At some point, the thin hint of wind coming through the blanket of snow wasn't all that she heard.  A Battlemech is a loud thing, a weighty block of metal and hissing actuators and clanking feet.  One might've ran by her unnoticed, but a lance?

Ingrid's head snapped to attention the moment she heard something that could've possibly sounded out of the normal soundscape, and her hand went into position immediately, hovering over the [i]Ostroc's[/i] ignition.  With comms blacked out and people waiting for her signal to fire, the only other hint she'd get is if the Fists caught them first.  A false start would've ruined the point of this gambit entirely.  She waited, and waited a painful amount of time - that noise earlier was the crunch of ice, and with ears trained entirely to it, she recognized it being repeated, and by more than one pair of feet!  The enemy had finally arrived, and their engagement was about to begin!

...and Ingrid held.

The sound repeated more, and she could hear the clatter of their feet beyond the crunch.  She had to hold.

This surprise's efficacy was predicated entirely on how well Daschke knew her opponent, how they would act, and their machines.  They had a [i]Hunchback,[/i] flank speed of 64 kmh, and they presented slow targets, possibly only slower with the caution needed to cross a narrow bridge.  They wouldn't let a [i]Crusader[/i] take point, that'd be a terrible idea if they weren't expecting air support, and the weather in the mountains made that unlikely.  The Fists were barbarians, but she had seen the footage they had released enough times to at least understand them as skilled thugs.  They were going to move close together to present as little opportunity to cut into their formation as possible.  That was textbook 'mech warfare.  She's even seen pirates from Circinus understand this, and those people didn't even count as real 'mech jockeys.

Through the muffling cover and through the noise of her thoughts, she heard a second pair.  One more and she'd have her guess validated, as much as it could be.

It'd be like this.  [i]Firestarter[/i] and [i]Hunchback[/i] in front, that was no surprise.  They required as much ground as possible to keep in range.  The [i]Crusader[/i] would be behind them...around 60 meters she imagined, the center point to their formation and the anchor which they'd meter their speed on.

She heard the third pair of feet, faintly.  Her thumb tensed, but remained arched.

Then it'd have to be the [i]Panther[/i] holding the rear as fire support.  She wanted to imagine it being the least likely to engage directly, being the slightest bit harder to repair with their distance from the Combine, and deathly weak in melee.  That'd be it.  FS9, HBK, CRD, PNT.  That exact order.

This didn't matter, beyond her choice of immediate target.  The question lay solely in their speed...which, imagining the humanoid gait of the [i]Firestarter[/i] and her memories of it in pirate hands, she could put that first pair of feet to it with near certainty...and how fast her own 'mech, the venerable [i]Susser Todd[/i], would be able to move from a complete cold start.  Four seconds.  She just needed to end up within a close enough distance with her second or so of surprise.

Ingrid's world froze for a moment, beyond the growing rumble of the approaching lance.  Her hand remained steady.

All of it came down to a rhythm.  She'd just enter at the same tempo...

...exactly then.

The engine kicking on pushed a dozen actuators into test-firing and made her mech shudder, a byproduct of safety mechanisms detecting her off-balance pose, and the inside of the cockpit flashed with light as everything came to life in quick succession.  Ingrid [i]floored[/i] the gas, willing her 'mech through her connection to push itself back into a standing gait as fast as it could, and it all paid with a perfect timing!

From the outsiders' perspective, a bank of freshly avalanched snow shook with unnatural vibrations before falling away entirely, an olive green heavy battlemech appearing from its white hold and heading right onto them!

At about this time, as per the request of someone back at base, the [i]Ostroc's[/i] speakers roared with a violent riff as an [url=https://youtu.be/mVurA44hwiw] ancient Terran musical piece[/url] blared out at maximum volume.  It wasn't Ingrid's taste but she figured it'd help with being distracting.

Her guess of marching order was incorrect in more than one way, the second of sighting she had initially landing on the [i]Panther[/i], but she found her real prize was about where she figured.  She lined up everything she had onto the Firestarter, and let loose in a flare of light and heat!