[center][color=Silver][b]M I S S I O N S T A R T[/b][/color][/center] [b]Western Continent, Espia NPDRE Outpost F-10 18 April, 3030 0500 Hours[/b] [color=OrangeRed]"Come on, you lazy pieces of trash!"[/color] Captain Yorgei Park shouted through his megaphone, his electronically-amplified voice barely audible over the rumble of huge diesel engines, the rhythmic stomping of IndustrialMechs, and the bustle of dozens of soldiers and laborers hurrying through their duties. [color=Orangered]"Move your asses! We've got sixty minutes to get this shipment on the road, or each one of you will be getting ten lashes!"[/color] A few of the unranked laborers cringed, particularly the ones who had been 'volunteered' in the wake of the coup. Park scowled as he watched them scuttle about, only the higher-ranking soldiers daring to meet his gaze as he surveyed the loading of the supply convoy. On the southern end of the continent, the siege of Yuzhny Portveyn had stalled, much to the annoyance of Premier Federov. Governor Xiu and a bare handful of his old cabinet had fled the capital and rallied a small number of loyal soldiers to protect them. While the loyalists had no chance of ever expanding outside of the south, they were fighting fiercely, and the Espian Guard was already stretched precariously thing keeping Balya Gora, Geum Haebyon, and Nui Awa at bay. The Guard needed to crack Xiu's forces soon, before they could become too dug in to remove without a bloodbath. This supply convoy, Park's superiors had told him, was crucial to the push that would break Yuzhny Portveyn. With it, the Guard forces in the south would have everything they needed to wipe Xiu's resistance out once and for all. Without it, they would have to abandon the city, at least until they could devote enough of the Guard from the other cities to attack again in force. The new regime wanted results, and they were willing to pay handsomely to those who brought them. Park didn't know where Premier Federov and his cronies had gotten this new influx of C-Bills, and he didn't particularly care. If there was a fortune to be made by showing he could get the job done, he'd get the job done without thinking twice. Off to Park's left, a laborer driving a forklift slammed on its brakes, lurching to a halt just before it would have careened into a [i]Powerman[/i] IndustrialMech carrying a palette full of ammunition cases. As the IndustrialMech pilot and forklift driver began shouting at each other, Park strode toward them, unlooping the long black leather bullwhip from his left hip. [color=OrangeRed]"Stupid oaf!"[/color] he shouted, lashing out at the forklift driver, the whip cutting a long, deep gash across the laborer's face with a crack like a rifle. With a scream and a spurt of blood, the driver toppled from the seat of the forklift, his hands trying to hold his ruined face together. [color=OrangeRed]"You nearly caused him to drop that ammunition and killed us all!"[/color] As the bleeding man ran towards the first aid tent, Park shouted after him in disgust, [color=OrangeRed]"First aid is coming out of your weekly pay! Now, someone who can drive a forklift, get on and do this pig's job for him!"[/color] Sheepishly, another laborer climbed onto the forklift, and Park cursed under his breath. How was he going to prove himself worthy to the new regime, when he was in command of such incompetent human garbage? [hr] Outpost F-10 was one of a dozen or so temporary facilities quickly put together by the Espian Guard in the wake of the coup, meant to help coordinate the movement of forces between the four major cities. A row of pre-fabricated warehouses, a handful of quonset huts, and row upon row of blocky storage containers to be distributed between convoys. At the heart of the base was a pre-fab headquarters, a combination of administrative offices, briefing rooms, armory, operations room, communications array, and sensor hub. At the top of the building was a large radar dish, which rotated in place searching for signals. Surrounding the bulk of the base was a ten-meter wall, thick slabs of ferrocrete meant to withstand all but the heaviest of enemy fire. At the four corners of the wall, and on either side of the large front gate, were automated turrets, each sporting a pair of lasers to damage incoming vehicles, and a .50 caliber machine gun to rip apart human targets. These turrets were programmed to fire at anything and anyone that came within 300 meters of the outpost without the correct IFF codes, and were all powered by a single portable fusion generator, which hummed and thrummed at the southern end of the complex. Around this wall were lines of razor wire, and a hundred meters of torn-up earth, all of which was riddled with mines. Most were small anti-personnel mines, but among them were a handful of anti-materiel mines that could rip through a vehicle or cripple the leg of a Battlemech. Around this perimeter, a quartet of tanks rumbled two-by-two in a wide patrol circuit. Each pair consisted of a [url=https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Scorpion_(Combat_Vehicle)]Scorpion[/url] and a [url=https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Striker_(Combat_Vehicle)]Striker[/url], both light tanks that individually had relatively anemic firepower, but acting together had a mix of ballistic and missile weaponry to ward off a light or medium Battlemech. The outpost was a hornet's nest, and should those defenses fail, reinforcements were only a radio call away. A few kilometers away, huge shapes lumbered through the morning mist towards the outpost, their intent to storm into that hornet's nest and break it wide open. [color=Olive]"We're approaching the edge of the enemy's sensor range,"[/color] Colonel Gaius Wayne called to the Green Knights over his comms from the Mobile HQ. [color=Olive]"Activate the ECM and begin your approach. Good hunting and godspeed, Green Knights. The operation is a go."[/color]