[IC] Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

[Letter Bee]

((Collab with @AndyC .))

So Raven was walking to his Colonel's new quarters, asking through the intercom, "Hey, Colonel; mind if we have a chat, just like old times?"

Old times that would never return, old times that were gone forever. But the Colonel had dreamt of being a hero and despite everything that's happened, he managed to make some progress towards being one. So if let in, the Mechwarrior would say, "I can't stop thinking about what happened to that town. I also can't stop thinking about how our Lancemates don't care about the innocent people who've died not just in Keahi, but literally on this entire planet due to that crisis that a lot of ordinary people - Not just us, not just fighters - are caught up in. We were there when mercenaries proved themselves greater heroes than most standing military forces. I was there when you dreamt of becoming heroes - ideal warriors - just like the Kell Hounds, and that dream is actually close to being fulfilled."

He breathed in, then out, before saying, "But the others don't care. I think of them as friends and kin, but they still don't give a dang about the local population, including our employer at times. And that might lead to trouble."

@Letter Bee

”You’re making an awful lot of assumptions about your lancemates, Rivers,” Colonel Wayne responded, giving his old comrade a hard glare. “Having some gallows humor or responding to comms chatter isn’t the same thing as not caring about what’s going on. These are the same lancemates who risked their lives to save the South Nui Awa dam. That had the potential to make the massacre at Keahi look tame, and do you know how many civilians ended up KIA during the fighting there? Hell, do you know how many civilians have died as a direct result of any of the Green Knights on this deployment?”

The Colonel didn’t wait for River to answer. “Zero. That’s because we are not the Crimson Fists, and we are not some thrown-together band of bloody-minded sociopaths. Daschke, Tarak, Ziska, Saarinen, I didn’t hire them just because they can shoot straight. I hired them because I trusted that they could get the job done and get it done right. And so far, I haven’t been proven wrong about any of them.”

“Lately, though, I’ve been having my doubts about you, Raven,” Gaius continued, turning for a moment to gather himself. Experience aside, it was never easy to come down on a long-standing friend. “After your outburst during the supply raid, I was a hair’s breadth of pulling you from active duty. I might have done it, if we hadn’t been in such a desperate situation. Since then, you’ve had more than a few breaches of op-sec and comm-sec. And now you’re questioning the integrity of the people fighting alongside you.”

It wasn’t an easy thing to say, but the Colonel came out with it.

“You’re emotionally compromised,” he said. “I understand why, don’t get me wrong. But you’re too close to this one, and it’s causing you to lose your composure. It’s not wrong to care about the situation, or about our people. But if you get too wound up in your emotions, you’ll be at risk of becoming a liability.”

Raven nodded, and said, “Understandable. Then, in that case, it might be best if I request to be pulled away from active duty, assuming I am not as necessary as I used to be.”

He then followed up with, “I managed to rally myself in the Dam mission. But then this happened; I did my part to secure a win, but all victory brought was a slight boost and then I was empty again. But now I’m tired and weary of more than a decade of combat. Colonel… Old friend, we’ve fought against pirates and slavers and that damn Marian Hegemony and now there’s a new war, and then all this happened. And now my wife and son are lost and so are most of our civilian contingent and I - After this crisis is done, I’m quitting Piloting; if Andrew is still alive, he can have the Shadow Hawk, and if he is… Gone, Sunny, or any of the next generation can have it.”

Raven’s shoulders slumped down, his face slackened, and his head bowed down, all bravado collapsing as he said, “I’m out of gas.”

”Easy, Rivers,” Gaius responded, ”I said I was considering pulling you, not ordering it. We’re all tired, we’re all strung out, and we still have a goddamn army to fight our way through before our business is done here on Espia. But we’ve gotten three big wins against our enemies since the start of the coup, and plans for another one in the works. We’re going to get our people back. We’re going to put the rest of the Crimson Fists in the dirt, along with what’s left of the Heavenly Sword and Premier Federov if we can pull it off. And we’re going to see our business through to the end. Once that’s done, then we’ll discuss what role you want in the Knights, or if you want to go your own way.”

