Chapter 7

Roebuck is part of the Taurian Concordat and the Concordat was tired of all the Pirate attacks. They wanted us with them for an attack on Tortuga Prime which was the major Pirate base in this sector. Eager Beaver was willing to release us to them for this attack. They, the Concordat and the Mining Company, had discussed it and it ended up that our contract was sold to the Concordat.

The Concordat gave us two choices, we could go in with everyone else with no intelligence on the planet, no idea of what forces were there and receive a salary plus a share of what was captured and destroyed or... We could drop ahead of everyone else, gather information and transmit it to the Jumpship which in turn would transmit it to the Regiments when they arrived. For this we would receive our salary and a share of what was captured and destroyed AND we would have salvage rights to everything we defeated and could carry away prior to the arrival of the Regiments.

With either assignment Shadow would drop blind, no intell, no foreknowledge of what was to come. We had a better chance going in with everyone else but then again if we dropped alone and did not use our radio would they take us as a serious threat? The drop was the danger. Once down we could play hide and seek, make them look for us, stir them up and see what happened. We took the latter course. It was simple, there was more chance for reward. Mercenaries fight not for fame and glory but for money!

Either to appease their conscious for selling our contract or as a bribe to go along with the decision to attack the Pirates or as they said as thanks for the inspired defense of their mines the Eager Beaver Mining Company gave us a bonus. A newly reconditioned Marauder. That thing is a 75 ton killing machine. As the Company commander Captain Larson moved over to it and gave up his Ostsol.

Our jump was uneventful. No surprises waiting for us or anything. Instead of a normal wait to recharge, as soon as we uncoupled and started our drop the Jumpship used chemical rockets to move away to a different position. He wanted to be in a better relay position and out of the normal recharge location in case 'visitors' came looking for him or another Pirate Jumpship arrived.

Just before we entered the atmosphere we engaged a wing of four Chippawas. They called us twice and then moved in on an attack run when we didn't answer with the proper passwords. We had all weapons manned and as ready as possible without powering up. When they fired on us we were ready within microseconds. They punched our nose good but a Buccaneer is heavily armored there. They also burned off a lot of armor in other places but didn't score an important hit and didn't hole the skin. We took out one Chip and hit a second one hard. As we didn't brake or maneuver we were able to out run them.

We pulled a skip on entry to slow down and then entered the atmosphere. We had our scanners and sensors manned and wide open and the recorders going. We spotted the main city. It was on an island just off the mainland. The drop field was there also with a Leopard and two Unions down. The city had several hard points. Sure was glad we did not have to take it alone.

We also spotted two Water Purification plants with hard points and at least five outposts radiating out from the city. Up river from the city was the agricultural area. This was good sized, twenty-five klicks wide and twice as long. We decided to land the Buc up river from the Ag Station. There were some bluffs, hills and other terrain that looked more suitable for hiding than a nice flat, open ag area.

We were still moving at a good clip, hot landings are a little rougher than normal and ours was no exception. We banged up the nose some more on the rough terrain. We immediately off-loaded the LAMs and moved two Recon Mechs out to spot for aircraft. As we off loaded additional Mechs we set up netting and other camouflage measures. Soon we looked like part of the landscape.

Just in time also. We had no sooner finished obscuring the landing path of the Buc than two wings of atmospheric aircraft were spotted. The two LAMs launched and moved to intercept. Zeke lost some armor but all eight of the Guardians were shot down. Those poor guys didn't have a chance. Each plane had a total of ONE ton of armor. Any hit with a medium laser punched through.

We did capture several of the pilots. When we started to question them I learned something surprising. J.J. is an ESPer! He could read surface thoughts and tell what they were thinking a good part of the time. We found out a lot about the place that way. What was really nice was they didn't know where we were hiding. Zeke and Karuska had intercepted them far enough away that we didn't open fire so did not give our position away.

