It took another two hours of waiting as the Penoy forces kept shifting around and tried to put more and more mercenaries on the front of the assault. Every time they tried to send him a message with anew offer he would dismiss it. They were not paying well enough for him to break his forces against the enemy line. Advancing over open terrain at the front of the spear into fire was not his idea of how to maintain the longevity of a merc group. The day had been hot before but was getting up towards sweltering now and the heat did not seem likely to break soon with almost no cloud cover he knew today was going to suck and the only thing he could look forward to was the salvage rights he hoped to claim tonight. It reminded him he really needed to invest in a recovery vehicle for when operations when bottoms up. 

Eventually though real orders started to be passed around designating everyone’s attack routes and attempting to coordinate over a regiment of disparate mercenaries meant to break the enemy line. The first echelon started to move out. He watched on his minimal HUD the battlemech intensive force advancing out north. Then he heard one of the worst sounds anyone can ever hear, artillery shells. They were outbound snipers and thumpers but it did not really help his thoughts on it. Artillery was the bane of everyone who was not artillery and while counter battery fire could be expected once the first shells hit most would still be aimed at him and his.

He started to turn on the main systems of his mech as he also opened a channel to the three men who helped him run his little cadre, “Alright guys we got orders to advance in the second echelon, we are not the breaking wave but we are not far behind them. You know what is up, we try to break into the city and just cause as much pain and suffering as we can once we get there,” a trio of affirmative responses greeted his opening remarks, “Anthony, the usual with you guys, keep the Blizzards back behind the Yin and his behemoths and send out LRMs when you get someone spotting something. We need Nosek and to get into urban terrain where they can make everyone regret not being him,”

Anthony was quick to respond, “Not our first ride Anton we know how this works. I will keep an eye out for openings once we get close and see if I can shoot the gap to get in there.”

“Good, we are getting paid a decent bit in salvage for this one which means we gotta win this side if we want a full payday or else we are just leaving C-Bills on the field.

“Shì de, not a step back,” Yin he could tell was as ready to go as ever.

Novek did not even bother to respond, instead turning on his music he enjoyed blaring over the net and drowning out any further chance of communication until the Blizzard he and his soldiers were in gave him the green light to disembark. 

Anton could only smirk as he cut closed the open channel as well. If anyone needed to reach him they could open their own channel, for now he went back to his mech, everything was green across the board, all that was needed was his code to bring the reactor to full power with a smile on his face he spoke, “Loyalty as strong as gold.”

With that it came on line and he felt a slight rush of heat from below him as the reactor came to full power and he watched reticles drop down on his HUD as his weapons became fully active. He brought his mech up to a light 20 KPH and the tanks soon matched his speed, it was a light walk for his mech but was the general cruising speed of the behemoths. It also helped to put more distance between himself and the first echelon attacking wave.

---

It took around 10 minutes for the first calls of combat to come in. Those furthest towards the center at the far left of his easterly oriented flank encountered enemy skirmishes are the hills and woods but this was not a light recon advance this was a full assault and managed to maintain their advance returning fire. Casualties seemed negligible from what he could tell from the command line network but what the Penoy seemed negligible and what the mercs at the front did were easily two different things.

It was intense fighting though apparently for those who made first contact with the main enemy line. Two eclectic groups of mercs quickly turned the whole thing into a confusing brawl apparently, just what Anton wanted. Opening a channel to his own unit he gave out an order, “Push it up to 30 kilo, flanking speed behemoths, time to earn our pay.” Following his own orders he brought his mech up another 10 KPH setting the pace. As they neared the conflict zone the first conventional aircraft flew over, Penoy were to draw the first blood in the air it seemed sending theirs in first and risking them to ground fire. Cheap stuff it seemed like mechbusters were the mainstay of their air force. Cheap they may be but he knew such craft could live up to their name. He almost told Frederick the tank commander of the partisan to watch the skies but he knew that right now that was all the man was doing.

As soon as they hit visual range all comms seemed to explode as messages were shot across all bands of the chaos of the battlefield. The direct beam comms were overriding everything else there was no way anyone on either side could hope to know what was going on this flank now and that meant he had to act fast before the defenders reinforced with their secondary mercenary regiment. “Weapons free Black Lances, let the LRMs fly.” The words had barely left his mouth when the behemoths and blizzards laid down a powerful volley towards a catapult taking potshots with a pair of gauss rifles into the melee. They were used to feeding telemetry back and forth to get as many missiles on one target. 

He then received a tight beam message from a mech he did not recognize, “Hey, if you can still got any of those LRMs left we could use some this way.”

He checked to see where the message came from and saw that it was a pair of Atlases who had pushed probably deepest into the enemy lines behind them was a trail of broken mechs and mech parts though now they were caught in a pincer between six mechs who were slowly tearing down the pair of assault mechs. He sent only a single word in response, “inbound” and fed telemetry to his tanks.

The LRMs came down like rain shearing the arm off one wyvern midair and faltering the press of the enemies on the atlases for a moment. It was all he needed and prepared to send a message to go forward when he saw the blizzards race past him. They were not going to risk losing the opening the assault mechs had made by asking permission first. Smiling Anton pushed his mech up to a running speed. He lacked the long range weapons necessary to engage at this range with his best being the AC/10s but we was not going to throw shells away at this range and his tanks could protect themselves and would be at the city just behind him anyway. It was going to have some fun on his own.