In truth, the Colonel had been getting worn thin himself. While their situation was far better than when they’d started, they were still a far cry from toppling the NPDRE, and the Crimson Fists still had them outnumbered two to one even without the entirety of the Espian Guards backing them up. If Federov, Malenkov, or the so-called ‘Crimson King’ managed to find their base and launch a coordinated attack, there wasn’t much the Green Knights could do from being wiped out. To say nothing of what he could do if their enemies decided to execute their hostages in Fort Tie Shan. Still, brooding about it wasn’t going to produce any solutions; the only way out was to push forward.

”I want you to talk to Doc Yuri about combat fatigue and follow her instructions,” Colonel Wayne said. ”Get some rest, clear your head. We’re still going to need you in the fights to come, but only once you’ve got your head back in the game. In the meantime, we’re going to get the Shadow Hawk repaired…and maybe give it some extra punch, depending on what those junkyard scrappers manage to salvage from our most recent kills.”

Raven could only look up and smile and say, “Done. I’ll hop to it at once; sorry for troubling you.”

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I just have to wait.

[Pilatus]

Merry-Go-Round

The ride back was mostly quiet in the Merry-Go-Round. Sure, they’d scored a solid victory in the pass, but that was what Merry did, she won. The sideshow lance of Crimson Fists they had put down were just more tally marks to be scratched on the hull. Merry had clipped bigger game plenty of times, many of which the crew had long forgotten about. Takka drummed his fingers on the side of the column as he drove. He thought it was amusing how the mech jocks thought she needed to be “defended” because the Crusader was packing some inferno warheads. They didn’t need to be saved, particularly not by that bullet soaker Ramrod or crackpot pirate Ziska. At least Marit was easy to look at, but her boyfriend in the Marauder could eat a bag- they definitely didn’t need his help. His lip turned up indignantly as he thought about the rest of the Knights. Everyone wanted to throttle Raven, but the true subject of Takka’s ire was dancing merrily ahead in the Phoenix Hawk oblivious to the young ginger’s hateful stare. Jumping in the way of Merry’s gun barrel wasn’t healthy for most and that clown’s dimwitted interference was gonna cost him, just like it had cost Merry. By the time they had reached Uncle Mack’s, he had worked out what he was going to do and justified that whatever punishment came down as a result, was just going to be worth it. He grinded his teeth together in a lopsided grimace of restrained glee and sadism.

Right under his feet was the crew escape hatch. It had never been used because neither they nor Merry retreated from shit, but it had a bank vault style lever meant to be kicked by the driver in the event of a bail out. Making sure that the hatch was functional was part of his pre-op checklist as the driver, so he knew that it would work and as long as Merry was parked and completely shut down, no alarm would sound. As they crawled through the scrapyard out of the tunnel, he watched Tarak ease his mech into its assigned bay and where he normally would have pulled straight into the Von Luckner’s “reserved” space, he instead stopped and reversed in so Merry’s nose was pointed directly towards the mechbays. “Thought I felt a little vibration from the drive again, Cap.” He said to Aroxy over his shoulder, daintily engaging the tracks in the opposite direction and craning his neck at the backup camera like an old lady backing in a Rotunda at Discount Dan’s. “Just gonna park her so the tech pit has an easier time.” He heard Aroxy grunt a tired approval while Helma groaned at having to spend an extra minute inside. Ansel seemed to be nearly asleep. Everything was set.

