and mangling the legs of Heishi (Private) Minako Barre, who had been standing alongside.

Ohashi had just turned to fire on the crowd when he heard a loud crack. It felt as if a baseball bat had whacked his right arm. A round had splintered the forearm. In a few blinding moments of pain he just went ‘cyclic’ on the big gun, firing it on automatic, sweeping the street behind the convoy until Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Tessa Hodges stepped up to take the gun.

Ohashi wasn't the only casualty. Chu-i (Lieutenant) Michal Naero had been shot in the arm. Heishi (Private) Jacqueline Clay had been shot in the meaty part of her calf. In the back of one truck, Barre held his weapon on the prisoners and propped up his mangled legs.

There weren't enough vehicles to carry all eight squads and the PA(L) guys from the target house. Three vehicles had been dispatched earlier to return an injured Commando to the main base. Some of the soldiers were able now to jump on the remaining vehicles, but the others had to move out on foot.
The trucks had big, fluorescent - orange panels on top to help the surveillance birds keep an eye on them. The helicopters were the troops' eyes in the sky, guiding them through the maze. If everything went well - the 20 - man convoy and ground units linking up at Jamila’s crash site with all the Commandos and PA(L) teams already there - there would be nearly 100 men to rescue the two downed crews and then fight their way out of the hornet's nest.

Ohashi stretched out on his belly in back of the second – to - last heavy APC, which had its sleek black backed hatch open so he and the others crammed in there could shoot out the back. He had a field dressing on his right arm, and he was using his left arm to shoot his KA - 23. He was a crack shot. An avid hunter from Shitara in the Altais Prefecture, Ohashi had grown up with guns. The Commandos had nicknamed him ‘Little Hunter’, for he was the smallest man in the unit.

Next to Ohashi, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Tessa was working the .50 - cal steadily. The big gun's recoil gently rocked the wide vehicle, which was comforting.

They started off following the soldiers who were on foot, but the helicopters steered them along a different route. A few turns later they found themselves right back where they had been minutes earlier.

And that spot was just a few blocks north of the target house, where they had loaded up their prisoners as the mission began an hour earlier.

There they came upon Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Joe Dean, whose Squad Four had been pinned down since the mission began. When the Combat Engineering Sho-sa (Major) had ordered Dean to move his Squad to Jamila's crash site on foot, the Shujin (Staff Sergeant)had said, ``Roger,'' but to himself had said facetiously, Right. His men were badly shot up. He had only about two or three still able to fight out of the original two Squad of about a dozen soldiers.

Dean was relieved to see the convoy approach. He spotted his buddy Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Gael Martinez, a tiny guy, so low in the turret of the lead Wheeled APC that he was actually peering out from underneath the .50 - cal.

It brought a smile to Dean's face despite his ordeal.

Dean loaded his bloodied men on the crowded vehicles, piling them on top of other guys. As he stood there taking a final mental count of his men, the column started moving. Dean had to make a running leap on the back of a APC. He landed on top of somebody, and found himself flat on his back, looking up at the sky, realizing what a terrific target he was and that he couldn't even return fire. As helpless as he felt, he was relieved to be back with the others, and moving. If they were together and rolling, it meant the end was near. Jamila's crash site was just blocks away.

Up ahead, in the second truck, Ohashi's buddy, Spec. Katai Bojorquez, was firing away steadily with his KA - 23. He was amazed at the ferocity of the Kokuryu - Kai attacks. There were people with guns in alleyways, at windows, on rooftops. Each time his KA - 23 magazine was used up, Bojorquez shot with his Gauss pistol while he replaced the rifle magazine with his free hand.

As they crossed one alley, a woman in a flowing purple robe darted past on the driver's side of the truck. The driver had his pistol resting on his left arm, and he was shooting at whatever moved.

"Don't shoot,'' Bojorquez shouted at him. "She's got a kid!''

At that moment the woman turned. Holding a baby on one arm, she raised a pistol with her free hand.
Bojorquez shot her where she stood. He shot four more rounds into her before she fell. He hoped he hadn't hit the baby. They were moving fast, and he didn't get to see whether he had. He thought he probably had hit the baby. She had been carrying the infant on her arm, right in front. Why would a mother do something like that with a kid on her arm? What was she thinking?




Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Crash Site
Thursday October 3rd 3095

In ordinary circumstances, as close to Jamila Shani's crash site as they were, the convoy would have just barreled over to it, running over and shooting through anything in its path. But with the surveillance helicopters and Aquarius Escort Small Craft overhead, the convoy was about to illustrate how too much information can hurt soldiers on a battlefield.

From above, commanders could see Dieron population throwing up roadblocks and preparing ambushes in New Leon. A group of about 15 gunmen were running along streets parallel to the convoy, and keeping up because the two twenty - ton trucks and five Heavy Wheeled APCs were stopping and then darting across intersections one at a time. This gave the gunmen time to get to the next street and set up to fire at each vehicle as it came through.

The men in the vehicles had been ordered to fight their way to Jamila's crash site, help rescue the crew, then get over to pilot Dave Pusti's crash site about a mile south. But the convoy couldn't get anywhere because it was lost - and getting riddled.

The choppers and the Small Craft, flown by Ronin flyboys, tried to steer the convoy clear of Kokuryu - Kai gunfire, dodging the soldiers left and right on the labyrinthine streets. It was like negotiating a maze. But the Aquarius pilots were handicapped. They were not allowed to communicate directly with the convoy. Their orders were to relay all communications to the Joint Operations Center (JOC) back at the beach. So when the Aquarius pilots said, ``Turn left,'' that message went first to the JOC and then to the convoy. The pilots watched with frustration as the convoy drove past the place they had directed it to turn, then, getting the delayed message, turned left down the wrong street.

There was another problem. Watching on screens, the commanders weren't hearing the pop of bullets and feeling the bone - rattling, lung - sucking blast of grenades. The convoy's progress seemed orderly. The video images weren't conveying how desperate the situation was.

Lying helplessly on his back, Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Joe Dean felt his vehicle steer left when he knew the crash site was back to his right. There was another turn. Then another. It was easy to get lost in New Leon. Roads you thought were taking you one place would suddenly slant off in a different direction.

At the rear of the convoy, KAGE Armored DEST member, Vincent Blanchard, his right hip still aching and bloody from where an Ceres Arms Striker Carbine round had been stopped by his armor baffle, was also getting frustrated. There were about seven wounded Combat Engineers in his APC who seemed to be in varying degrees of paralysis. As far as Blanchard could see, none had life - threatening or immobilizing injuries. All were capable of fighting, but few of them were. They seemed to believe that their mission had ended with the capture of the Kokuryu - kai back at the target house. It was already evident to Blanchard that they were not on their way home but were fighting for their lives.

Kashira (Sergeant Major) Barbara Ogawa, leader of the Tornado PA(L) team that had taken the Kokuryu – kai prisoners, did not know where the convoy was going. She was riding blind. Standard procedure on a convoy was to tell each driver where he was headed. That way, if the lead vehicle got hit, the convoy could continue.

But convoy commander Reece Kimura, a Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) more accustomed to commanding a battalion than a line of vehicles, hadn't told anyone. Kimura was in his lead vehicle with a radio plugged in his ear, relying on his eyes in the sky to direct him. The inexperienced APC drivers kept stopping at intersections, or stopping just beyond them, leaving the vehicle immediately behind exposed to a wicked crossfire.

