Ciudad del Mar, Buena
Periphery March, Federated Commonwealth
19 August 3050
There had been surprisingly little opposition as the 28th Dragoon Cluster landed on Buena. That might have been because their inital landing
site was near the planetary capital in the northern hemisphere rather than near Fort Buena, which was on a completely different continent and halfway around
the planet. The Fort, which was closely associated with a major training facility, or so Star Colonel Kayla understood, would be far better
protected.
Oh, the militia had done their best, but despite air support that had made a daring sub-orbital loop of the planet to attack her dropships
during disembarkation, they had melted in the face of her Dragoons. After the hectic pace of the invasion so far for the Cluster such an easy landing had been
a relief, she thought, sitting on the foot of her Stormcrow and examining the reports from units that had fanned out through the capital to secure the centre
of government and the HPG station. She supposed that given the supposed neutrality of ComStar it made sense to place the station well away from a military base
where raids might inadvertantly endanger it, but it left the installation pathetically easy to capture, far more simple than the reports from Poulsbo had
described. After hearing about that battle, she'd been careful to carry out aerial reconnaissence of ComStar installations before sending in the
troops.
"Star Colonel?" someone called and she looked up to see Star Captain Wesley, one of her infantrymen, approaching. His towering Fang
battle armour seemed out of place even to Kayla, compared to the smaller Elemental suits she was more familiar with. "Star Colonel, we may have a
problem."
Kayla frowned at him. "What sort of problem?" she asked him suspiciously.
Wesley pointed with one hand at the wing of the aerospace fighter that had crashed near their landing site. "That white horse head is
the same marking that Iota Galaxy found on the Mechs they fought on Althastan, suggesting that this is a regiment of the same nature - a frontline force rather
than the training unit we expected to find. The captured records that have been deciphered by our scientists did not mention another such unit here, but if
there is one then it could be one of their regimental combat teams."
"That would be unfortunate," Kayla admitted. The initial waves of the invasion had concentrated several frontline clusters to deal
with large troop concentrations such as regimental combat teams. "What are these troops called?"
"The Lyran Guards," Wesley said. "Supposedly one of the better formations of troops in the Lyran army."
Kayla grimaced. "I hate doing this," she confided and then opened a channel to the ships in orbit. "Put me through to Star
Colonel Hayden." It took only a moment for the commander of the garrison cluster scheduled to take over on Buena once she had secured it to respond.
"I want the 112th Garrison Cluster and every aerospace fighter on the Pompeii and the Rickenbacker deployed in support," she ordered. The dropship
Edward Rickenbacker was one of a handful of fighter carriers built on the same hull as the standard troop transports used by the Star Adders. Between that and
the fighters from the Volga-class transport that had carried them to Buena, she would almost treble the fighters available to her 28th Dragoon Cluster and the
112th. "In fact, order the Pompeii to make any preparations necessary to provide supporting fire from orbit. It may not be necessary, but it would seem
that the defenders have been reinforced."
"How bad is the situation, Star Colonel?" Hayden asked seriously.
"We could be facing a full regimental combat team," admitted Kayla. "The casualties from confronting such a force with a
single cluster would be unacceptable."
Hayden considered his options. "They have not fought against a garrison force before," he noted, "So they will have no way of
knowing the exact capabilities of my command. What is your plan?"
"Attrition," Kayla explained. "It will be necessary to thin their numbers significantly before a decisive engagement. I want
you to fight a hit and run campaign against their forces on the Dominika continent. Ideally, I want you to draw them away from their base at Fort Buena and so
that I can seize it with my Cluster. At that point, they will lack the logistical base necessary to continue the campaign."
The other Star Colonel was silent for a moment as he considered the situation. "Their main base is located on the eastern coast, which
is not the best terrain for tanks. I will land at their western port and secure the city. They will have the opportunity to attack what appears to be an
isolated garrison force. Once they are moving across the continent, you should be able to carry out a quick orbital hop and block them from their
base."
"It has the virtue of simplicity," agreed Kayla.
"All good plans are simple," Hayden told her. A few years her elder, he sometimes had the bad habit of talking to her as if she was
fresh from the Sibko. She had thought that she'd gotten rid of that habit after he was retired to a backwater posting. Unfortunately, it seemed that the
backwater had been Sinclair and he'd won command of a Garrison Cluster. Kayla had been looking forward to leaving him here on Buena, but after the pounding
that his Cluster was probably going to take in this operation, another Cluster would be assigned to that and he'd remain in the Delta Galaxy
reserve.