As soon as he heard the main hatch creak and turn over with its usual thud against the hull, Takka jammed his boot against the emergency door lever, hiding its metallic release with the sound from overhead. As the rest of the crew wearily climbed out, he was already on his feet, sprinting like a shot across Uncle Mack’s. Like some feral creature, it had only taken him one or two seconds to bound out from under the tank and as they had drove along he had been quietly alternating his feet on the pedals, keeping them as stretched and limber as he could. He didn’t want to cramp up and now it was paying off. He wasn’t even tired and his feet carried him with a hate-fueled quickness that nearly surprised him. He could see Tarak and his entourage of misfits happily high-fiving and rejoicing in his return and he ran harder, leaning into it. Someone shouted and he could hear the attention shifting towards him, but it didn’t matter. He was nearly on top of them when one of Tarak's followers finally noticed him. The little girl was holding some ridiculous pink boombox, but in her shock at seeing him bearing down on top of her, she dropped it right in his path.

Unable to stop and running far too fast to avoid it, Takka desperately lifted his stride to clear the radio with his next step and he probably would have made it if it weren’t for the restriction of his heavy winter pants. His booted toe clipped the pink box just barely, but his second footfall clamored right over it, switching it on and sending him lunging directly into Tarak like a linebacker.

In a flurry of rabid cursing, sweat and spit...

The brawl was on.

And from one of Tarak’s cursed mixtapes, stuck inside, the volume jammed high from impact- The radio played…

[Abstract Proxy]

Ziska

"Hey, Ziska! Back in one piece for a change?” Marit hollered with a broad grin on her face. ”You’re awesome by the way, have I told you that? When we liberate a suitable watering hole, remind me I owe you some drinks for today. The TAG was on point."

"You can't get rid of me that easily, Marit," Ziska said, escaping Dr. Yuri's grasp in a sudden flurry of motion. Any sign of weariness or fresh pain vanished from her face in a heartbeat, as she focused all her thoughts on matters of merriment. She hadn't survived fighting off two heavier BattleMechs to die of boredom. Drinks. She wanted to drink. She wanted to party. And she wanted to...fight?

"But please, tell me more about how awesome I am, it has been too long since I received an appropriate measure of compliments, given my peerless reputation in this undoubtedly fine and heroic unit."

Matching Marit's step and avoiding the doctor's growing scowl, Ziska wrapped an arm good-naturedly over Marit's shoulder, taking small advantage in having to support less of her own weight, "Say...where is everyone else? We need some drinks to celebrate our successful mission, no?"

[Starlance]

”Hel no, I won’t be responsible for that rising to your head. You want more, you gotta earn them. No freebies in our line of work.” Marit grinned, craning her neck back toward the Doc to give her a thumbs up behind the Raven driver’s back. Not that she expected to be able to keep Ziska from doing stupid things, but it was the thought that counted, right?

”Might even be some silver lining to losing your ‘Mech’s arm, now they get to mount the one from that salvaged Raven and you get to smack the Fire Witch with pieces of her own lance the next time she crawls out of her den.” Marit grinned, imagining the verbose war criminal seething.

”Think I saw Rivers heading to the Colonel’s shack? The rest probably went to get chow before the debriefing. Maybe a nap if-” She began to answer when a commotion from the ‘Mech bays’ direction loud enough to be heard made her pause. ”Vad fan? Sound like your kind of party?”

[Th3King0fChaos]

Scrapyard Brawl

---

---

The Phoenix Hawk was scorched and burned, the once white and gray paint that covered the machine was now marked with black scorch marks on the back and across the armor. The machine whined and groaned as it had been put through much punishment that it was not ready to forget. Yet it carried on, finally into warmer pastures as the scrapyard that the Green Knights had taken up to be their base of operations was now in sight. Even though it was ram shack in comparison to the many more illustrious places the Green Knights had found themselves in before this entire endeavor. There was a faint feeling of comfort from it, at least it was not in some dark cave that could barely keep the heat in.

As the Phoenix Hawk finally moved into the scrapyard, the great machine seemed to sigh as it began to lean back into its' bay. the great machine almost looked to have slumped down once the reactor was shut down. The cool air began to warm quickly around the machine as it seemed to release all the stress it had accumulated within the past day. The man within the machine let out a sigh as he adjusted his helmet and began to gather his things before leaving the great machine.

