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Grand Central Station
by Khartoum |
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MechWarrior Janus was on patrol in the area. He and four others were responsible for arresting the person who had brought an unauthorized radio into the plant. He knew the potential that an infiltration team could cause, as the scar across his arm attested. He had killed the saboteur with the knife, but the explosion had sent a piece of shrapnel across his arm. Because of that failure, he had been sent to building security, instead of Mech patrols. He would not allow the same dishonor to happen twice, and had drilled the technicians and security personnel ruthlessly.
That training paid off right now. They passed the freebirth carrying the radio casually, joking with one another, and then when he was in the middle, the five Mechwarriors turned and grabbed him. Two grabbed his arms, a third put a plastic bag over his head, and the remaining two began punching him in the stomach, to keep him distracted. The freebirth went down in a matter of seconds, no match for a trained warrior, and they quickly bound his arms behind his back. Searching him quickly, they came up with the tape recorder, and tested the technicians' accuracy. Proving the signal was produced by the tape recorder; they marched him to the small cells in the Smelting plant, and threw him inside. The tape recorder was turned over to the electronics technicians, who began to carefully take part the tape recorder, in case of explosives, or other self-destruct systems.
Franz though, was in the hands of a different sort of 'technician'. One who had been trained on all the features of human minds, chemical interactions, and how to wreck them. He was not going to enjoy the next few hours.
The team though, was getting ready. They had infiltrated near the base, to a vehicle park. Idly they wondered why the Clanners would have a highly secure facility, but leave vehicles wide open here. But with the searches that occurred at the gates, it was easy enough. The vehicles were searched for people before they came in, and were parked far enough away that explosives wouldn't affect the building.
But they could use that arrogance. Already, they could see the standing down of the internal security, and a couple helicopters had taken off, to look in the nearest forests for receivers. But Greg noticed something weird.
"Sarge, I need to check that forest over at 2 o'clock."
"What is it?"
"Well, those helicopters haven't checked it out yet. Either they are on a different search pattern, or there is a reason they aren't bothering to search there."
Sergeant Vinson undid his binoculars, and passed them over. Greg's vision, combined with the passive binoculars, should tell them. "Take a look son, and call it out."
Greg swung the glasses around for a moment, and then froze. "Shit. There's at least a binary of mechs in that forest. We cannot use our standard escape route, as they'll have target practice with us. Yup, a trinary. Maybe they're doing wargames here, or just a patrol, but those guys just changed the game plan."
Leutenant Graves nodded in understanding. Most leutenant's would have demanded to see for themselves, but he trusted his soldier, and they trusted him as well. "All right then, our plan is still a go. We never planned to engage Mechs anyway, and five or fifteen, they'd still slaughter us. We'll pick three trucks, split up between them, and ride under the cargo. Once inside the fence, we'll rendezvous at the southwest corner, under the vehicles. There's a drain ditch nearby, in case we have to crawl to the building."
Nine heads nodded in receipt. Their mission was still dangerous, but it was still a go. Even better, their leutenant was picking proper protocol, keeping them near the building, but not close by the guard shacks.
Picking three trucks that were on the way into the building, and the drivers who were too casual for any proper security, the team got their rides et up. The first vehicle got through no problem, but as the second vehicle was pulling up, the gate guard suddenly slammed the security shutters up no the gatehouse, and ran outside.
"Everybody inside now! We have incoming!"
Lieutenant Graves' stomach had tensed as the guardhouse had shut itself up, but the next words were baffling. Was a nearby pirate group or House regiment attacking the Clans? Most pirate groups simply didn't have the technology to offer anything other than target practice to the Clans, and he hadn't heard of any House Raids being proposed. When the driver leaned out the window to ask what the hurry was, the guard pointed a gun at him, and yelled, "Inside, now!" The scary part was that the guard wasn't even looking at the driver; she was looking at the sky.
Hearing a muffled, "Just what the he-," Lieutenant Graves felt the truck bounce into the air. A quick rev of the vehicle's engine told him that the driver had decided to floor the engine, to get into safety.
The third vehicle, with Sergeant Vinson had heard a similar exchange, and the Sergeant had risked looking up from the bed, and out under the tarp. Seeing a small mushroom cloud from the of the perimeter guns, he realized that someone was doing a snap raid on the Clan operation. Even better, the Clan guards were going to be focused on getting the civilians to safety, and seeing off the raiders, than any worries about a minor team of infiltrators.