While the pilots were being interrogated we finished the unloading of the Buccaneer. One thing we had done that was unusual for a drop mission like this. We had brought with us spare parts, additional armor plates, missiles and cannon ammunition above what is normally carried on a dropship and as many of our techs and astechs as we could load aboard. We were expecting to fight. We needed to be repaired and rearmed. Now we could. Shadow had a few ground transportation vehicles. Not many and most of them were owned by members of the company. Using them we started to scout in the direction of the agricultural area. We scouted trails on both sides of the river to within a half-klick of the hard points. There were trails on both sides of the river and obvious signs that the trails were patrolled at times. From the available signs it had been a while since a patrol had been up this way. We could find no indication that we were being watched, had been spotted, or anything so we decided to patrol in force towards the Ag. station.

They were there. They had deeply buried sensors and artillery. We had no more than moved forward and taken out the hard point when the artillery started to land. Wee Darling was the only Mech hit but the bursts were close enough that we were convinced to move on to another location. This was not the way.

So much for the front door, now for the back. We slipped around the Ag station and cheated. We intercepted the fiber-optic feed line to the Ag Station computer from the City mainframe. Karuska placed a tap on it and did his hacking thing. It is unreal the things he can do with a computer or convince a computer to do. On more than one occasion he had shown us some of his expertise. Before they knew what had happened Karuska was scratching that computer on an itchy spot and it purred like a cat while doing anything he wanted it to do.

The boss of this band of Pirates was a Paula Travelina. She had been the leader for about three years and piloted a BattleMaster. Her title of office is "Dame Murderess Extraordinaire". Paula became boss when she took out the old leader in single combat. The fact that she had sabotaged his Mech before the fight seemed to only add to her power rather than distract from it. The initial intelligence report on this system placed their strength at only two Companies but as we found out before the last outing there were between two and four regiments on this planet. They have grown as she has consolidated many smaller Pirate groups and has built them into quite a force. That was why she felt she had strength enough to raid the Concordat, the Outworlds Alliance and some of the smaller planets of the Federated Suns.

Some more information we found out scared the life out of us. There were usually Dropships with fourteen aerospace fighters at each jump point as well as twelve more aerospace fighters patrolling just above the atmosphere. Somehow we had missed them or they had missed us. Also each of the hard points and outposts we had spotted while inbound had at least a Lance up to a Company of Mechs nearby. The Ag station has a reinforced Company with others on call.

Some good news for a change. The Tortugans are spread out to protect certain vital areas so we don't need to worry about a concentration yet. Also they know only the general area not the specific location we are using. Even better they don't know how many of us there are. Seems there are conflicting reports. A Buccaneer, a Union or a Buccaneer and a Union. All three stories are circulating. Our location is about as accurate also.

We could sit still, use the tap that had been placed on the computer line and gather all the information we needed. Or we could stir them up and create holy hell for them. Of course this latter path was more to our liking. More fun, more trouble for them and more profitable for us.

We saddled up and moved out. Karuska had received information that a Leopard had landed hard and the Pirates were now trying to dig it out. There was a company of Mechs guarding the Dropship while it was being worked on. Here was a chance to reduce the odds by a company, and a Dropship. We had to make a try.

We ran into problems soon after we started. They had a Recon Lance out and it contained an Ostcout. That little beastie can't fight for sour apples but it's fast and boy can it gather information. They spotted us at long range and turned. They had a Jenner, a Spider and a Cicada as well as the Ostcout. That made the Jenner the slowest thing they had while it was the fastest thing we had if you didn't count the two LAMs. We had left our Spider back on Roebuck in favor of a Mech with greater fire power. Their fire power wasn't much but they had speed galore.

I got a couple of hits on the Spider but nothing to slow him down. What I couldn't understand was their Jenner, it continued towards us. It didn't go back. J.J. walked a line of autocannon shots up his chest. I don't know if it was his or if it was the missile hits from one of the other Mechs but the magazine for his missiles was hit and exploded. All that was left of that Jenner was a set of legs. The others were running. Zeke was hanging on to the Ostcout. He zoomed in behind it and opened up. A LAM is the only thing that can catch an Ostcout. When he fired it went down. There is little armor on the back side of an Ostcout. All four medium lasers penetrated. He scored a hit on the gyro which put the Ostcout down for the count.

