Sakhara 2.2
Sakhara 2.2
He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his blazer and waited. He hadn't done anything too complicated. The standard Cataphract had protected actuators, and he had for about five minutes been pretty tempted to replace that... but he had held off.
If actually did try to do something with the seventy ton design he might change that quirk, but he'd been running on too little sleep as it was. He wanted to see how Justin did with a slower better armed mech.... frankly just giving him a Grasshopper might not have been a terrible idea, but well here they were.
"Why do you need Corean again?"
"Factory floor expertise. Assembly line manufacturing for large stompy robots." He shrugged off Bard's question, "I need input from the factory line team, engineers service personnel... once the line is set up," Henry Clay trailed off, "Well you have to walk before you can run."
The truth was that wasn't true... but Henry couldn't admit that... he was getting good at the cover story, and repeating it over and over again. They'd torn a Morninstar Command vehicle into its constituent parts and recycled them individually... the ones they weren't going to reuse for other things so he could have easily called up the forces necessary to stand up a much heavier force... but no... he had to restrain himself.
Even though it was really fucking hard at times... because it was only a matter of time before people figured out that he could set up factory lines and build stuff like he claimed, and he needed to be ready for that day to come. People might not believe in magic, but they'd figure out logistics won wars when it showed results.
Coleridge leaned forward to squint at the screen, "You are correct it is a little slow but even the 210 version has potential as simply a training and gunnery mech. As you said Mister Clay it does use standard weapons. Given its ammo it would be possible to run an entire class on a handful of machines through a stationary gunnery course without needing to reload."
That hadn't actually been his intention.... but from the looks that skeptical. Coleridge must have only been talking about firing the Imperators. Each bin of medium auto cannon ammo allowed 20 shots and with tons of the stuff even split between Imperator A auto cannons that was a fair bit of ammo for a day of instruction at the range.
"Well as I had said, the GM 210 powering this design is the same as the standard fusion engine of Mountain Wolf BattleMechs Night Hawk and I have an interest in their products." he replied. He had no idea if there would be teething issues with the mech or not... other than it carried five tons worth of ammunition cooking off risk... but it didn't matter, "The 280 is a more common engine, and we have several vox engines in that rating, but that weight meant some of that ammunition had to be sacrificed." Unfortunately. That kind of ammunition would have made more sense with something... well with auto cannons with a higher rate of consumption... but no none of those not yet.
Coleridge did have a point given the armament of long range weapons. As a training mech the 210 powered 4X was fairly ideal, it wasn't especially fast and could serve as a 'driver's ed' mech while carrying simple enough weapons to learn the basics on.
That hadn't been his intention at all, but it didn't seem anyone believed that happy coincidence.
--
A part of him didn't want to give up his Black Jack. He had gotten used to it and more importantly he'd gotten used to using it to show people not to underestimate him in it.
He watched as the Reactor start up on the 280 began, and then confirmed the armor readout. 12 tons of standard plate equated out to a digital reading of 192 pips. The Computer ameliorated his crappy resolution of the fake desert around him as the simulator program started get on with it. Pixels turned into what was believable 'life like' sand, and he pushed his mech's arm through a fake digital tree brushing the palm fronds out of his mech's camera.
The young madman's face appeared. "Good sorry I needed to ditch and Bard was, never mind." The Rabid Fox remarked, "Basic run down of the machine it is designed to run heat neutral. Its not oversinked, but on the other hand ... well do your best you have limited ammunition, and while I might be able to provide better ammunition these simulators get schizo about more exotic lost technology or non standard equipment."
"Right," Justin muttered, "Cataphract Launching." He pushed the mech's throttle forward and left the stand of palm trees looking around. There were other Sakhara Cadet's mechs appearing and starting their boot up in the digital battle space.
Alexandria's Orion appeared about four hundred meters to his right, and was up and moving quickly as the Star League Defense Era machine completed its pretend boot sequence. Or rather her actual mech dated to when their ancestors, it had passed through the rulers of Kestrel and their heirs since the beginning of the Succession Wars.
"Hmm," The voice continued, "I don't have a bunch of spare orions sitting around Justin."
"What?"
"You've pivoted the Cataphract inline to Lex. Two and two is four. Anyway, it is a classic robust machine there is a lot to appreciate about the design. You could even refit the Orion easily enough to approximate the armament of the Hammerhands." He muttered something about if its not broke don't fix it, and not getting ahead of themselves. "Alright I should get off the line it looks like most of the cadets are now in the pipeline, and the rangers as well. Good luck."
He was right naturally his feeds were signaling his lance mates had shown up in the simulation, and were after a couple more moments started making their way towards his machine.
--
An Imperator A fired in five shot bursts and Justin putting both auto cannons on the center torso of the opposing 'mech was enough to shred almost half a ton of armor. Class 5 auto cannons produced far less heat than most weapons, but autocannons in general were fairly heat neutral anyway, with class tens producing roughly the waste heat of common medium lasers. It was only with assault auto cannons really throwing 16 and up centimeter projectiles in three shot groups that you had to contend with risky excess heat; even that was still waste heat relative to longer range weapons like a PPC or Large Laser.
"The missile packet seems a tad extraneous."
"it provides some indirect long range firepower , though I admit out of the line of sight is more for wide scale unit confrontation." In the Cataphract case one LRM 5 launcher well twenty four fires it was very unlikely that this engagement would last long enough for Justin to get through all 24. He would probably get through the rest of his auto cannon ammunition.
That was the thing though, the cataphract wasn't equipped with anything out of the ordinary. Nothing lostech to be sure, and Justin was doing well. Certainly better than he would have been doing in the Black Jack as they were now in an engagement range where his personal machine's medium lasers would have been in play.
... that was an idea to consider, is to drop the lrm 5 for medium lasers... well later... when the convergence of the main lines of the force weren't hitting it. The actual force disposition of the mechs wasn't that dissimilar. The reality of two Davion forces coming to blows meant that there were Centurions, and Enforcers present. There were other mechs that were common. The Rangers had Black Jacks and a group of light mechs filling out their scout lance for the company which was screening for a fire lance, but the Cadets had a slight advantage in terms of having a handful of heavier mechs and more over all machines.
Unlike the previous two engagements the cadet lances were focusing on cohesive unit engagement. Moving as Lances and engaging targets, which he was happy to see. If they hadn't been the Rangers probably would have looped around been hitting them from possibly three sides, but that possibility was now unlikely as attrition began to take its toll on both sides.
"Major Cameron is moving to engage Cadet Lead."
"I see him." Gene replied, and more importantly he was watching the hillside that was probably blocking Bard's line of sight.