"I was thinking that you might remember the plan for more than five minutes if it was simple," she told him half-seriously.
"You are forty now, and I hear that the mind goes when you get old."
"I am only thirty eight years old," Hayden lied. He'd been claiming that for the last three years, despite the evidence to the
contrary.
Dominika, Buena
Periphery March, Federated Commonwealth
26 August 3050
"Sir," the intelligence officer reported to General Kaulkas. "There are two dropships moving towards Fort Buena from the east.
Their current path will have them overflying it and landing somewhere near your position. We think that they've realised that we're
here."
Kaulkas sighed. The opportunity to catch the Clans unawares had seemed too good to be true and the last few days had been ample proof of
this.
For the last week, the fast moving Clan tanks and helicopters had been carrying out an exemplary mobile campaign against his force. Oh, their
numbers were being nibbled away at but the the casualties were painfully high - only yesterday a pair of the helicopters had caught one of his heavy tank
battalions struggling through a swampy lakeside that had looked like perfectly firm ground to the scouts. Both had been destroyed but it had cost the battalion
more than a third of its forty-eight tanks destroyed and to add to what had been a miserable day, it had taken the rest of the day for them to get half the
survivors out of the fire-ravaged swamp and they were currently in reserve, morale shattered.
If Andreas Kaulkas ever found the grave of whatever bastard had invented the inferno short ranged missile he'd have the body dug up and
hung for crimes against humanity. The Star Adders were almost obscenely fond of the weapons and their suicidal willingness to close in and use the napalm
warheads was proving lethally effective against his armoured units while the tanks and helicopters had proven too fast moving for him to close in with the two
battalions of Battlemechs that he had brought out from Fort Buena or concentrate his forces without giving them opportunity to slip past him.
"Alright. We'll pull back to the Certamain Line," he decided, designating a line of hills within the western foothills of
Dominika continent's spinal mountains. "That should ensure that they don't drop right on our heads but leave us in position to close in as soon as
we know where they come down."
"Should we bring in Second Battalion or the Training Battalion?" Leftenant General Kelly Danvers, the actual commander of the
Guards RCT's Battlemech Regiment asked. She hadn't been happy about leaving a large detachment of the 'Thundering Herd's' forces to protect
Fort Buena and the War College, even with the disparity in numbers.
Kaulkas considered and then shook his head. "No, if they're pulling a bluff then I want to keep those two Battalions in reserve.
However, have the tanks and infantry pull forward to join us. They're well aware that their own conventional troops have been savaging our forces, so being
at full strength may still surprise them." He looked around his officers. "However, the other reason for picking the Certamin Line is that we have
several of our dropships concealed just behind the hills. If things go poorly for us, we will fall back on them and load our casualties aboard to get them off
planet and then the rest of us head for the War College and the rest of the transports."
"Abandon Buena?" she protested. "We can't do that!"
"We're not here to stop them, Kelly," the General sighed. "Even if we were able to beat them back this time they'd
come back with more troops. That would be good, since those troops wouldn't be pressing deeper into the Commonwealth, but my orders are clear. The
Commonwealth has more planets than it has regiments and we've already lost far too many troops. If we can't hold them then we'll bleed them as much
as we can and then move back to regroup. Trade space for time."
"Time for us to retreat further."
"No," Kaulkas told them. "Time for reinforcements to arrive from the FedSuns Marches and for the factories on Hesperus to
start producing upgrades to even the playing field."
Dominika, Buena
Periphery March, Federated Commonwealth
27 August 3050
Almost five hundred kilometers to the west, the 10th Lyran Guards and elements of the Buena War College's field forces were still
sparring inconclusively with the battlemechs and battle armour of the 28th Dragoons and the vehicles of the 112th Garrison Cluster. What the planet's
defenders hopefully hadn't realised was that the 112th was not only made up of tanks and helicopters. Their armoured infantry Stars and the Asps from the
28th Dragoons had not yet appeared, except in token amounts in the planetary capital of Ciudad del Mar. The reason for this of course was that virtually none
of them were present to fill out the apparent garrison. More than forty of each had been quietly loaded into an improvised squadron of shuttles and during the
previous night those shuttles had circled Buena, flying low and fast across the trackless oceans to deliver their cargos to the shores of Dominika.