We continued on towards the Leopard. By using all the available cover we got to within a half klick of their position. We could just see the Leopard. It had landed in a pit. I mean the whole thing was in a hole.

As I was the closest thing we had to a Ostcout that made me the Recon Mech. I did a slow sweep of the area. I could make out a Shadow Hawk and a Griffin on the near side and two Phoenix Hawks on the far side of the pit. The most amazing thing was that they were all four powered down. Four guard Mechs that were acting like statues. They couldn't move, couldn't fight, couldn't do anything, they were just there. So far they had not received the news that we were in the area. By now the Spider and the Cicada should have returned and informed them of our presences, but they sure didn't act like it.

I passed this information on to the others and then ran flat out to get to the near Mechs before they could start up. As I approached I saw that the hatch was open and the boarding ladder was down on the Shadow Hawk. The Griffin was heating up so I fired on it while keeping an eye on the S. Hawk. I didn't want the pilot to suddenly appear and start up that Mech also.

Seeing the Griffin starting to power up the rest of the team opened up on it. It took a good pounding and then toppled over. Before it could get back to its feet I stepped forward and pointed all four lasers at the cockpit. The pilot immediately surrendered. Seeing this St.John (pronounced Sin Gin) Knight opened up on the woods near the Shadow Hawk to disrupt the pilot. He moved forward and did the same thing near the two P. Hawks. A tree bursts when hit by a laser. The intense heat of the laser turns the sap in the tree to steam and with no where to go it explodes. The shower of splinters will force a person there to keep his head down. With the Griffin down we turned our attention to the two P. Hawks.

Again only one of the Mechs was manned while neither was powered up. With fire and smoke around the two Mechs we couldn't see the pilot, so we just fired on both to play it safe. With no power the gyros wouldn't work. A hit knocks them off balance and they would fall over. Then we moved up and demanded that they surrender while they were flat on the ground. While the others were doing that I jumped over on top of the Leopard. I tapped on the roof with my foot and asked them to surrender. They had to comply. They couldn't run and they couldn't bring their guns to bear on any of us. That made two Dropships for my Kill Shield. Most pilots never get one and now I have two!

With the fighting out of the way we took over from the Tortugans and finished removing the Leopard. We had planned ahead and had several Techs and astechs waiting close by. A check of the hull showed several sprung plates but no major damage. While we were checking for damage on the inside we found that the aerospace fighters were still aboard. Not only did we capture a Medium lance of Mechs with only minimal damage to two of them, we got a LEOPARD Dropship and a pair of Transit Fighters. We loaded the captured Mechs aboard, strapped them down ready to fly them out.

We knew that the heavy element of the Company was headed our way to keep us from getting away with the Leopard and whatever else we might have captured. A Catapult, a Warhammer, a Thunderbolt and a Dragon finally showed up. These four plus the Spider and the Cicada that had avoided us earlier were what we were up against. As bad as they all were, they were not nearly as bad as they would have been with the Medium Lance. We had them by numbers and combined weight.

First on the scene were the two lights, of course. They came in from the west and ran off to the north-east. They tried to sucker us into following them into a trap. When we didn't fall for it then the Heavy Lance lumbered in from the North. When I spotted them I yelled to let the rest of the company know they were here, from what direction they were approaching and ducked behind a hill. I could keep tabs on them and keep out of the way. By doing this the others knew who was where. I could spot for any LRM shots from some of the concealed Mechs. This Heavy Lance was bad news for me and the Darling. Three of them had LRMs. They could score hits of me for a long time before they came in range of my lasers and I could return fire so I played hide and seek with them. I let some of our larger mechs mix it up with them after our missile Mechs had fired. When they got in closer to where I was I committed myself. I jumped in behind the big T'bolt. As I did Jero Conn, one of our newer guys who was in Captain Larson's old Ostsol for this battle moved in and opened up from the front. The pilot paid more attention to him in front than to me pecking away at the rear. Between the two of us we took down the T'bolt.