Tarak took hold of his bag as he began to pass it through the hole where another person stood to take hold of it and pull it out before assisting Tarak with his own exit. His size has been an issue in several machines, often many had to be modified to fit him, and the Phoenix Hawk was no exception. Tarak shimmied his arm and shoulder through first, then his head, then his other shoulder and arm, shifting and switching till he was able to slip out far enough to finally yank himself free.

Once out, Tarak sighed and began to head down from the scaffolding, beginning to scratch at his neck as he began answering the off question here and there as he made his way down, but kept it light. It was not until he made it to ground level the itching stopped. Tarak's eyes flashed and flickered, he felt incredibly uneasy, this never happened to him before. The itching normally required him to go to great lengths to stop if not wait for it to subside after an hour. Yet in this moment, it was gone.

Then, Tarak felt what could be described as a baseball bat slam him directly in the stomach and bring him down to the ground, knocking the wind out of him. Through gritted teeth and shock, he began to yell out himself as he took to defending himself before lashing out at his assailant.

Most of the Misfits were in shock, many watched in horror as they didn't even think something like this would happen, not now, not in the middle of a mech bay.

Yet some soon began to get their head wrapped around the situation.

Many stayed out, some assuming this was some misunderstanding or that one of them deserved what was to come.

Others instead brought themselves back and were not going to let it stand.

The music blared out louder and louder making it hard to tell who was yelling, or why.

[Abstract Proxy]

"Think I saw Rivers heading to the Colonel’s shack? The rest probably went to get chow before the debriefing. Maybe a nap if-” She began to answer when a commotion from the ‘Mech bays’ direction loud enough to be heard made her pause. ”Vad fan? Sound like your kind of party?"

---

Ziska

Ziska paused, leaning against Marit as she listened. Music blared, but it didn't sound like any normal sort of party. She heard grunting. She heard shouting. She heard crashing and smashing sounds. It sounded like battle. It sounded like fighting. Ziska knew the sounds well. She had fought her way across the dive bars of the Inner Sphere and Periphery. Pugilism had always been an outlet. A way to relieve the anger that she felt. The frustrations that gathered over the long, boring weeks of garrison duty. Fighting for their lives, had precious little time for R&R. And Ziska realized that she missed it.

Marit was right. It was a brawl. Exactly her sort of party. Ziska could feel her blood heating up. It was dumb, pointless even, to fight with friends and comrades. And yet, violence was often the solution, within the lance as outside of it.

Half dragging Marit, Ziska ambled forward with surprising speed, “Come on, Marit! Rivers and the Colonel can wait, we've a grand ball to attend, and we can't miss an invitation so kindly delivered.”

The scattered sea of swinging souls made identification difficult. Ziska didn't care. One enemy was as good as another. Laughing, Ziska shoved Marit gently away, ducking under a wild blow that sailed over her head from her left. Her hands rose in a flash and gone was any weariness that she had carried.

Her right hand measured the distance, darting forward and catching the bloodied astech over his cheek. He helped with pain, hurtling another desperate haymaker at Ziska. Dancing just out of range, she stepped back in and hammered her fist over his nose. Blood poured from his nose and the young man collapsed onto his knees, raising a hand fearfully, muttering something about giving up.

Ziska smiled, lightly patting him on the head, as if petting a favored dog. Engrossed in her theatrics, Ziska didn't see the bottle that crashed into her shoulder and the oil covered woman that followed.

Caught between her strong arms, Ziska sprawled, fighting to remain standing as she pulled and pushed her new foe towards the ground.

She saw another shape moving towards her and shouted to Marit, "Giggles, 2 o'clock, cover me!"

[Letter Bee]

Raven Rivers

Raven was just headed outside, barely a few steps away from the Colonel's office, when the brawl broke out, a brawl between the Tankers and Tarak's own band of groupies for reasons he did not want to know about. Seriously, just because he lost his marbles did not mean everyone else had to lose theirs'!