More precisely, the troops had dropped onto the mouth of the river that, two-dozen kilometers inland, ran between Fort Buena and Buena War
College. Simple pragmatism meant that the river was mined with sensors capable of detecting Battlemechs if those behemoths tried to use the river as a road
past sentries and defenders, but Star Colonels Kayla and Hayden were ambling that a nine-ton Asp, even burdened with a three-quarter ton Ape, would not trigger
those sensors. And even underwater, an Asp could travel the distance between shore and their targets in just over an hour.
The group moved in silence, operating on minimal emissions to reduce the chances of being detected. Each point followed a leader through the
water, navigating by dead-reckoning and communicating only by hand signals. The sun was above the horizon when the water under the largest of the three bridges
between the Fort and the College dimpled as the head of an Ape battlesuit poked above it for long enough to confirm that they were in position.
Secure in their perimeter, none of the guards or security noticed as the battle armour moved out of the water, moving stealthily through the
morning light and towards their targets. The Asps waited under water. They were too obvious for this stage of the attack, but their time would come.
It was ironic that only a remedial class saved John McDonald's life. Kommandant Henri Lassard of the Training Battalion had not been
pleased with the cadet's performance on the gauntlet the previous afternoon and assigned him a repeat session at the crack of dawn, this time with the
Kommandant running alongside him in the lone Crockett assigned to the College to give him some pointers and decide whether or not the improvements merited
being allowed to return to the Academy before or after the mess hall finished serving breakfast. The two of them had just reached the gantry that gave access
to the Battlemechs when every alarm in the building sounded and then cut off abruptly. John saw movement below on the floor of the hanger and his head turned
as he tried to identify it, leaving him wrong footed when his instructor was shot.
There was no telltale rattle of machinegun fire, no visible beam of light. One moment, Kommandant Lassard was pulling his cooling vest on and
the next he was tumbling over the gantry, half his head carved open. Opposite John on the gantry, one of the simian man-sized invaders was pointing her right
arm and the attached laser at where the Kommandant had been standing.
Later, John could not have explained for the life of him what he was thinking. In truth, there was no time to think. Grabbing hold of the
cockpit hatch with one hand, he slapped the control to retract the gantry.
The jolt as the gantry unlocked threw off the invader's aim for long enough for John to scramble onto the hatch and the second - rather
less than designed - jolt as the gantry realised it was supporting a ton of occupant at the end opposite from its mounting, a ton that it was never rated to
support while unlocked and promptly sagged noticeably, alllowed the cadet to dive inside the cockpit and undock the hatch, bringing it crashing down on his
heels.
Outside the Mech, the Ape leapt clear of the gantry before it collapsed beneath her weight. The fall probably wouldn't kill her, not
encased in a three-quarters of a ton of the finest protection that any warrior had ever enjoyed, but it would be an inconvenience at best and could damage her
laser. On the floor she took a moment to aim the laser into the open cockpit of the Chameleon in the next bay to the Crockett and fired twice, the beam leaving
the medium battlemech imoperable like the ten others in the hanger that the point of Apes had been attacking when the alarm sounded.
John dogged the hatch shut and started powering up the Crockett, grateful that since it was primarily used as a training Mech the usual
security arrangements for a battlemech were somewhat relaxed. Pulling his dogtags over his head he opened a small panel on the right hand side of the control
console, uncovering a dataport. Hanging from the dogtag chain was an electromagnetic key that he slipped into the socket, loading his own data into the
computer's brain. With that done, he hit the reactor switch and felt the familiar rumble of the fusion reactor through the seat of his pants.
"Security Protocols active," the recorded voice droned. "Failure to provide the correct pass-phrase will enact full
lockdown."
"By sea and by land," John quoted the ancient motto of the highland clan his family claimed descent from as he stripped off his
uniform pants and tunic. Without a cooling vest it was going to be murderously hot inside the Crockett's cockpit. Recognising the voice print and the
correct pass-phrase the idiot-savant computers that made up the Crockett's nervous system raced through the emergency activations that John triggered and
reported partial readiness as he strapped himself into the command couch. The laser in the right arm was still glitching, he noted and shut it down entirely.
He wouldn't dare fire the weapon anyway without a cooling vest - using both lasers would strain the heatsinks prodigously at the best of times.