Our Catapult had moved forward and was taking on their Cat. Rock McKinnon was piloting our Catapult since Flannery had been killed. He moved that Cat in close enough to make sure he was doing damage and he was. Sgt. Jacobs in his P. Hawk was helping him while Gentry had Bad Ass pecking on the 'Hammer. MacAmon and Knight were tapping on the Warhammer also while J.J. and Schultz, both in Shadow Hawks, were engaging the Dragon. Before that Lance knew what was happening they were fully engaged from all directions with rockets, lasers, cannons and even a few insults. We took damage but we took them out!

We did have a problem. This was the first engagement we had had since Captain Larson started piloting the new Marauder. He wouldn't close and engage. When he was piloting his Ostsol he would close even when he didn't have backup or cover. This time his weight and large weapons would have been a great help as he would have been the heaviest Mech on the field but he didn't fire a shot. He didn't even come out of hiding until the battle had been decided. Something was wrong. Either the responsibility of being Company commander was too much, he was unsure of the new Mech or something else but he had changed.

So we off-loaded the Mechs we had placed aboard and loaded all of the damaged Mechs aboard the Dropship. The undamaged ones and those that could still move we sent back by the Techs and Astechs. The loaded Mechs could not be dropped but they could be carried encased. We loaded that beastie until the supports groaned. Zeke was dropship rated so he was the one flying it and I hate to say it but I was the backup pilot. I had learned to pilot these things on a whim. At least the Leopard was an aerodyne configuration, not a great big blob like a Union. We babied that thing as much as possible. When we had speed and started to lift I retracted the gear. As our speed and height increased I cleaned up the wings. We didn't lift to a great height but stayed low so ground clutter would cover us on radar.

We slicked that thing in on landing so well we only had to move it just a bit to get it under cover and hidden. We then started to off-load all of the Mechs. Between the damage we had done and the damage we had received the techs had a lot of work to do.

Rachel came to report to Captain Larson. She told him that this would use up all the spare parts and the armor that they had brought with them. They could make many of the necessary repairs to the captured Mechs but not all. There were several parts that she would need and we needed to replenish our spare parts if we were going to be engaging in many more fights.

I was very concerned about one of those Mechs. I had captured the Shadow Hawk. Sure the others were involved but I was the one who made sure the pilot didn't reenter the Mech and defended it by stopping the Griffin. Anyway after the talk with J.J. I had decided that it was time for me to move up to a larger Mech and I wanted that Shadow Hawk. I had waited too long in making up my mind before and Schultz had moved into the other Shadow Hawk. This one was going to be MINE and I was going to give it the same configuration that J.J. had on his. After seeing what he could do with his I liked that configuration much better than the standard design. Anyway as soon as the modifications have been made I was going to move to it. I already had a name picked out for it, the Highland Lass. I don't care what kind of Mech I might have later this funny looking little Jenner would always be special to me.

We were taking a bit of a rest while those repairs went on. We were also keeping track of incoming messages on the computer. Karuska had done something I have never heard of, he bugged the computer. He simply told the computer to down load to us a copy of any movement orders from command. We just became one more place that orders were dropped off, normal routine. We knew who was being ordered where, when and with what. Sometimes we even knew before they did. Passive receipt of information is less obtrusive and less likely to be detected than constant orders or requests being made.

Karuska turned out to be a first class thief, I mean he really is. He entered us into the Tortugan employee listing, had identification packets made up and issued and then had us paid a month's back pay. That is creative use of a computer. Oh yes, we are all Security Officers. On this planet, under Dame Murderess, nobody messes with Security Officers. They can go anywhere, do anything and no one has seen or heard a thing.