The three vehicles were quickly abandoned in the vehicle park, and the drivers were running flat out for the building, to get into the underground shelters. Taking the opportunity of confusion, the team melted out of the vehicles, and rounded up in the southwest corner of the vehicle park. While getting organized Private Morris played back a recording she had gotten while monitoring Clan ground to space communications. Those comms were very powerful to penetrate atmosphere, and it had been easy to tap into them. The fun part though, was listening to them.
The first voice was that of the Clan Galaxy Commander, in charge of the planet's defense, had opened with the standard spiel:
"This is Galaxy Commander Hugh Crichell to inbound vessels. What is your claim upon this world, and what do you bid?"
The second voice though, was apparently modulated through a synthesizer, from the artificial sound.
"We are here to pick up some steel and steel alloys. About fifty thousand tons should suffice. Please keep your forces out of our way, or we'll destroy them."
"You demand our steel, yet you do not give any strength of your own? If you want our steel, then you shall have it. I demand your name though, so I will know who to laugh at in the future."
"My name is unimportant, now, but all you need to know, is that we are mercenaries, from the Periphery. Now be a good boy and stay out of our way."
The infiltration team looked around at that last comment. The Clanners hated Periphery worlds, as the Periphery states had tried to leave the Star League, and most Clanners hated mercenaries as well, as they were nothing but thugs fighting for money. That last comment about staying out of their way though, was apparently stated to piss off the Clan commander.
Lieutenant Graves spoke up. "Well, that changes things. These raiders are likely going to drop right on top of us, and they've sent their aerospace fighters ahead-"
A shadow suddenly went over their heads. Looking up, they saw what had to be either a small dropship, or large shuttle swooping overhead. Attached to the bottom were what appeared to be four tanks. Settling lightly, the four tanks dropped off neatly, and began moving out to positions around the southern end of the smelting plant, to guard it. The shuttle floated over to the smelting operation itself, and more troops dropped down.
Hovering over in front of the main loading doors, the guns on either side of the main body spoke, and a door that could withstand a Mech simply blew open. Cries of pain inside told of flying shrapnel that had crippled or killed many inside. Troops then dropped from the back of the shuttle, and began heading inside.
But the speed of it was nothing compared to what they had seen in the dropship. There had been no obvious signs of fusion exhaust from the vessel, merely four glowing circles on the bottom, as it had literally hovered over to the doors. The vehicle was obviously advanced technology, and seemed to be even better than any Clan dropship they had seen. It had a straight vertical fin on top, with a pair of wings on the rear portion, more for attitude control, than actual lifting surfaces.
Private Morris suddenly pulled her headset off, and reached around to a volume control. Explaining her actions, she said, "Sorry sir. I just got this massive feedback in the comms I was listening on, trying to tap Clan comms. I think these new folks are jamming them."
"Not a problem. We’re entering the building, but we'll get to the computers first. From the looks of it, we'll have to avoid the southern areas, but anybody in the computer rooms should be in the basements now, so we don't have to worry about that. Move!"
he team edged between the vans and trucks carefully, except for one. Yancey Phillips had pulled out a pair of macrobinoculars, with a recorder attached. He was sticking it around the vans in the way, to record what was going on. Their mission was to gather intel, and a new force who had landed a few minutes after entering the system was definitely going to attract attention at Lyran High Command.
Greg happened to be glancing in the right direction, as one of the tanks suddenly swung its turret around, right at them!
"Everybody down!" Greg yelled, as he tackled Yancey out of the way. Suddenly the five vans in the path of the bolt simply blew up, from a shot that the tank had fired. Seeing the massive destruction, as three of the vans were not even smoldering hulks, Greg called out, "They've got some sensors, and Phillips' active emitters just triggered them. We can't use active emissions, or they'll hit us."
The rest of the team moved pieces of vans off themselves, and looked around at the destruction that a single shot had done. Keeping low, to avoid being seen, they carefully moved until several vehicles were between them and the unknown tanks. Anything that casually tossed shots around that made a PPC look like a spitwad was not something they wanted to experience. Seeing the team pull themselves together, leutenant Graves ordered them in. |
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