With a determined expression on his face, John used the right arm to batter the damaged gantry out of his path and started tramping the
assault mech out of the hanger, stepping carefully over the broken body of his teacher. It was time to get some payback.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
Periphery March, Federated Commonwealth
19 August 3050
There had been surprisingly little opposition as the 28th Dragoon Cluster landed on Buena. That might have been because their inital landing
site was near the planetary capital in the northern hemisphere rather than near Fort Buena, which was on a completely different continent and halfway around
the planet. The Fort, which was closely associated with a major training facility, or so Star Colonel Kayla understood, would be far better
protected.
Oh, the militia had done their best, but despite air support that had made a daring sub-orbital loop of the planet to attack her dropships
during disembarkation, they had melted in the face of her Dragoons. After the hectic pace of the invasion so far for the Cluster such an easy landing had been
a relief, she thought, sitting on the foot of her Stormcrow and examining the reports from units that had fanned out through the capital to secure the centre
of government and the HPG station. She supposed that given the supposed neutrality of ComStar it made sense to place the station well away from a military base
where raids might inadvertantly endanger it, but it left the installation pathetically easy to capture, far more simple than the reports from Poulsbo had
described. After hearing about that battle, she'd been careful to carry out aerial reconnaissence of ComStar installations before sending in the
troops.
"Star Colonel?" someone called and she looked up to see Star Captain Wesley, one of her infantrymen, approaching. His towering Fang
battle armour seemed out of place even to Kayla, compared to the smaller Elemental suits she was more familiar with. "Star Colonel, we may have a
problem."
Kayla frowned at him. "What sort of problem?" she asked him suspiciously.
Wesley pointed with one hand at the wing of the aerospace fighter that had crashed near their landing site. "That white horse head is
the same marking that Iota Galaxy found on the Mechs they fought on Althastan, suggesting that this is a regiment of the same nature - a frontline force rather
than the training unit we expected to find. The captured records that have been deciphered by our scientists did not mention another such unit here, but if
there is one then it could be one of their regimental combat teams."
"That would be unfortunate," Kayla admitted. The initial waves of the invasion had concentrated several frontline clusters to deal
with large troop concentrations such as regimental combat teams. "What are these troops called?"
"The Lyran Guards," Wesley said. "Supposedly one of the better formations of troops in the Lyran army."
Kayla grimaced. "I hate doing this," she confided and then opened a channel to the ships in orbit. "Put me through to Star
Colonel Hayden." It took only a moment for the commander of the garrison cluster scheduled to take over on Buena once she had secured it to respond.
"I want the 112th Garrison Cluster and every aerospace fighter on the Pompeii and the Rickenbacker deployed in support," she ordered. The dropship
Edward Rickenbacker was one of a handful of fighter carriers built on the same hull as the standard troop transports used by the Star Adders. Between that and
the fighters from the Volga-class transport that had carried them to Buena, she would almost treble the fighters available to her 28th Dragoon Cluster and the
112th. "In fact, order the Pompeii to make any preparations necessary to provide supporting fire from orbit. It may not be necessary, but it would seem
that the defenders have been reinforced."
"How bad is the situation, Star Colonel?" Hayden asked seriously.
"We could be facing a full regimental combat team," admitted Kayla. "The casualties from confronting such a force with a
single cluster would be unacceptable."
Hayden considered his options. "They have not fought against a garrison force before," he noted, "So they will have no way of
knowing the exact capabilities of my command. What is your plan?"
"Attrition," Kayla explained. "It will be necessary to thin their numbers significantly before a decisive engagement. I want
you to fight a hit and run campaign against their forces on the Dominika continent. Ideally, I want you to draw them away from their base at Fort Buena and so
that I can seize it with my Cluster. At that point, they will lack the logistical base necessary to continue the campaign."
The other Star Colonel was silent for a moment as he considered the situation. "Their main base is located on the eastern coast, which
is not the best terrain for tanks. I will land at their western port and secure the city. They will have the opportunity to attack what appears to be an
isolated garrison force. Once they are moving across the continent, you should be able to carry out a quick orbital hop and block them from their
base."
"It has the virtue of simplicity," agreed Kayla.
"All good plans are simple," Hayden told her. A few years her elder, he sometimes had the bad habit of talking to her as if she was
fresh from the Sibko. She had thought that she'd gotten rid of that habit after he was retired to a backwater posting. Unfortunately, it seemed that the
backwater had been Sinclair and he'd won command of a Garrison Cluster. Kayla had been looking forward to leaving him here on Buena, but after the pounding
that his Cluster was probably going to take in this operation, another Cluster would be assigned to that and he'd remain in the Delta Galaxy
reserve.