The convoy took several doglegs onto side streets and got no closer to Jamila's crash site. Every time they stopped, the able - bodied would jump out to pull security, or guard the column, and then more soldiers would get shot. Those who were not wounded were smeared with the blood of those they had helped carry back to vehicles.

It was a nightmare. The sun was low now, so turning west meant a blinding stab of dusk. At one point, after driving through a hail of gunfire, the column stopped, then made a U - turn and drove straight back through the same maelstrom.

Every time the ungainly twenty - tons turned around, they would have to pull clumsily up and back, up and back, to negotiate the narrow streets. The whole exercise seemed maddeningly foolhardy. Veterans such as Blanchard and Barbara wondered, Who's calling the shots here?

The driver of Blanchard's APC, Magnar Francisco, who had been shot in the left leg back by the target
house, was hit in the right leg. Pfc. Daniel Ohashi's shattered right arm ached but wasn't bleeding. He was shooting through his second magazine of KA - 23 ammo when Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Tessa Hodges, a tough little ex – boxer from Hanover, in the Albiero Prefecture of the Pesht Military District, who had taken over the .50 - cal, suddenly slumped down.

``She got shot! She got shot!'' shouted the driver, who raced the APC frantically up the column with the
.50 - cal just spinning around in the empty turret.

``Get the .50-cal up!'' screamed Chu-i (Lieutenant) Michal Naero. ``Get the .50 cal up ASAP!''

Packed in the way they were, with Tessa now slumped on top of them, no one could climb into the turret from inside the APC. Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Abrienne Clifton got out and jumped up to the turret from the street. She couldn't climb inside because Tessa's limp form was in the way, so she hung on from the outside as they began moving again. Abrienne swiveled and shot the big gun.

Inside, the men pulled Tessa out of the turret. They tore off her ballistic plate armored vest and shirt, and found a hole in her lower right chest and a bigger exit wound in her back. She was bleeding heavily and seemed to be in shock. Tessa, like many of the men and women in the vehicles, had taken the armored plates out of her armored vest to reduce the weight she had to carry in the Dieron heat.

They made another stop. Commandos piled out to provide cover.

At opposite sides of one alley stood Heishi (Private) Vlastimil Podebrady and Gunsho (Sergeant) Detrick Hertzel, the Commando who had earlier run alone through gunfire to get help for Hojuhei (Recruit) Soetsu Tamura, the Commando who had fallen 70 feet off the fast rope at the start of the mission. That seemed like hours ago.

Hertzel and Podebrady were in a furious firefight. Go-chu (Corporal) Katai Bojorquez, who had just leaped from his truck to provide cover, watched rounds shatter the wall just over Podebrady's head.

They had to get out of there.

``We're going to move!'' he screamed to Podebrady.

Podebrady didn't hear him. From where Bojorquez stood, it looked as if Podebrady was going to be shot for sure.
He was doing everything wrong. He had not sought cover; he was changing magazines with his back exposed. Bojorquez knew that he should go help cover his friend and pull him back, but that meant crossing the alley where bullets were flying. He hesitated. Hell no, I'm not going to cross that alley.
As Bojorquez debated with himself, Blanchard ran out to help. The KAGE Armored DEST Agent fired several rounds up the alley and herded Podebrady back to the vehicles.

Across the alley, Hertzel was on one knee, doing things right. He'd found cover and was returning disciplined fire, just the way he'd been trained. Then a gun barrel poked out a window above Hertzel and let off a quick burst. There wasn't even time for Bojorquez to shout a warning, even if Hertzel had been ableto hear him. There was just a ‘Blaaaap!’ and a spurt of fire from the barrel, and the Gunsho (Sergeant) went straight down in the dirt on his face.

Immediately, a .50 - cal on one of the APCs blasted gaping holes in the wall around the window where
the gun had appeared. Heishi (Private) Kieth Holden, weaving through the heavy fire, sprinted out to Hertzel, grabbed him by the shirt and vest, and dragged him back to the vehicles.

Hertzel's skin was white. His eyes were open wide but empty. He looked dead. He had been hit through the vest in the upper back where the Commandos' new ballastic vests had no protective plate. The round had passed through his torso and had come out his abdomen. It lodged in the front of the vest, which did have an armored plate. They loaded Hertzel in back with the mounting number of wounded.


WORD COUNT 2994

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE



DC-PA-06-07 #19

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Lost
Thursday October 3rd 3095

Fed up, Chu-i (Lieutenant) Masaru Recep left his Heavy Wheeled APC back in the column and sprinted up to the lead vehicle. As he saw it, Reece Kimura was overwhelmed. The Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) leading the convoy appeared completely lost. And now Kimura, too, was wounded. He was bleeding from the arm and the neck.

Chu-i (Lieutenant) Recep finally learned from Kimura where they were trying to go. Then, on his way back down the column, the Transport Lance Leader stopped at every vehicle and spread the word. He screamed at each driver to stay out of the intersections, where they were exposed to concentrated fire.

Some of the men in the column had caught glimpses of Jamila Shani's Stinger crash site in their meandering, but had no idea that was where they were supposed to go. Recep tried to impose some order on the column. He began trying to call in helicopter gunships, while other members of his Logistics Supply Lance organized men to collect the wounded every time the column stopped.

Over the radio came a hopeful inquiry from Command, which clearly misunderstood their situation. “Flare 46, you got everybody out of the crash site? Over.”

Flare 46 was the column's code name. Kimura answered: “We have no positive contact with them yet. We took a lot of rounds as we were clearing out of the area. Quite a few wounded, including me. Over.”

Command replied with: “Roger. Want you to try to go to the first crash site and consolidate on that. Once we get everybody out of there we'll go to the second crash site and try to do an exfill [extraction].”

This was, of course, out of the question, but Kimura wasn't giving up. “Roger. Understand. Can you give me some . . . we just need a direction and distance from where I'm at.”

There was no answer at first. The radio net was filled with calls related to the crash of Dave Pusti's
Hermes. When Kimura did hear from Command again, he was asked to report the number of
Commandos he had picked up from Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Joe Dean's Combat Engineering Platoon. He ignored the request. He wanted to know where the hell he was.

“Dawn 46, this is Flare 46. From the crash site, where am I now? How far over?”

“Stand by. Have good visual on you now . . . Reece, are you still on that main hardball [paved road]?”

“I'm on the exfill road. Down toward Highway 161.”

“Turn east. Go about three blocks east and two blocks north. They're popping smoke.”

“Understand. From my location I have to go east farther about three blocks and then head north.”

So the increasingly deadly search resumed. As they turned another corner, they encountered a
roadblock. Piling out of the vehicles to provide security, the Ronins were hit with a terrific volley of
fire from the Kokuryu - kai.

Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Kusumi Yogish took two bullets, and Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Takechi Makino was hit by a volley. His body armor stopped a round that hit his chest, but three other bullets struck the inner thighs of both legs. He dragged himself out of the vehicle, and medics began patching him up. They helped him back into the APC.

Go-chu (Corporal) Katai Bojorquez jumped out of his truck to help carry Yogish to a vehicle and, as he carried him, he felt the Gunjin (Private 1st Class) get hit by another round. Bojorquez was about to climb back into his seat on his truck when he was grabbed by an enraged Recep and yanked back out to the street. The Chu-i (Lieutenant) was shouting so hard his face was beet red, and Bojorquez could see veins bulging in his neck, but the noise of gunfire was so loud he couldn't hear.

"What?''

