Chapter Thirty: Shot in the Dark

Chapter Thirty: Shot in the Dark

Major Constance Vaultaine worried her lip as she looked over the tactical workups and the information she had on the battalion that had made landfall half a week ago. The Marksman were another battalion, and on any other day that wouldn't worry her. But they had refused to move into the city. Instead, they used some strange light 'Mech ' in order to reach out and take out fixed defenses with PPC's and LRM's and then backed up out of range whenever they moved someone to pursue.

It was infuriating, to know that your enemy was up to something but be unable to figure it out. The enemy had artillery, they had used it to great effect against the Lancer's not even a full year ago. So why hadn't they tried the same sort of trap on her battalion? She didn't know and it made her angry.

"Knock Knock." Someone tapped twice on the door to her office. Even this late at night, there may be someone who had intel for her.

"Doors open." She responded, glancing up just in time to note that this wasn't one of her men. Before she could scream for help or anything, she was wrapped in the metal beings arms and getting placed in a choke hold. Major Vaultaine struggled, she tried everything she knew about close quarters combat. She threw elbows into the thing's face, she tried the groin, everything. Her struggle only made her grow weaker faster, and she was still struggling when everything went black.

Captain Paige was both exhilarated and scared for her company at the same time. Their job was to capture the enemy dropships and there were three of them there. The Lothar's Fusiliers seemed to primarily be a 'mech oriented battalion and as such only had three Unions to lift off with. Captain Peterson wanted the enemy grounded and unable to flee, and so her and her company had been tasked with this job.

Staff Sergeant Nathan Rook used hand signals to stop his fireteam from moving. There were some of the Union's crew above them that he could see with his thermal vision. When their backs were turned two of his fireteam went up. They knocked the crew members unconscious. Bound and gagged them, and placed them in a cargo bay. Which Rook then locked from the outside. Moving through the ship, the various members of the Fireteam subdued the crew in sets of two and three until all 42 of the Union's crew members were bound, gagged, and thrown into the same cargo bay that they stripped of anything that they might use to escape.

When they reached the bridge, Sergeant Rook signaled for his team to guard the entrance while he used his technical expertise to get into the Union's systems. He navigated through the various logs, stripping valuable data on the Fusiliers and the CCAF in general. He also locked the current crew out of the systems with an override that had been provided by Lieutenant Dunham before he had left for the Concordat.

Risking an comm channel for the first time tonight, he used his Mithril's slightly limited comm gear (He would have to report that to be improved on the next generation of armor.) "Longshot Actual, this is Longshot two reporting mission objectives seized, awaiting further instruction."

"This is Longshot actual, Longshot two, proceed with secondary objectives." Captain Paige responded.

Sergeant Rook clicked his comms twice for confirmation and then told his Fireteam to move on to their next objective.

Lieutenant Packer and his Fireteam moved quickly through the night. They needed to take the comms center and get ready to call for the rest of the Marksman when ordered to by Paige or Peterson. Stacking up on the Comms center's main door, they broke the lock, and then eased the door open before moving in.

Packer had traded Rook to Paige in exchange for Mathis on this op. Sergeant Mathis was the single best entry person they had in the entire battalion. He loved being on point in a room and always knew what to do and where to go. Mathis noted the empty entry room, checking his corners and any desks that someone might hide behind before setting up on the next room. Using a fiber optic cable and camera to see if there was anyone on the other side. Noting that there were two techs monitoring the Comms systems, he signaled that to the team and had them stack up behind him. They breached the room quickly, using their speed and the element of surprise to subdue the techs before they could sound an alarm. Thankfully, they hadn't had time to log out of the communications and now they were listening in on all of the Capellan's communications in the city.

"This is the hardest part." I observed to Sheppard over laser comms through my Warhammer. "The waiting and not knowing if everything is going according to plan or not."

"Yeah." Sheppard replied. "The waiting is what gets everyone. Everyone always talks about the exciting bits of combat, the 'Mech combat, the aerospace duels. They always forget about the waiting and the in-between."