He then commed the Colonel, saying, "I'm getting Colonel Dalton and as many Infantry as I can commandeer on short notice. This has to be nipped in the bud - I'll talk to Doc Yuri later after additional combat fatigue and injuries."

Before this entire war started, the Green Knights had been on garrison duty, putting down brawls and riots with the minimum of cruelty and heavy-handedness, unlike their Capellan paymasters. Raven had, before things went to hell, been a good soldier and this incident brought back some of his learned instincts. The moment he made contact with any squads of Infantry close to the brawl site/hangars, he would shout, "Cordon off the hangar bay! Repeat, cordon off the hangar bay! This is Pilot Rivers, requesting Sgt. Dalton and all Infantry to prepare for riot control; anyone with any experience as riot police is to step forward and help me restore order - We cannot allow this to spread!"

Raven knew no one respected him now that he was losing his edge, his sanity, and anything that made him 'serviceable'. But that was no reason for him not to try and do his part; he just had to remember his lessons and make the right call. No fancy gimmicks such as turning off the lights or using the sprinklers. He and Sgt. Dalton and any Infantry with riot police experience will form up around the edges of the mech bays, then begin the process of restoring order by slowly closing in, whatever improvised shields and blunt weapons they had up, and demanding that the riot be stopped 'In the Name of the Colonel'. If they had spare Anti-Riot weapons such as sticky foam, sound guns, or anything rescued from the initial escape from the Crimson Fists, those would be used.

He'd let Sgt. Dalton be the carrot to his stick as they put down the brawlers; let them hate, as long as they knew that there was still some fight left in him. Right now, Raven was going to resolve this swiftly, strongly, and with as little pain as he could bring.

"Stop this at once!" he'd only bark out once before working with the Infantry to put down (non-lethally) the brawling crews, which he realized were divided among partisan lines between Tank Crew and Mech Crew (and Pilots). Then he'd turn to Sgt. Dalton and say, "You're neutral in this and everyone respects you; what should we say to make them stop?"

@Abstract Proxy@Th3King0fChaos@Starlance@Pilatus

[Starlance]

”Wait, hold up, let me catch up you magnificent lunatic.” Marit protested as she staggered after Ziska, surprised by the sudden shift from being weighed down to being dragged along. The scene that greeted them was about as could be expected if too many fighting folk live in tight quarters for too long. They could have at least saved the fighting for bad times when it was understandable. ”Is it so hard to simply bask in the victory and keep all your teeth? We should- What? Em- Ziska, NO! For Gods’ sake.” She should’ve anticipated that, that was on her. She jumped to the nearest person who wasn’t Ziska and tried to pull them away from the fight, not feeling like getting socked in the head by the madwoman in her blood haze. ”Save it for the Fists!”
“Here’s a fist.” Someone she didn’t recognize in the melee retorted and clocked her in the cheek.

Marit wasn’t good at fighting with her hands, as an oh-for-two score in the Scrap Yard illustrated. It was one thing to wield a bar stool like a bat to even out the odds when some spaceport worker was talking shit, but such tactics couldn’t be applied to the situation at hand because unlike the random peasants in a bar, broken ribs and noses were a concern here. Still, a hit like that did release some small reservoir of Viking blood into her system. Briefly seeing red and subconsciously noting Ziska’s callout, Ziska’s phrasing switching on the fighting autopilot in Marit’s mind, she took advantage of being grounded and latched onto the leg of her assailant, lifting it up and toppling him to clear a way for her to intercept Ziska’s oncoming problem with a blow to the gut followed up by an elbow to the back of the head.

In the corner of her vision she noticed a crowd of spectators assembling. ”Whatever you’re gonna do, do it fast.” She replied to Rivers’ voice, earning herself another bite of a knuckle sandwich with a loud *clack* of her teeth for momentarily dropping her guard.