The Chu-i (Lieutenant) put his florid face right up to Bojorquez's nose and enunciated every word.
"PULL YOUR FUCKING TRUCK FORWARD!''

Their sudden stop had left the vehicles behind backed up, and Recep's APC was stuck in the middle of an intersection again, exposed to enemy fire.

To make room on the back of his APC for the wounded Yogish, Gunsho (Sergeant) Daniel Ohashi had jumped out and run down to another truck. Chu-i (Lieutenant) Michal Naero held down a hand to help him climb aboard in back, but with his broken arm Ohashi couldn't grab hold of anything. After several failed attempts he ran around to the cab, where Heishi (Private) Vlastimil Podebrady stepped out to let Ohashi squeeze between himself and the driver, Hojuhei (Recruit) Rebecca Shrivastava, a skinny, quiet kid from Unity whom they all called "Alphabet'' because they didn't want to pronounce her name.

Two APCs farther back, Hojuhei (Recruit) Vincent Saro sat behind the wheel, increasingly amazed and alarmed by what was happening around him. Ahead, he saw a line of trees on the sidewalk begin to explode, one after the other, as if someone had put charges in each and was detonating them one at a time. Somebody with a big gun was systematically taking out the trees, thinking Black Dragon gunmen were hiding in them.

As the convoy moved out again, it suddenly seemed to be raining LAW Rockets (Light Anti-Vehicle Weapon Rockets).

Go-chu (Corporal) Juuso Callara was wedged in between the two rear seats of the second APC in the column. Stuffed in behind him, shooting out the open hatch in the rear, were Heishi (Private) Kieth Holden, the wounded Makino, and Nighthawk PA(L) Chu-i (Lieutenant) Jason ‘Fury’ Grantz, who was leaning against a row of sandbags to one side.

Callara heard a LAW Rocket explode behind his APC, and moments later came a blinding flash and an
Ear - shattering ’Boom!’ The inside of his vehicle was clogged with black smoke. The goggles he had pinned to the top of his helmet were blown off. A rocket had gone through the steel armor of the vehicle, right in front of the gas cap, and exploded inside. The blast blew Makino, Holden and Grantz out of the back end of the moving vehicle.

It ripped the hand guards off Gunsho (Sergeant)Daniel Kogawa's Ka - 23 and pierced his left forearm with a chunk of shrapnel. He felt no pain, just some numbness in his hand. He told himself to wait until the smoke cleared to check it out. The shrapnel had fractured a bone in his forearm, severed a tendon, and broken a bone in his hand. But it wasn't bleeding much, and he could still shoot.

Callara felt himself for wet spots. His left arm was bloody where shrapnel had pierced it in several places. His boots were on fire. A drum of .50 - cal ammo had been hit, and he heard Commandos screaming for him to ‘Kick it out! Kick it out!’ He booted the drum, then stooped to pat out the flames on his feet.

The explosion blew off the back side of Makino's left thigh and practically tore Grantz in half. The LAW had poked a football - sized hole right through the side armor of the APC, blown on through the sandbags inside, passed through Grantz's lower body, and penetrated the ammo drum.

Holden, Makino and Grantz now lay writhing on the road behind the smoking APC. Makino had tumbled about 10 meters before coming to rest. His legs were a mass of blood and gore. He began struggling to his feet, only to see one of the twenty - ton trucks bearing straight for him. Its driver, Gunsho (Sergeant) Pancho Avila, stunned and momentarily disoriented by another rocket blast, rolled the truck right over Makino.

Soldiers scrambled again from the vehicles to pick up their wounded comrades. Medics did what they could for Makino and Grantz, both of whom were gravely wounded. Recep helped carry some of the injured and found places for them in the troop bays of the APCs. In the rear of one he found an uninjured Commando Gunsho (Sergeant) hiding, curled in fetal position. There wasn't enough time to say or do anything about it.





Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Lost
Thursday October 3rd 3095

Hojuhei (Recruit) Vincent Saro, who had felt such a surge of excitement an hour earlier when encountering battle for the first time, now felt a cold sweat of panic behind the wheel of his APC toward the rear of the lost convoy. So far, neither he nor anyone in his vehicle had been hit. But he watched with horror as the convoy disintegrated before him. He was a soldier for the most powerful nation in the Inner Sphere. If they were having this much trouble, shouldn't somebody have stepped in? Where was a stronger show of force? It didn't seem right that they could be reduced to this, battling on these narrow dirt streets, bleeding, dying! This isn't supposed to be happening!

Men he knew and admired were dead or bellowing in pain on the street with gunshot wounds that exposed great crimson flaps of glistening muscle. They were wandering in the smoke, bleeding, dazed, their clothing torn off. Those who were not injured were smeared with the blood of others.

Saro was young and new to the unit. These were men he looked up to and felt good about going into battle with, men who knew how to fight and would keep him safe. If these experienced soldiers were getting hit, sooner or later he was going to take a hit, too. And all this dangerous driving wasn't even taking them back to the base. They were supposed to be rescuing the two BattleMech pilots who had been shot down, Jamila Shani and Dave Pusti, along with their Nighthawk PAP(L) Squads. Now they were going to be out in this horror all night!

As Saro slowed down to let the Wheeled APC in front of him clear an intersection, he looked out the driver’s cupola to his left and saw a smoke trail coming straight at him. It all happened in a second. He knew it was a Light Anti-Vehicle Weapon Rocket and he knew it was going to hit him. It did. Saro awoke lying on his right side on the driver’s seat with his ears ringing. He opened his eyes and was looking directly at the radio mounted under the dash. He sat up and floored the accelerator, and the vehicle took off, fast. Up ahead he saw the convoy making a left turn, and he raced to catch up.

The rocket had hit Saro's door. He and the others inside had been saved by a combination of the
armored door and the ballistic proof plexi glass inside it. Because the cupola had been opened, the point of the rocket hit first armored steel and then the reinforced plexi glass.

……………………….

By now the efforts to direct the convoy had turned to black comedy. It was complicated by the fact that a second convoy had been dispatched from the airport base to attempt a rescue at Dave Pusti's downed Sunset Two, and those vehicles were under fire, too.

Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) Reece Kimura, the convoy commander, struggled to make sense of the directions rattling over the radio. Here, the instruction from Command refers to the second crash site, while Kimura's convoy was actually searching for the first: ”Reece, I think you've gone too far west trying to look at the second crash. You seem to have gone about four blocks west and five blocks south. Over.”

Then: “Flare 46, this is Dawn 46. Give me a right turn. Convoy, right turn! Right turn!”

And then: “You need to go about four blocks south, turn east. There is green smoke marking the site south. Keep coming south.”

At one point a voice came over the busy command frequency begging for order. “Stop giving directions! . . . I think you're talking to the wrong convoy!”

But still the instructions came, and in overlapping confusion: “Flare 46, this is Dawn 46. Next right. Next right! Alleyway! Alleyway!”

They just missed their turn.

“Take the next available right, Flare.”

“Be advised they are coming under heavy fire.”

“Goddamn it, stop! Goddamn it, stop!”

“Right turn! Right turn! You're taking fire! Hurry up!”

It was the experienced Nighthawks and Tornado PA(L)s on the convoy who held things together. Every time another man was hurt, the boys would brave fire on the streets to recover him, and the Prowler’s medic, Tiffany Troyer would go to work.

