Chapter 1

Well the Clan War was over and i had a mech. Actually, I had three but only one was functional right now. I also had a drop ship rigged for two lances. On my own and owner of an old drop ship, two disabled mechs and a Shadow Cat.

Some start as an independent mercenary. I'd been part of a company called Black Cats for a year after I graduated from training. They put me in a Locust as a scout. During that year, the Locust got creamed and I found the Shadow Cat. It was abandoned on a planet where we'd been sent on a guard contract for a small agricultural area. It wasn't much of a post, but I did find the Cat.

Manny was a good leader and when I lost the Locust, he put me into another one right away. When I found the Cat, he told me that it was mine since it had been my find and wasn't even salvage from a fight. Then he helped me get it fixed, himself. Manny was a great guy to work for.

During the contract, we got hit by some pirates. I don't know what they thought they'd get here since it was only an aggy outpost, but they hit the port and then headed right at us. I had my Cat up and headed out first thing since I was still the scout.

It only took about twenty minutes to get to a good place to watch the pirates from about half way up a small hill and in a cave that was barely big enough to fit the cat. With the cover and the cat powered down, I got out and started counting. The pirates had a company about the same size as us, but they did have one thing we didn't. I spotted it as it came out of the Drop ship. An Atlas! They had an Atlas!

This was going to be a tough fight. An Atlas and three heavies for one lance, two heavies and two mediums for another and four mediums for a third. To go against that, we had a lance of heavies and two lances of mediums, plus me in my Cat.

I had set this cave up when we first got here as an O.P. so I had a line laid for comm so I didn't have to use the radio. Using the land line, I sent in the count to the boss and told him what we had to fight. He told me to stay where i was and let him know what the baddies were up to so I settled back for the wait.

The pirates only took about an hour to secure the port, such as it was. All it had was the comm tower and a small radio shack with an empty warehouse behind it.

I could see the pirates escorting the guy who ran the comm and a couple of workers to their drop ship, which looked like a modified Mule or something similar. It was big enough to carry three lances and some ground troops plus whatever loot they might find.

When they started for the station, I reported in and let the guys know the pirates were on the way. Manny told me to continue holding and when I was sure that they were all on the way, to try to disable the drop ship. If I could damage the engines, they wouldn't be able to pull out.

Well that was simple. Take a small mech and knock out an engine on a 10,000+ drop ship. No problem, do it all the time. Yea, right! Well i guess if I had wanted to live forever, I should have joined my Dad in his little trade company.

After the mechs had passed and were out of range of my sensor, I lit up the reactor on the Cat and headed for the port. I had plenty of cover, and it appeared that the ships crew wasn't paying attention to their sensors. I managed to get within range and had a clear shot at the ship with my Gauss Rifle, so i put one into the engines.

Not only did I get a hit, but it went through the engine housing on one of the exhaust ports and hit one of the legs! The whole ship tilted over to a point where it would topple if they tried to take off. This created a mad scramble of bodies around the ship but I didn't stick around to find out what the were going to do. The ship might not be able to launch now, but it still had weapons that could really do bad things to my Cat.

Since there was no further need for radio silence, I called in on the company frequency and reported the success of my assignment. I didn't get the captain, but the exec answered and told me that Manny was busy. I gave my report and asked for further instructions, to which Lieutenant Grant replied, "Well if you can come up behind them and try to at least damage that Atlas, we'd be very appreciative. We don't have anything to slow it down and it's being a bit of a bother right now."

"I'll see what I can do," I replied. "Just don't hope for too much because I'm only in a forty five tonner."

Grant said, "We'll take whatever you can give us, just don't get yourself killed."

"That's one order I intend to obey to the best of my ability," I answered.

With the Shadow Cat going at a moderate pace, I slowly closed on the nearest pirate mech. It turned out to be a Bushwacker. They weren't much for ranged fights since they mostly carried Auto cannons. An AC5 might not seem like much, but up close they can really strip off the armor. At least he wasn't able to pack something like an AC20. Those things would peal the armor off my back by shooting through the front.