"Well, I think Peterson's plan has the best chance of success with minimal casualties." Sheppard observed. "He really put this thing together in a hurry."

"Well, he was a lead in the development of Mithril." I stated. "It makes sense he'd want to be able to take advantage of it while we are still ahead of the curve."

"I guess I didn't see it that way." Sheppard said. "I know that the cross training helped keep any issues between our various companies down, but I haven't done infantry stuff in too long."

"That, and you were gone when we went over the potential uses for it." I made my Warhammer shrug. "It'll take time for us to make use of Mithril properly."

"Well, we'll basically be setting doctrine for it so I better learn quickly." Sheppard offered, and then paused. "We should be getting some sort of message soon."

We went silent for a good five minutes after that, just taking in the silence of the hills and forest around us.

"This is Sniper One." Our comms system alerted us to a new transmission. "We have seized all primary objectives and are moving to take secondary now. Move in at your discretion."

We didn't respond aside from basic acknowledgement of the transmission but began to move in conjunction with the forces we had to the rendezvous point. If they had accomplished the main objectives, that meant that most of the 'Mech forces were stuck in their bays, the dropships had been seized, and the command staff were either captured or killed.

Captain Peterson was grateful for the advantages that the Mithril powered armor provided his infantry more and more as the night wore on. After they had accomplished their main objectives, they had broadcast a surrender message to the entire city. "This is Captain Peterson of the Marksman, we are a Mercenary company in the employ of the Federated Suns, we have taken your base, and are asking you to power down both your 'Mechs and vehicles and lay down your arms. If you do so, you will be treated according to the Ares Conventions and you will not be harmed. Resist, and we will respond in kind."

Most of the enemy had surrendered rather than face superior numbers on every front. That being said, there were a couple of lances of medium and light 'mechs that hadn't surrendered, instead; the couple of Firestarters that made up half of the eight 'Mechs had started to set fire to parts of the city. Heading towards the abandoned factory as they did so. Luckily, the Colonel and Sheppard had anticipated something like this and had a couple of fireteams of Marines and the heavy fireteam moving to intercept. The fireteam of Marines jumped onto the back of a firestarter, broke open the hatch, and chucked a grenade in, using their jump jets to get out of the way before the Firestarter just stopped in its tracks. They managed to take out two of the light 'mechs before they had to take cover and disappear. The rest of the forces, focused fire on one 'mech at a time, starting with the Firestarters, and taking them down one by one, until they had stopped destroying the city of Macbeth.

Two days later…

I moved my 'Mech through the city, heading towards the factory that had been shut down a hundred or so years ago. I had been told that they had a report for me and I wasn't arrogant enough to believe that I was safe taking a regular vehicle across the city despite us saving them from the rampage of Capellan Firestarters. Reaching the perimeter that we had set around the factory that we were preparing to loot, I crouched my 'mech down, powered down, popped my hatch, and lowered the ladder. Climbing down, I was met by the head of this project. A woman by the name of Adamina Rogers. When I reached the ground, she promptly handed me a 'Noteputer with notes on it and led me to the inside of the factory.

"We first examined the factory to determine if there was anything left by the Cappies that we could use to expand Mithril production. Most of the factory is intact, with parts of it being defunct and destroyed from age or looters. Given we need to retool the factory anyway, we found that we should be able to strip this thing to the bedrock and repurpose it entirely for Mithril production." She gave a very long winded spiel.

"I thought the factory was supposed to produce tanks." I thought out loud, quite a bit curious.

"It was, most of the machines that we need were used for small things, and will do whatever the computer tells them to do as long as it has enough spare parts to keep going. We could set up two to three lines of production with what we have in this factory. And it would enable us to take the strain off of the Argo's R&R systems." She said in reply.

"How long will it take to take the factory apart?" I asked.

"Give us a week and the Jackwagonnearby and we'll have everything ready for you." She said.

"You have five days, I'm pretty sure we're on a time limit here." I replied.

Authors note: The roll for the factory was a 13. So a decent bit was left behind for us to scavenge. But not as much as we'd hoped for