Chu-i (Lieutenant)Masaru Recep kept radio lines up with the Cavalry Attack Helicopters, relaying the convoy's status and calling in air support. Things had deteriorated so badly that officers in the command helicopter were considering just releasing what they called ``all the precious cargo'' - the 24 Kokuryu - kai Black Dragon prisoners.

Aburami Wakamoto was among the handcuffed prisoners in a twenty - ton truck. They were stacked tightly into the space, laid out on their sides. Under the din of gunfire he heard the sound of muttered prayers, until the Dieron native praying was shot dead. There was no telling who had fired the shot. Told to be silent, the frightened prisoners began talking among themselves until a Commando clubbed one of the Kokuryu - kai in the head.

Finally, after about 45 minutes of meandering, they were right back where they started, out on
Pioneer Avenue.

“This is Flare 46. You've got me back in front of the Empyral Citadel.” Kimura was ready to pack it in. There were far more dead and wounded in the convoy than there were at the two crash sites.

When the shooting let up for a few moments, the convoy stopped. Kimura and some of the ranking non - comms huddled in the street to assess their situation - how they had gotten lost, and where they should go now. They set off a purple smoke grenade to mark their position.

Kimura got on the radio.”We've got a lot of vehicles that will be almost impossible to move. Quite a few casualties. Getting to the crash site will be awful tough. They are both pinned down.”

Command was insistent: “Reece, I really need to get you back to that crash site. I know you turned left on Armed Forces [Blvd.], what's your status?”

But Kimura and his men had had enough. They had made a courageous effort, but casualties were piling up. They were going to give up on reaching either crash site. The Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) answered:
“I have numerous casualties, vehicles that are halfway running. Got to get these casualties out of here
ASAP.”

They started back to base, but they weren't home yet

WORD COUNT 2525

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE
Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Rank: Colonel
Callsign: 'Iceman'
MH: Steele Dagger Spec Ops BA
Role: DEST
Assignment: CO Battle Armor Regiment
Platoon: Black Ops
Company: SWAT
Battalion: HQ Battalion
Regiment: Smilodon
RESTLESS SOULS MERCENARY DIVISION

User avatar
Iceman
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:51 pm
affiliations: Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Callsign: 'Iceman'
Rank: Sho-sa (Major)
Hardware: Kage BA (DEST)
Battalion: DEST
Company: Shadow
Platoon: PA(L) DEST Platoon Alpha
Assignment: Breach
Role: Executive Officer
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: Draconis Combine

Re: Transcript for DC-PA-06-07 Planetary Assault Dieron

Postby Iceman » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:40 pm

DC-PA-06-07 #20

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Lost
Thursday October 3rd 3095

Some of the vehicles were almost out of ammunition. They had expended thousands of rounds.

One of the 24 Kokuryu - kai prisoners had been shot dead and another was wounded. The back ends of the remaining trucks and Heavy Wheeled APC in the lost convoy were slick with blood. Chunks of viscera clung to floors and inner walls.

The second APC in line was dragging an axle and was being pushed by the twenty - ton truck behind it.
Another APC had three flat tires and two dozen bullet holes. DEST Transport Driver, Gunsho (Sergeant) Magnar Francisco, who had been shot in both legs, had them draped up over the dash and stretched out on the hood. Yet another APC had a grenade hole in the side and all six tires were flat.

They were shooting at everything now. They had abandoned their new mission - to rescue downed Mechwarrior Jamila Shani and then try to reach pilot Dave Pusti's crash site. Now they were fighting just to stay alive as the convoy wandered into one ambush after another, trying to find its way back to base.

Up in an APC turret and behind a SRM 2, a machine gun missile launcher, Hojuhei (Recruit) James Camacho was pumping twin rounds after another into the windows of a building from which they were taking fire. It was hard to shoot the SRM 2 accurately, but Camacho was dropping missiles neatly into the second - story windows one after another. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

From his seat in the second twenty - ton, Go-chu (Corporal) Katai Bojorquez shouted out to his friend: "Yeah! Get 'em, 'Macho!''

It was just after that when Camacho, firing to his left down an alleyway, slumped forward. He had taken a round to the back of his head and was dead. Bojorquez helped load him on the back of the truck. They tossed his body up and it landed on the legs of an injured Commando in back, who let out a shriek.


Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Stuart Callwood, one of the Nighthawk PA(L) soldiers, stepped up behind Camacho's SRM 2. He was even more of an expert shot. The big 40mm rounds were designed to penetrate two inches of steel before exploding. As Callwood fired, the rounds screamed right through the bodies of Kokuryu - kai gunmen and exploded farther down the street.

But not long after he took over the gun, a bullet came through the side window of the APC and took off the back of Callwood's left leg just below the knee. He was standing in the turret, so all the men in the APC were splattered with tissue and blood. The muscles of his leg hung open in oozing flaps. But
Callwood was still standing, and still shooting. A Commando tied a tourniquet around his leg.

The convoy was taking a beating, but it was also leaving a terrible swath of dead and wounded New Leonites in its wake.

In the Prowler, Go-chu (Corporal) Juuso Callara was shooting out the back, his small pulse lasers rocking the vehicle, when he saw three Kokuryu - kai men cross the ‘Mech grade gun's range. Their bodies went flying, and as the beams kept coming the bodies skipped and bounced along the ground until they were thrown against a wall. There the the men were incinerated.

Callara was watching with horror and satisfaction when he felt a sudden blow and sharp pain in his right knee. It felt as if someone had taken a knife and held it to his knee and then driven it in with a sledgehammer. Callara glanced down and saw blood rapidly seeping through a rent in his armor. So much for Nobinsky theory. He said a prayer and kept shooting. He had been wildly scared for longer now than he had ever been in his life, and now it was somehow worse. His heart banged in his chest and he found it hard to breathe and he thought he might die right then of fright.

His head was filled with the sounds of shooting and explosions and the visions of his friends going down, one by one. Blood splashed everywhere, oily and sticky with its dank, coppery smell. He figured, This is it for me. And then, in that moment of maximum terror, he felt it all abruptly, inexplicably fall away. He had stopped caring about himself. He would think about this a lot later, and his best explanation was that he no longer mattered, even to himself. He had passed through some sort of barrier. He had to keep fighting, because the other guys, his buddies, were all that mattered.

Bojorquez was sitting next to the passenger door in his truck with his rifle out the window, turned in the seat so he could line up his shots, when he was startled by a sudden flash of light down by his legs. It looked as if a laser beam had shot through the door and up into his right leg. Actually, a bullet had pierced the steel of the door and the window, which was rolled down, and had poked itself and fragments of glass and steel straight up his leg from just above his knee to his hip. He let out a squeal.

"What's wrong, you hit?'' shouted the truck's driver, Gunsho (Sergeant) Pancho Avila.

"Yes!''

And then another laser poked through, this one into Bojorquez's left leg. He felt a jolt this time but no pain. He reached down to grab his right thigh, and blood spurted out between his fingers. Still Bojorquez felt no pain. He didn't want to look at it.

Then Avila began shouting, "I can't see! I can't see!''

Bojorquez turned to see Avila's helmet askew and his glasses knocked sideways on his head.

"Put your glasses on, you dumb ass.''

But Avila had been hit in the back of the head. The round must have hit his helmet, which saved his
life, but hit with such force that it had rendered him temporarily blind. The truck was rolling out of control, and Bojorquez, with both legs shot, couldn't move over to grab the wheel.

They couldn't stop right in the field of fire, so there was nothing to do but shout directions to Avila,
who still had his hands on the wheel.