"I was thinking that you might remember the plan for more than five minutes if it was simple," she told him half-seriously.
"You are forty now, and I hear that the mind goes when you get old."
"I am only thirty eight years old," Hayden lied. He'd been claiming that for the last three years, despite the evidence to the
contrary.
Dominika, Buena
Periphery March, Federated Commonwealth
26 August 3050
"Sir," the intelligence officer reported to General Kaulkas. "There are two dropships moving towards Fort Buena from the east.
Their current path will have them overflying it and landing somewhere near your position. We think that they've realised that we're
here."
Kaulkas sighed. The opportunity to catch the Clans unawares had seemed too good to be true and the last few days had been ample proof of
this.
For the last week, the fast moving Clan tanks and helicopters had been carrying out an exemplary mobile campaign against his force. Oh, their
numbers were being nibbled away at but the the casualties were painfully high - only yesterday a pair of the helicopters had caught one of his heavy tank
battalions struggling through a swampy lakeside that had looked like perfectly firm ground to the scouts. Both had been destroyed but it had cost the battalion
more than a third of its forty-eight tanks destroyed and to add to what had been a miserable day, it had taken the rest of the day for them to get half the
survivors out of the fire-ravaged swamp and they were currently in reserve, morale shattered.
If Andreas Kaulkas ever found the grave of whatever bastard had invented the inferno short ranged missile he'd have the body dug up and
hung for crimes against humanity. The Star Adders were almost obscenely fond of the weapons and their suicidal willingness to close in and use the napalm
warheads was proving lethally effective against his armoured units while the tanks and helicopters had proven too fast moving for him to close in with the two
battalions of Battlemechs that he had brought out from Fort Buena or concentrate his forces without giving them opportunity to slip past him.
"Alright. We'll pull back to the Certamain Line," he decided, designating a line of hills within the western foothills of
Dominika continent's spinal mountains. "That should ensure that they don't drop right on our heads but leave us in position to close in as soon as
we know where they come down."
"Should we bring in Second Battalion or the Training Battalion?" Leftenant General Kelly Danvers, the actual commander of the
Guards RCT's Battlemech Regiment asked. She hadn't been happy about leaving a large detachment of the 'Thundering Herd's' forces to protect
Fort Buena and the War College, even with the disparity in numbers.
Kaulkas considered and then shook his head. "No, if they're pulling a bluff then I want to keep those two Battalions in reserve.
However, have the tanks and infantry pull forward to join us. They're well aware that their own conventional troops have been savaging our forces, so being
at full strength may still surprise them." He looked around his officers. "However, the other reason for picking the Certamin Line is that we have
several of our dropships concealed just behind the hills. If things go poorly for us, we will fall back on them and load our casualties aboard to get them off
planet and then the rest of us head for the War College and the rest of the transports."
"Abandon Buena?" she protested. "We can't do that!"
"We're not here to stop them, Kelly," the General sighed. "Even if we were able to beat them back this time they'd
come back with more troops. That would be good, since those troops wouldn't be pressing deeper into the Commonwealth, but my orders are clear. The
Commonwealth has more planets than it has regiments and we've already lost far too many troops. If we can't hold them then we'll bleed them as much
as we can and then move back to regroup. Trade space for time."
"Time for us to retreat further."
"No," Kaulkas told them. "Time for reinforcements to arrive from the FedSuns Marches and for the factories on Hesperus to
start producing upgrades to even the playing field."
Dominika, Buena
Periphery March, Federated Commonwealth
27 August 3050
Almost five hundred kilometers to the west, the 10th Lyran Guards and elements of the Buena War College's field forces were still
sparring inconclusively with the battlemechs and battle armour of the 28th Dragoons and the vehicles of the 112th Garrison Cluster. What the planet's
defenders hopefully hadn't realised was that the 112th was not only made up of tanks and helicopters. Their armoured infantry Stars and the Asps from the
28th Dragoons had not yet appeared, except in token amounts in the planetary capital of Ciudad del Mar. The reason for this of course was that virtually none
of them were present to fill out the apparent garrison. More than forty of each had been quietly loaded into an improvised squadron of shuttles and during the
previous night those shuttles had circled Buena, flying low and fast across the trackless oceans to deliver their cargos to the shores of Dominika.
