[color=76D0FF]”Understood.”[/color] She replied to Raven’s clarification before the first distant detonation. Marit directed the rangefinder in the town’s direction, but even if it wasn’t too far away, LRMs would do just as much damage to the town as the suicide bombers. She almost turned to make for the city on autopilot, but that would’ve been a mistake. If they ignored the attack on the town, those people would die. If they broke off to try and protect it, they [i]could[/i] succeed in protecting both the dam and the town, with a probability of that happening somewhere between ‘tiny’ and ‘none’. But if they tried to help the town and the fanatics took out the dam, then everyone in the town would die, they would die, and who knew how many more would be killed by the lack of power. No heating, no fresh or running water, no power in hospitals, emergency services unable to communicate... Fuck. Her father once explained this to her as ‘calculus of war’ - Sacrifice 100 over here to save 1000 over there. If by the end of it more people survived than died, you did okay. It was the best they could do given the situation, but that didn’t mean one had to be happy about it. Knowing they were driving the Heavenly Sword maniacs to desperation was a small comfort for the price the locals would pay, and not even that surprising. Three ‘Mechs, a tank and a few squads short of an infantry company of the meanest fighting bastards within five lightyears. If you were facing that in a truck, you had to be afraid unless you were functionally braindead, although the average Heavenly Sword schmuck was approaching that definition.

Seeing how much the Heavenly Swords hated him, Marit considered asking Family Man if he needed help, but stopped halfway to the PTT. He'd probably spent more time in a ‘Mech than she had as a sapient being, he knew she was there and that she had almost a quarter of his 'Mech's tonnage worth of undamaged armor. If he needed help, he'd ask. Instead, Marit focused on offense. She started pacing her launchers, creating a continuous hail of ordnance, but taking care not to aim too close to Family man or in the 180° arc around his current heading. By only using both LRM 10 launchers and two medium lasers, and with the river’s help, Archie was sinking more heat than he produced and at that rate, she had some 220 seconds of fire, with 10 missiles every five seconds. Fortunately, unlike the depot raid, there weren’t supposed to be any nasty late-game surprises this time around according to the briefing, so she didn’t see any reason to conserve ammunition, aside from making what they had last longer than three sorties. She caught herself with the heretical thought that Archie was better at this than a Catapult. True, with 15 heat sinks, four of them in the legs and a smaller profile, it had its strengths, but with the same laser armament, two LRM 15s and only half the missile capacity, it’d be dry in a little over half the time.