"Turn left! Turn left! Now! Now!''

"Speed up''

"Slow down!''

The World Rover was weaving and banging into the sides of buildings. It ran over a Kokuryu - kai man on crutches.

"What was that?'' asked Avila.

"Don't worry about it. We just ran over somebody.''

And they laughed. They felt no pity and were beyond fear. They were both laughing as Avila stopped
the truck.

One of the DEST Firestorm Gunners, Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Benjamin Canton, ran up and opened the driver's side door to find the cab splattered with Bojorquez's blood.

"Holy shit!'' he said.

Avila slid over next to Bojorquez, who was examining his wounds. There was a perfectly round hole in his left knee, but no exit wound. The bullet had fragmented on impact with the door and glass, and only the metal jacket had penetrated his knee. It had flattened on impact with his kneecap and just slid around under the skin to the side of the joint. The rest of the bullet had peppered his lower leg, which was bleeding. Bojorquez propped both legs up on the dash and pressed a field dressing on one. He laid his rifle on the rim of the side window and changed the magazine. As Canton got the truck moving again,
Bojorquez resumed firing. He was shooting at anything that moved.

Bojorquez's buddy, Gunsho (Sergeant) Daniel Ohashi, was wedged between driver and passenger in the truck behind them when Hojuhei (Recruit) Eunice Varderesian, who was driving, was hit in the shoulder. She absorbed the blow and kept on steering.

"Alphabet, want me to drive?'' asked Ohashi. Eunice was nicknamed ’Alphabet,’ for her long
surname.

"No, I'm OK.''

Ohashi was struggling in the confined space to apply a pressure dressing to Alphabet's bleeding shoulder when a LAW rocketed in from the left. It severed Alphabet's left arm and ripped into his torso. It didn't explode. Instead the two – foot - long missile was embedded in Alphabet's chest, the fins protruding from her left side under her missing arm, the point sticking out the right side. She was killed instantly.
The driverless World Rover crashed into the rear of the twenty ton truck ahead, the one with the prisoners in back and with Canton, Avila and Bojorquez in the cab. The impact threw Bojorquez against the side door, and his truck rolled off and veered into a wall.

Ohashi, who had been sitting between Alphabet and Heishi (Private)Vlastimil Podebrady when the LAW hit, was knocked unconscious. He snapped back awake when Podebrady shook him, yelling that he had to get out.

"It's on fire!'' Podebrady shouted.

The cab was black with smoke, and Ohashi could see a fuse glowing from what looked like the inside of Alphabet's body. The LAW lodged in her chest was unexploded, but something had caused a blast. It might have been a flash bang grenade - a harmless grenade that gives off smoke and makes noise - mounted on Alphabet's armor. Podebrady got his side door open and swung himself out. Ohashi reached over to grab Alphabet and pull her out, but the driver's bloody clothes just lifted off her pierced torso.

Ohashi stumbled out to the street and realized that his and Podebrady's helmets had been blown off. Podebrady's rifle had been shattered. They moved numbly and even a little giddily. Alphabet was dead and their helmets had been knocked off, yet they were virtually unscathed by the LAW. Podebrady couldn't hear out of his left ear, but that was it.

Podebrady found the lower portion of Alphabet's arm on the street. All that remained intact was the hand. He picked it up and put it in his side pants pocket. He didn't know what else to do, and it didn't feel right leaving it behind.

……………..

Ohashi climbed into another APC. As they set off again, he began groping on the floor with his good left hand, collecting rounds that guys had ejected from their weapons when they'd jammed. Then he passed them back to those still shooting.

The convoy found a four - lane road with a median up the center that would lead them back down to the K-4 traffic circle, a major traffic roundabout in southern New Leon, and then home. In the truck, Bojorquez began to lose feeling in his fingertips. For the first time in the ordeal he began to panic. He felt himself going into shock. He saw a little Kokuryu - kai boy cradling an Striker Carbine, shooting it wildly from the hip. He saw flashes from the muzzle of the gun. Somebody shot the boy. Bojorquez felt as if everything around him had slowed down to half speed. He saw the boy's legs fly up, as if he had slipped on marbles, and then he was flat on his back.

Canton, the Firestorm Gunner, was a hell of a shot. He had his weapon in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. Bojorquez saw him gun down three Kokuryu - kai men without even slowing down.

Bojorquez felt his fingers curling and his hands stiffening. His forearm had been shattered by a bullet earlier. "Hey, man, let's get the hell back,'' Bojorquez said. "I'm not doing too good.''

"You're doing cool,'' Canton said. "You'll be all right. Hang in there.''

A Wheeled APC driven by Commando Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Stephanie Ranjan was now in the lead. It was shot up and smoking, running on three rims. One dead and eight wounded Commandos were in the back. Francisco, the wounded Spitting Dragon Corporal, had his bloody legs splayed out on the hood (he'd been shot once more, in the left foot).

They came upon a big roadblock. The Kokuryu - kai had stretched two huge underground gasoline tanks across the roadway along with other debris, and had set it all on fire. Afraid to stop the APC for fear it would not start up again, Stephanie shouted to the driver to just ram through it.

They crashed over and through the flaming debris, nearly landing on their side, but the sturdy APC righted itself and kept on going. The rest of the column followed.

Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Joe Dean, the leader of a Commando unit that had been rescued by the convoy, was curled up on one of the back passenger seats of his APC, training his weapon out the window. At every intersection he saw Kokuryu - kai who would open fire on any vehicle that came across. Because they had men on both sides of the street, any rounds that missed the vehicles as they flashed past would certainly have hit the Kokuryu - kai on the other side of the road. What tactics, Dean thought. He felt these people must have no regard for even their own lives. They just did not care.

In his vehicle, Ohashi was on all fours now, groping around on the floor of the APC with his good hand, looking for unspent shells. They were just about out of ammo.

As they approached K-4 circle, they all braced themselves for another vicious ambush.

WORD COUNT 2304

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE






DC-PA-06-07 #21

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Nishijima beach
Joint Operation Center Base
Second Convoy
Thursday October 3rd 3095

As soon as Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Nyta Sundara drove her Heavy Wheeled APC out of the Nishijima beachfront compound, gunfire erupted all around. They weren't more than 80 meters out the back gate.

"Action left!'' Heishi (Private) Oliver Stone screamed from the troop compartment of Nyta's APC at the head of the convoy.

Nyta's turret gunner swung around to face five Kokuryu - kai with weapons. Stone heard the explosion of gunfire and the zing and pop of rounds passing close. He had been taught that if you heard that crack, it meant the bullet had passed within three feet of your head. A zing, which sounded to him like the sound made when you hit a telephone pole guy wire with a stick, meant the bullet had missed you by a far margin.

The shots were answered by a roaring fusillade from the men in the convoy.

This column - four APCs and three five - ton flatbed trucks - had been hastily assembled to rescue the
Tornado Squad of Mechwarrior Dave Pusti's downed Hermes. A larger convoy already in New Leon also had been ordered to rescue Pusti, along with pilot Jamila Shani and her crashed Stinger and its PA(L) Squad. But the original convoy had finally given up and started back to base after wandering through the city under heavy fire, absorbing terrible casualties.

The Pusti crash site was less than two miles from the base, but Nyta realized already that she would have to fight street by street to get there. They were driving out into hell.