[Pilatus]

Jonathan McCord

He hated the tunnels. Miles on miles of the Maruader’s lights painting the same picture of unremembered ferrocrete, cracked pavement and in some places, solid, mineral rock. Occasionally, he would pass a dingy sign or some graffiti, maybe even a stretch of warped railway. It was easy to remember, because there was nothing else to look at. A while back he thought he saw a mildewed SLDF banner painted in the corner of a large switchback and gave a huff of amusement before glancing down at the route plotter next to his leg as the meters continued to tick away slowly. Not a lot easily bothered him in the pilot seat during his career as mechwarrior, but these tunnels just didn’t agree with his blood. He could feel it in the controls as well. Ossie didn’t care for it at all. She was an open field hunter and these subterranean routes were nothing more than a narrow cage. Not that he was expecting to draw down on anyone while several stories below ground, but the monotony was nigh unbearable. Nothing to keep you sharp or weary, just walking and walking and unfortunately, plenty of time to think.

For a while he had thought about what he could have done had he gone back down the mountain and tracked the Warhammer that separated from the group. Cassandra had technically given him an “order” to follow the Green Knights back to Uncle Mack’s, but ultimately she wasn’t his commander, just his benefactor and he was pretty confident he could have justified his position particularly with bagging another mech. It had a head start, but the tracks showed clearly that it was wounded and its dragging stride was like blood in the water. He thought about it several times. That pilot was the last survivor of the massacre and he had let him slink away. Sure, that guy could have made it wherever he was going, but there was also a chance he didn’t. Then there was the Mechbusters. Jon knew he got pretty lucky with that initial snapshot, but sometimes he could just feel, even before it came out of the barrel, that it was a strike. That would be some BattleROM footage worth watching later. The one that got away though, was going to spell trouble. He failed that objective. There needed to be no survivors. Granted, no one even knew they were going to be there, but that was just how it went sometimes.

He thought about his dad most of all and it was hard going for a while as his thoughts darkened. Cassandra kept a private line open with Comstar, but there had still been no news, though he wondered if she found out anything on her visit today. She would have checked for him. She said as much. Cosmopolitan as she was, she kept her word. At present, he had more than enough saved from this job to settle up what was left of the debts, the family business and keep the farmland- He just had to give off this God-forsaken shithole planet. The FPA, the NPDRE, the Guard, the Crimson Fists… they could all do a flying backflip from the hotel office as far as he was concerned. He started to add the Green Knights to that list, but stopped short as again. Marit, as usual, was the first to drift through his mind. It felt like years since they’d met in the cave and then the raid on the dam, but that was just how war and fighting weighed on a man. He considered himself, now past the age of his dad when he was born and he wondered how his ancestors would see him as a man and as a warrior and he was never satisfied. Seventy-five ton steps pressed beneath him.

When the ramp for Uncle Mack’s came up, he got an odd feeling, like entering a room and finding a monitor unexpectedly turned on. The doors widened into the clear night sky above as the Maruader stepped up, the angle steep enough that he had to lift his chin slightly to look over the A-frame through the top of glass. Then he heard it: Shouts, screams and the unmistakable raucous of an excited gathering. The cockpit cleared the threshold and for a moment, he legitimately wondered if he had taken a wrong turn somehow, but no, there were the Knights’ mechs, surrounded by absolute bedlam, right at the foot of the Phoenix Hawk. “What in the fuck…” He murmured. His floodlights cast hard over the throng of chaos and Jon’s unseen face looked back in bewilderment as some shielded their eyes while others seemed completely uncaring or unaware. He looked around. Rivers was visible, mouth running, which was no surprise and again confirmed he was in the right place. Sgt Dalton was visible as well, along with a contingent of his platoon and appeared to have a man by the shirt collar in each hand tossing them around like pool toys. Jon shook his head and made ready for shut-down. It was beyond time for a cigarette.