Chapter Sixty-One: Butterflies

Chapter Sixty-One: Butterflies

Mallory's World March 30th, 3013

"Mark, why did you stomp on the Tai-sa's Cockpit after you slid his feet out from underneath him? Ian asked me curiously. "I'm not upset by any means, but it felt a little unnecessary."

"Ian, it was a PPC to the face, or a boot." I shrugged. "Kuritans aren't worth the waste of electricity so I chose the boot."

"The Kentares Guard finish off the supporting elements yet?" He asked me. "I know they did an orbital drop onto their holdouts."

"Sheppard hasn't gotten to a place where he can give me an update yet." I told him, "But I suspect that they'll have everything tied off come April." I paused for a minute. "You know what Ian." I said, "I'm proud of you, I thought that you were going to try and duel Yorinaga in one on one combat at first, instead of just taking the Second SOL entirely off of the map."

"Mark," Ian started. "You, Yvonne, and Hanse have hammered it into my head enough that I know better than to do that. I'll still come to the front lines and do what I did today when we are invaded, but I'm not exposing myself like I did on Versailles again."

"Being paralyzed scare you a bit?" I asked.

"Mark, I was almost crippled because I wanted to have an adventure." Ian confided in me, "Hanse was almost left a kingdom to rule because of my stupidity."

April 3rd, 3013

"Sheppard," I greeted as I walked into the Mobile HQ. "How goes finishing off the rest of the Kuritans?" I asked.

"Well, they're trying to dig in over in that area, and since we captured their dropships they're unable to leave." He shrugged. "We've taken some casualties, but mostly injured instead of dead. Right now, I'm sending over terms of surrender and waiting to see what happens."

"Sounds good Sheppard." I told the Colonel. "My Warhammer is being re-armored after the beating we gave the Second SOL and so I'll be managing things from here if you want to move closer to the front."

"I think I can manage things just fine from here." He shrugged. "Even if my Cyclops does have the B2000 computer."

"You made sure that the messenger was armed right?" I asked. "Because they might take it as an insult if they're not."

"Yes Mom." Sheppard replied. "They're in a Von Luckner, one of the first off of the line. And we've got Manticores as long range backups and escorts."

"Alright," I shrugged."I guess we just have to sit and wait for a response."

"That's what I'm doing now." He said, and leaned back in his chair. "So, I do hope you realize that now that we've got the factory lines up and running that we need some aerospace fighter factories as well,"

"I've got Gabriella, the one that we hired for the acquisitions department of Sharpshooter looking into licenses and trying to buy out some older lines that need to be repaired." I replied. "I'm looking at the mothballed Centurion lines. I think there might be something we can do with them, but it's up to acquisitions for now."

April 7th, 3013

"We cannot accept the terms of surrender." the Tai-sa told us over the open channel. "We must fight as honor demands."

"Damn idiots!" Sheppard slammed his hand against the HQ's wall. "I didn't want to have to slaughter them."

"None of us wanted to." I said in response. "Is the Arty in position?" I asked him.

"Yes, we've had them sighted in for the past week." He replied and then turned to the comms specialist. "Issue command Gulf Sierra Romeo."

"Copy sir, issuing Gulf Sierra Romeo." She said, "May God have mercy on their souls."

When the command had gone through the chain, all of the artillery batteries began to fire in a practiced pattern. Beginning what we had termed as "Grid Square Removal." The destruction of everything in a set square of the grid and to not cease the bombardment until we had a surrender or no more enemies left in the square.

April 10th, 3013

"We seized their colors right?" Ian asked when Sheppard and I walked into the room set aside for debriefing. "Any Sword of Light regiment being utterly destroyed is something to be celebrated."

"Yes sir, their colors were on their dropships, and when we seized all but the one Union that lifted off they still had their colors aboard." Sheppard replied. "And the new Mithril Battle armor proved its worth by being able to destroy two lances of Mechs with MPPC's after digging in."

"That's good to hear." Ian said with a grin. "Despite Mallory's world being invaded and some of the foodstuffs destroyed, I believe we came out ahead." He paused and thought for a second. "The Fourth will need some time on R&R before being deployed again, but defeating two regiments of battlemechs and supporting elements is something that we can claim as a success."

"Yes sir," Sheppard responded. "We didn't get here in time to do more than pin down the remnants, but we did manage to finish them off on arrival."

"Colonel Sheppard, you don't give yourself or your people enough credit, the dropships being seized is what allowed us to call this a major victory." Ian shrugged. "While I would have been just as happy with a retreat versus a slaughter, I am happy that we have bled the Dracs on this one."

"Something to add to our playbook as it were." I brought up a suggestion. "Seeing as the Sword of Light Regiments will almost always prefer to be aggressive instead of retreat, we should try and goad them into chases, make them angry and then destroy them with better arms and strategy. They may all be Extremely good mech pilots, but they have the fatal flaw of believing that the Battlemech is superior over everything else in combat." I shook my head at that thought. "We're going to have to work on working Mithril to our advantage before the Combine awakens to the fact that infantry can now stall and remove battlemechs and heavy armor from a fight in a battle."

"That's something for Hanse, Yvonne, and the DMI people to work on for us." Ian waved his hand, "They'll figure out some way to make it work, and probably far better than anything I would have thought up."

With that, we dove into the guts and boring parts of debriefing, the discussions what we did in the battle of Mallory's world, and why we made those decisions."

Kentares IV, Draconis March, Federated Suns May 1st, 3013

"Mark, I look and feel like an Atlas right now." Natasha complained to me. "This is strange, and new and I am not sure I like it."

"Well Nat, if you feel that way, we only have to have one." I said. "But, I would like you to wait to make that decision until this one is born." We were sitting on the couch in the evening just spending time together. Natasha was now around six months pregnant, and wasn't handling it very well.

"Just so you know, I'm going to kick your ass after I give birth." She told me. "Now rub my feet, my ankles are killing me."