The brunt of the shooting was aimed at Nyta's lead vehicle. A Light Anti Tank Weapon scraped across the top of her APC and exploded against a concrete wall. The concussion lifted the wide - bodied vehicle up on two wheels. Clearly these Kokuryu - kai didn't know how to stage a proper ambush. The correct way was to let the lead vehicle pass and suck in the whole column, then open fire. The unarmored flatbed trucks in the middle, loaded with cooks and clerks and other volunteers, made vulnerable targets. But even with undisciplined enemy gunfire, going forward would invite slaughter.

She told her driver to throw the APC in reverse. Everybody behind her was just going to have to figure it out. They rammed the APC behind them, and then that driver rammed the truck behind him.

Eventually they all got the message.

Nyta got on the radio to the officer directing her from the command helicopter circling high above the city, Chu-i (Lieutenant) Kyle Kennebrew, “You need to find a different route!”

Kennebrew’s answer came back, “Go back where you came from and turn right instead of left. You can get there that way.”

Nyta got the whole column back up to the gate, and this time she steered out the opposite way. She drove straight into a roadblock, a big one. The Kokuryu - kai had thrown up dirt, junk, chunks of concrete and wire.

…………………………

The convoy knew Pusti's Sunset 2 was somewhere directly ahead. Where he lay beside his Hermes Light Class BattleMech, Pusti had heard the sound of the .50 - cal on Nyta's APC and figured the rescue column was coming in. This was minutes before Pusti's site was overrun and he was taken captive.

But the convoy couldn't advance. Beyond the roadblock was a concrete wall surrounding the vast ghetto of huts and walking paths into which Pusti had crashed. The APCs could roll right over the roadblock but Nyta knew the five - ton trucks wouldn't make it. And even if they did, there wasn't going to be any way through the concrete wall.

“You'll have to find us another route,” Nyta radioed to her guide high above.

“There ain't another route.”

“Well, you need to find one. Figure out a way to get there,” Nyta replied.

“The only other route is to go all the way around the city and come in through the back side.”

“Fine. We'll take it.”

It seemed to take forever for the five - tons to turn around on the narrow street. As they struggled to reverse direction again, most of the Commandos were out on the street, providing security in all directions.

The trucks weren't delicate about turning around. They rammed into walls and ground gears.

On one knee in the street, Stone took a whack to his chest that almost knocked him over. He knew he'd been shot, and he ran his hand inside his shirt, looking for blood. There was none. The bullet had skimmed off the front of his heavy ballistic chest plate, tearing the straps of his load - bearing harness so that it was now hanging by threads.

Gunsho (Sergeant) Ganiu Kosoko, the company armorer who had donned fighting gear and volunteered for the convoy, sat with his KA - 23 Subgun pointed out the passenger side window of a truck, suddenly wondering what he was doing there. Only a year earlier, he had been bar - hopping with his buddies in Dromini VI trying to pick up girls. A bullet clipped off the side mirror on the driver's side. Kosoko pointed his rifle across the cab, right in front of the driver, and squeezed off several rounds.

When they were at last turned around, the convoy sped out a road that skirted the city to the southwest, driving through an occasional hail of Ceres Arms Striker Carbine fire. At one rise they could actually see Pusti's crash site. It was less than a quarter of a mile away, down in a little valley, inside a squalid rag hut village. There was no way to get closer. They kept driving on their roundabout course until they came to the K-4 traffic circle, one of the major traffic intersections in southern New Leon.

Here they met up with the smoking, limping, bleeding remnants of Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) Reece Kimura's lost convoy. It was a remarkable sight. The lead APC was smoking and all of its tires were flat. The ones that followed looked almost as bad, and Nyta's men were shocked to see that the vehicles were loaded with dead and shot - up Razan’s Ronin’s Commandos.

The fresh convoy surrounded the battered vehicles, setting up a perimeter of fire while casualties on the worst of the vehicles were moved to the intact ones. They were less than a mile from the base, and less than a mile from Pusti. One look at the lost convoy made it clear that they weren't going to be able to break through Kokuryu - kai roadblocks with just APCs and flatbed trucks.

So while the Command helicopter continued to reassure DEST soldiers who were holding off the mob around Pusti's downed Hermes that help was just minutes away, the two convoys were already headed the opposite way.

………………….


The men in the lost convoy had braced themselves for another vicious fight at K-4. But as they
limped through the flaming barricades on Via Lenin, they saw instead, to their enormous relief, Nyta
Nyta's line of fresh vehicles and troops approaching them.

The lead APC driven by Combat Engineer Stephanie Ranjan, carrying Vincent Blanchard and Magnar Francisco, with Francisco's bloody legs draped over the dash, could go no further. The dead and wounded were lifted from it and loaded on another APC. Before they torched the battered vehicle, to prevent Kokuryu - kai from looting it, Stephanie counted the bullet holes and Blanchard rooted around inside to find the handle of the broken knife that had saved his life by deflecting a bullet.

Kosoko saw his squad leader Gunsho (Sergeant) Detrick Hertzel being lifted out of one of the vehicles, his eyes wide but empty, his mouth open. Hertzel looked as if he was screaming, but he was dead. It really shook Kosoko. He and Hertzel had been pals. Both of them were big guys, bulkier than most of the Commandos. They had shared a particular hatred for the daily morning run that seemed so easy for thinner Commandos. Now Detrick was dead.

Then Hojuhei (Recruit) Quincy Short, normally a cheerful, funny guy, emerged from the back of a truck looking pale and shocked, still clutching his severed thumb in his bloody hand. The tough old Chu-i (Lieutenant) Senior Grade they called ‘Fury’ Jason Grantz, had been cut almost in half by a Light Anti Tank Weapon, but he was still, somehow, alive. Gunjin (Private 1st Class) Takechi Makino was a bloody, broken mess, barely alive. The tough little ex – female boxer, Sho-ko (Command Sergeant) Tessa Hodges, had a breathing tube in her chest. On the litter she looked diminished, scared and small.

The dead and wounded were headed home, but they weren't out of danger yet.

Heishi (Private)Stone, now in the third APC, saw a Kokuryu - kai with an LAW pop up from behind a brick wall. There was a bright flash and a bang.

At the same moment, in the back of the APC, Hojuhei (Recruit) Kieth Norli had spotted a row of Kokuryu - kai, their heads poking over a concrete wall. He had thrown himself backward in order to get a better shot at them when he felt the vehicle lurch. The blast underneath threw the APC in the air. The men inside felt their stomachs drop. It was as if they had flown off the end of a ramp.

They crashed back to earth on all four wheels, unharmed and still moving. With no time to react to what had just happened, Stone pointed to a Kokuryu - kai gunner up a tree. Both Norli and the APC's .50 - cal gunner started blasting away. A Kokuryu - kai fell out of the tree to the street.

Then Stone felt a jab in the leg. He thought he'd been shot. He looked down and saw instead that a bullet had poked through the metal door of the APC and had been caught by the internal structure, which was hanging off, forming a second layer inside the door. The bulletproof plexi glass had stretched out under the round's impact to form what looked like a horizontal stalactite, four to five inches long. The tip of it had nudged Stone's leg. He could see the bullet lodged inside the point. He marveled at it momentarily, then broke it off with the butt of his rifle and resumed shooting.

They shot their way back to the base, blasting everything they saw. Rules of engagement were off.
Norli saw young boys, 7 and 8 years old, some with weapons, some without. He shot them all down. He saw women running in crowds alongside men who had rifles, and he mowed down the crowds. He didn't care anymore. He just felt numb - numb and angry and full of fight. He just wanted to hit as many Dieronians as he could. He didn't even care anymore if he got shot. These Commandos were his buddies, his best friends in the world, closer to him than family had ever been, and he was going to do anything he could to return them safely.

