[Mechwarrior] Plan All-Cause Readmissions

[Asemir]

Axunari Kabrinski of Clan Ghost Bear blinked. The faceplate of his neurohelmet was a mess of cracks and scars, and blank, the heads-up display completely blank and dead. Something cold and wet dribbled from his nose and pooled at the back of his head. That fact struck him as odd. Shouldn’t blood be flowing down his neck?

He blinked again and reached up to unlatch his neurohelmet. Only with the clatter as it fell to the back of the cockpit, did he realize that he was lying on his back. He stared forward, through the ruined forward canopy and up into the night sky. The field of stars shifted, his vision blurred.

The Clan warrior forced the nausea away and focused on the faint crackle of his radio. He thought he could catch pieces of a message through the garbling caused by damage and electronic counter measures. Something about retreating. Pulling back.

Retreat? Kabrinski frowned. Clan warriors didn’t retreat. It must have been bad, then. The raid had not gone according to plan. His trinary should have been able to handle the defenders, but there had been far more than they had expected. Typical Inner Sphere treachery.

The cold night wind drifted through the breaches in his cockpit, carrying with it the pungent odors of melted plastic, vaporized metal, and spent munitions. Axunari began working at his restraining straps, noting that the familiar hum of an extralight fusion engine was gone. His cockpit was still, silent except for the howling wind. The numerous monitors and screens were dead, either having been torn apart by the autocannon fire that had shattered his OmniMech, or shut down from lack of power by the stilled fusion engine.

The Ghost Bear carefully eased himself out of his command couch, satisfied that aside from his bleeding nose, he had suffered no real harm. He had been lucky. That last salvo from the enemy Atlas had nearly killed him. Its autocannon had tracked up from the center torso and through the head, neatly devouring the Executioner’s exposed heart and decapitating the machine in one blow. The 180-millimeter shells should have killed him, but had simply reduced the cockpit mechanisms to scrap.

Having pulled on a jumpsuit and heavy coat from a storage locker, Axunari added a heavy pistol to his holster and strapped a katana to his back. The sword was isorla, taken from a Combine warrior during Operation Revival. It had served him well in the past.

The Ghost Bear pulled himself out of his cockpit, mindful of the jagged edges of the shattered armor. He took a moment to orient himself and smiled grimly. Fifty meters to his right lay the offending Atlas. The Inner Sphere assault ‘Mech’s head was split open. His parting shot with his Gauss rifle had been true.

He looked around, seeing the forms of shattered ‘Mechs, both Inner Sphere and Clan, too few of the former and too many of the latter. To his relief, however, he spotted no signs of the Timberwolf piloted by his sibmate. She had escaped off-world, then.

Axunari Kabrinski dropped from his Executioner and landed solidly on the frozen ground. It was cold, and he knew he had to find shelter. There was a town, some ten kilometers to the west. It wasn’t that far, but it was a trek. Pulling his coat tighter around him, he began his journey.

 

[Archive]

Fields of white, charred black by munitions and focused beams of coherent light. The gentle hum of his fusion reactor seemed to encapsulate his being, even inside his neurohelmet. He'd had silence the alarms - the Highlander was on its last legs. He'd lost just over half his armor, and another lucky hit or two would have likely put him down for the count.

But here he stood among the snow, snapped and collapsed trees all around, shielding the ground from his view. Sensors told him Cel was nearby, about fifty meters off to his left. A rustling off to his right set off an alarm and the right arm of his mech rose, smoking barrels of his two PPCs pointed towards the offending area. Moments later, a startled elk burst from its cover and raced across a small clearing where a Koshi had been waiting for him a few moments before.

It disappeared into the night, just as the Bears had done.

The Truce was fresh, relatively speaking, and clan raids had become almost commonplace where tensions had flared or - more accurately - they'd decided they needed to whet their teeth. A pounding in his head drew his attention, and he realized the gryoscope must have taken a glancing blow. Several hundred meters ahead of him was the last known position of an Atlas piloted by one of the other mercenary units hired to defend the world.

Checking to make sure the comm circuit with Cel was still open, he gave a sigh. "Let's see if we can't find that Atlas." He mutters, knowing that more likely than not the mech was scrap by now. Still, he imagined he might be able to barter the information for resupply. The blizzard had been playing hell on the comms. Depressing the pedals, great bursts of fusion fire erupted from the 90 ton mechs back and legs, propelling him forward and into the air as the Jump Jets carried the beast forward.

Normally he wouldn't travel with the jets, but he'd had to clear that destroyed mech somehow - he wasn't too keen on going around. It had the unfortunate side effect of startling the light mech out of hiding, sensors blaring a warning as its presence was detected. Growling audibly into his neurohelmet, he lined up the two medium pulse lasers mounted in the right chest of his mech and depressed the firing stud.

A split second later and paired beams of light green jumped the gap from Highlander to Koshi, savaging what little back armor it still had. It managed to get away, however, hurrying away towards wherever their dropships were hiding. Waste heat from the weapons firing filtered up into the cockpit, and the coolant vest clinging to his chest began to pump, attempting to regulate his core temperature so heat stroke wouldn't knock him unconscious.

Slowly guiding the Highlander into a slow walk, he angled again towards the last position of the Atlas with the hope the pilot yet lived. "Ye capable of keepin' up, Cel?" He jests, Donegal accent as thick as ever.