More precisely, the troops had dropped onto the mouth of the river that, two-dozen kilometers inland, ran between Fort Buena and Buena War
College. Simple pragmatism meant that the river was mined with sensors capable of detecting Battlemechs if those behemoths tried to use the river as a road
past sentries and defenders, but Star Colonels Kayla and Hayden were ambling that a nine-ton Asp, even burdened with a three-quarter ton Ape, would not trigger
those sensors. And even underwater, an Asp could travel the distance between shore and their targets in just over an hour.
The group moved in silence, operating on minimal emissions to reduce the chances of being detected. Each point followed a leader through the
water, navigating by dead-reckoning and communicating only by hand signals. The sun was above the horizon when the water under the largest of the three bridges
between the Fort and the College dimpled as the head of an Ape battlesuit poked above it for long enough to confirm that they were in position.
Secure in their perimeter, none of the guards or security noticed as the battle armour moved out of the water, moving stealthily through the
morning light and towards their targets. The Asps waited under water. They were too obvious for this stage of the attack, but their time would come.
It was ironic that only a remedial class saved John McDonald's life. Kommandant Henri Lassard of the Training Battalion had not been
pleased with the cadet's performance on the gauntlet the previous afternoon and assigned him a repeat session at the crack of dawn, this time with the
Kommandant running alongside him in the lone Crockett assigned to the College to give him some pointers and decide whether or not the improvements merited
being allowed to return to the Academy before or after the mess hall finished serving breakfast. The two of them had just reached the gantry that gave access
to the Battlemechs when every alarm in the building sounded and then cut off abruptly. John saw movement below on the floor of the hanger and his head turned
as he tried to identify it, leaving him wrong footed when his instructor was shot.
There was no telltale rattle of machinegun fire, no visible beam of light. One moment, Kommandant Lassard was pulling his cooling vest on and
the next he was tumbling over the gantry, half his head carved open. Opposite John on the gantry, one of the simian man-sized invaders was pointing her right
arm and the attached laser at where the Kommandant had been standing.
Later, John could not have explained for the life of him what he was thinking. In truth, there was no time to think. Grabbing hold of the
cockpit hatch with one hand, he slapped the control to retract the gantry.
The jolt as the gantry unlocked threw off the invader's aim for long enough for John to scramble onto the hatch and the second - rather
less than designed - jolt as the gantry realised it was supporting a ton of occupant at the end opposite from its mounting, a ton that it was never rated to
support while unlocked and promptly sagged noticeably, alllowed the cadet to dive inside the cockpit and undock the hatch, bringing it crashing down on his
heels.
Outside the Mech, the Ape leapt clear of the gantry before it collapsed beneath her weight. The fall probably wouldn't kill her, not
encased in a three-quarters of a ton of the finest protection that any warrior had ever enjoyed, but it would be an inconvenience at best and could damage her
laser. On the floor she took a moment to aim the laser into the open cockpit of the Chameleon in the next bay to the Crockett and fired twice, the beam leaving
the medium battlemech imoperable like the ten others in the hanger that the point of Apes had been attacking when the alarm sounded.
John dogged the hatch shut and started powering up the Crockett, grateful that since it was primarily used as a training Mech the usual
security arrangements for a battlemech were somewhat relaxed. Pulling his dogtags over his head he opened a small panel on the right hand side of the control
console, uncovering a dataport. Hanging from the dogtag chain was an electromagnetic key that he slipped into the socket, loading his own data into the
computer's brain. With that done, he hit the reactor switch and felt the familiar rumble of the fusion reactor through the seat of his pants.
"Security Protocols active," the recorded voice droned. "Failure to provide the correct pass-phrase will enact full
lockdown."
"By sea and by land," John quoted the ancient motto of the highland clan his family claimed descent from as he stripped off his
uniform pants and tunic. Without a cooling vest it was going to be murderously hot inside the Crockett's cockpit. Recognising the voice print and the
correct pass-phrase the idiot-savant computers that made up the Crockett's nervous system raced through the emergency activations that John triggered and
reported partial readiness as he strapped himself into the command couch. The laser in the right arm was still glitching, he noted and shut it down entirely.
He wouldn't dare fire the weapon anyway without a cooling vest - using both lasers would strain the heatsinks prodigously at the best of times.
With a determined expression on his face, John used the right arm to batter the damaged gantry out of his path and started tramping the
assault mech out of the hanger, stepping carefully over the broken body of his teacher. It was time to get some payback.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.