They hammered every alley in both directions until, just blocks from the gate to the airport, all the shooting ceased. It was as if they had entered a different city. Crowds of Indigs were moving through open air markets, strolling, chatting, as if nothing had happened. As the vehicles approached, the crowds parted for the battered and bloody column with its crippled APCs and dead, wounded and
horror - stricken soldiers. And as the soldiers moved the last hundred meters to the gate, Kosoko couldn't believe what he was seeing. The Indigs in the street all turned to face them, grinning, and they applauded.


WORD COUNT 2027

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE



DC-PA-06-07 #22

Draconis Combine/Free Worlds League Contested
Dieron Military District/Oliver District
Dieron Prefecture/Duchy of Terra
Dieron
Gaspar
Guanajuato
New Leon
Lost
Thursday October 3rd 3095

Just eight minutes after Jamila Shani's Stinger went down, a Cobra M.A.S.H. VTOL carrying a rescue team moved over the crash site in south New Leon. Inside were 10 men and women and 5 Ailette Rescue PA(L) members who had trained for months as a combat search – and - rescue unit. Their specialty was saving downed Mechwarriors.

But even professionals who practice the same moves a thousand times can overlook a detail in the heat of an actual mission. The team hit the fast ropes perfectly and slid down. It was the last man out, M.A.S.H. Med Tech, Go-chu (Corporal) Bert Able, who noticed that their medical kits had been left behind.

The oversight delayed Able's slide down the rope. He had to wait until the men 30 meters below him reached the ground and got out of the way. Only then was it safe to throw down the kit bags. By the time he reached the rope, the timing was off by several crucial seconds.

It was just enough time to leave the big Cobra M.A.S.H. VTOL exposed to fire from crowds of Kokuryu - kai converging on Jamila's crash site. As pilot Melvin Griffin held his hover and Able slid down the rope, a
Mk. 1 Light Disposable AA Weapon exploded on the left side of the airframe. The Cobra was knocked slightly sideways, as if absorbing a roundhouse punch. Griffin instinctively began to pull up and away.

“Coming out. I think we have been hit”, Griffin radioed to Kyle Kennebrew in the command helicopter circling overhead.

“You have been hit . . . Behind your engines . . . Be advised you are smoking.”

One of the crew chiefs screamed into the radio, “We still have people on the ropes!”

Hanging on the rope below Able was Gunsho (Sergeant) Aldon Kichida. Able heard the explosion above, but he was so intent on negotiating his descent that he never felt the rope pull forward and up. He didn't learn until much later how Griffin's composure had saved his and Kichida's lives.

In the cockpit, Griffin could hear his rotor blades whistling. Shrapnel from the blast had poked holes in them. The aircraft started to slosh from side to side. Instinct and training dictated that he move away the instant he was hit. But Griffin eased the M.A.S.H VTOL back down to a hover for the few more seconds Able and Kichida needed to clear the ropes.

Despite the brown dust cloud below, Griffin's crew could see both men reach the ground safely. He pulled up and away. He eased the Cobra back toward the main base three miles away, trailing a thin gray plume of smoke. Limping the last mile, Griffin plowed the heavy Cobra VTOL into the base landing strip. The bird came down with a quick roll right on the landing wheels. They hit with a jolt, but the bird stayed upright and intact. They walked away.

……………………..


Able heard the snap of rounds passing nearby as soon as he hit the ground. It was hot, and in the cloud of dust he couldn't see. He ran to the right side of the street and waited for the dust to settle. He tried to orient himself. He couldn't see Jamila's downed Stinger or the rest of his rescue team. The only thing he saw was the medical bags, still lying in the middle of the street. He ran out and snatched up both bags.

Still running, he rounded a corner and stumbled upon the wrecked Stinger. The size of it stunned
him. He was accustomed to seeing the BattleMech standing up right on spacious tarmacs. In this narrow alley it looked tragic, like a harpooned whale, beached on its left side.

Able was surprised to see that the Commandos and Ailette PA(L)s from his rescue unit had already set up a tight perimeter around the crash site. Scattered around were the bodies of several Kokuryu - kai, and in the distance there were many more. He couldn't see inside Sunset 3 to determine if the Tornado PA(L)s who had been aboard were still alive.

Near him, a Commando, Go-chu (Corporal) Eliza Ruzinsky, shot two Kokuryu - kai as they rounded the corner, a man with a KA – 23 and a woman with him. Eliza picked up the Kokuryu - kai's rifle, clicked a magazine into it, and took it with her.

At the front of theStinger, Able's team leader, Gunsho (Sergeant) Kichida, was stretching up to peer inside and check for survivors when he felt a tug at his left pants leg. Then came the pain. It felt like a hot poker stabbing through his calf muscle. Kichida, a big, broad - faced man who had fought with House Kurita and during the War of Benjamin, felt anger with the pain. He had trained years for a moment like this, and after less than three minutes on the ground he'd been shot.

He hopped back away, grimacing. Bullets whizzed and snapped up the adjacent alley. A PA(L) medic came over to help, and Kichida hobbled back toward the feet of the Stinger. He nearly bowled over Able, who was making his way forward.

``What's up?'' Able asked, startled.

``I've been shot,'' Kichida said. ``Rat bastards shot me.''


Kichida ducked into a deep hole that the crashing Stinger BattleMech had left in the alley wall. He cut open his pants and saw that the bullet had passed through his calf muscle and out the front of his leg. Nothing was broken. By the look of it, with flaps of muscle tissue spilled out of the wound, Kichida figured it ought to hurt badly. But other than the stabbing sensation right after he'd been shot, there was little pain. He figured his fear and adrenaline were acting as an anesthetic.

He folded the muscle tissue back into the wound, packed some gauze into it, and applied a pressure dressing. Then he crawled back out into the alley, finding cover in a small, cup - shaped space behind the rear torso of the Stinger created by its bent armor where the SRM had impacted.

Kichida's wound heightened Able's sense of urgency. He had thought they would have a few minutes to set up before coming under attack. In past missions, it had usually taken 10 to 20 minutes for a Kokuryu - kai crowd to gather around any action on the streets. But now they had to mount their rescue under immediate heavy fire.

Able assumed Chu-sa (Lieutenant Colonel) Reece Kimura's ground convoy would be pulling up at any minute; he had no way of knowing that the convoy was hopelessly lost and getting hammered. He and his team would need to get the wounded and dead out of the BattleMech wreckage, treat the wounded, and have the men on litters by the time the vehicles approached. But he hadn't even been inside the wreck yet, and now his rescue team leader was wounded.

Able moved quickly to the head of the Stinger. A Tornado PA(L) trooper, Gunsho (Sergeant) Justice Keter, who was riding on Jamila's Sunset 3 when it crashed, was already on top of the ‘Mech, pulling out her squad mate Toniko Hirata. Justice's helmet was missing and her face was badly cut and swollen from the impact of the crash. It was purple and black. She looked as if she were wearing a fright mask.

Toniko was obviously dead. On impact something had sliced through her helmet and head, angling up from just under her chin. Her body was relatively easy to reach because she was mag clamped to the right side, which was now on the high side. Able helped Justice pull Toniko up and out of the wreckage, and then handed her armored body down to two Gunsho’s (Sergeant). They carried her over to the designated casualty collection point, the protected space where Kichida had crawled.

Justice climbed down into the cockpit and checked on pilot Jamila Shani who hadn’t ejected because she knew if she had then none of her Tornado Squad would have stood a chance at surviving the crash.

``She's dead,'' Justice told Able.

Since Justice was not a medic, Able felt the need to see for himself. He told Justice to get some medical attention for her face, and then he climbed up into the ‘Mech. It was eerily quiet inside. There had been no fire, and there was no smoke. Everything inside that hadn't been strapped down had been violently thrown around and had come to rest on the left side, which was now the bottom. There was a slight odor of coolant fluid inside, where various liquids were draining down. He dipped his finger in the fluid and sniffed. It wasn't coolant.

Able was suspended upside down as he reached in and felt Jamila's carotid artery for a pulse. Jamila
was dead. She and Toniko had taken the brunt of the impact, and Jamila, because her Stinger’s head had hit the ground, had gotten the worst of it. The whole cockpit of the BattleMech had folded in on her from the antennae down. Jamila was still in her seat, and her head and upper torso were intact, but the foot pedals and instrument panel and crumpled cockpit of the BattleMech had collapsed into her lap.
Now the rescue team had to figure out a way to cut Jamila out of there. They were not leaving without
her. They would not consider it. They did not leave their dead on the battlefield.

Able tried to slide his hand to grab the pilot's legs, but there wasn't space. She could not be lifted or pulled free. Able then slid completely into the cockpit and crawled back behind the pilot's command couch to see if Jamila could be pulled back and out that way, but that vantage looked no better.

He climbed out and got down on the dirt by the smashed left underside of the cockpit, digging to see if there was a way to create an opening underneath the wreck so that Jamila's body could be extracted. But the 20 ton Stinger had plowed hard into the soil. There would be no easy way to get the body out.

……………………………….


Gunsho (Sergeant) Bert Able climbed back into the wrecked Stinger to see whether he could get more leverage to free the body of pilot Jamila Shani. Perhaps there was some way he hadn't seen at first to pull the pilot’s seat back and get more room and a better angle. But after a while he saw that it was hopeless.

He crawled out of the cockpit of the Stinger call sign Sunset 3, and, kneeling on top of it, he peered through the open right side panels into the main fusion reactor area. They had accounted for the pilot and a Tornado PA(L) trooper - both dead - and one of the Tornado Gunsho’s (Sergeant), who was injured. Able knew some of the Tornado troopers from Sunset 3 had been rescued by a Suzaku VTOL that had landed and loaded up survivors.

He thought everyone was out of the wreck, so now he was looking for any sensitive equipment, weapons or papers to be removed. As a member of a highly trained rescue team, he had been taught to quickly erase the memory banks of any electronic equipment that held important data. In this case, he didn't want Kokuryu - kai taking classified stuff once Jamila's body was recovered and the Mercenaries had pulled out.

All the radar equipment and every piece of gear that hadn't been strapped down had come to rest at the left side of the BattleMech, which was now the bottom. In the heap Able noticed a scrap of desert battle dress uniform.

"There's somebody else in there,'' he told Shujin (Staff Sergeant) Kodama Pedapudi, a Ailette PA(L) medic standing alongside the wreck.

Able leaned in farther and saw an arm and a PA(L) armored glove. He called down into the wreck, and a finger of the armored glove moved. Able climbed back into the wreckage and began pulling the debris and equipment off the person buried there.

It was the Tornado trooper mag clamped to the Stinger’s left side, Gunsho (Sergeant) Lucille Kichida. She was still clamped to her hand holds. One of the hand holds had been snapped off its hinges, but it was basically intact and in place.

When Able freed Lucille's arm from under the pile, the Tornado Trooper was sufficiently alert to start helping to shove things away. Lucille still hadn't spoken and was clearly dazed and disoriented. The last thing she remembered was noticing she didn't have all her clamps fastened before hitting the ground.

Able was throwing things off and prying things back. He reached in to help Lucille pull free of the mag clamps. Pedapudi crawled down under the wreck and tried without success to make his way in through the bottom right - side maintenance hatch to reach Lucille from below. He gave up and climbed in through the upper access panel just as Able freed Lucille.

The three Ronin were standing inside the wreck when a storm of bullets tore through the skin of the BattleMech. Pedapudi and Able danced involuntarily, hopping away from the sharp burst of snapping and crashing noises. Lucille saw the tips of two of her fingers shot off, just the tip of her index finger and about half the first digit of her middle finger. She felt no pain and said nothing. Bits and pieces of debris were flying around them. To Able it looked like a sudden snowstorm. Then it stopped.

Able remembers noting, first, that he was still alive. Then he checked himself. He'd been hit in the
face and arm. It felt as if he'd been slapped or punched in the chin. Everyone had been hit. Pedapudi had
been hit in the hand. Able looked at Lucille. The crew chief's eyes were open wide, with a blank
look. He was staring at his bloody hand.

Able put his hand over Lucille's bleeding fingertip and said, "OK, let's get out of here!''

Pedapudi tore up the bullet - resistant floor panels and propped them up over the side of the craft where the bullets had burst through. To avoid the gunfire outside, Pedapudi and Able tunneled out of the BattleMech, digging wider a hole where the rear corner of the left side torso was above ground. They slid Lucille out that way. Then the two medics went back inside for a few more minutes, searching for more equipment to destroy.

Pedapudi set to work handing out the bullet - resistant panels from the interior, which were being placed around the right foot of the Stinger where a wounded sergeant, Aldon Kichida, had established a casualty collection point.

Fire was coming from all directions, but mostly straight up and down the alley. They were still expecting the arrival of the ground convoy at any moment. They had no way of knowing that the convoy was lost and taking heavy casualties.

Kichida was too busy shooting from his position out by the left foot to take notice of the placement of the floor panels. He had a pressure dressing on his calf and an IV tube in his arm.

"Aldon, why don't you get behind the Riese – 100 Armor [floor panels]?'' Able asked.

Kichida looked startled. Only now did he notice the barricade. "Good idea,'' he said.

Crouched down behind the panels, Able and Kichida watched as the intense gunfire ripped first one
hole through the Stingers rear armor, then another. Then another.

Able was reminded of the 20th century Steve Martin movie ‘The Jerk’, where Martin's moronic character, unaware that villains are shooting at him, watches with surprise as bullet holes begin popping open a row of oil cans. Able shouted Martin's line from the movie. "They hate the cans! Stay away from the cans!”

Both men laughed.

After patching up a few more men - the wounded boys who had been in the crash, Lucille, and his
fellow squad mate - Able crawled back up into the cockpit from underneath, to see again if there was some way of pulling Jamila's body down and out.

There wasn't.

WORD COUNT 2774

Name: Onishi Razan
Callsign: ‘Rough Ryder'
Rank: Tai-sa, Commanding
Hardware: Naginata NG-RO1
Battalion: Ronin Legion
Company: Katana
Lance: Fire Dragon
Assignment: MUCO
Unit: Razan's Ronins
House: DRACONIS COMBINE
Name: Kintaro Tanaka
Rank: Colonel
Callsign: 'Iceman'
MH: Steele Dagger Spec Ops BA
Role: DEST
Assignment: CO Battle Armor Regiment
Platoon: Black Ops
Company: SWAT
Battalion: HQ Battalion
Regiment: Smilodon
RESTLESS SOULS MERCENARY DIVISION


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