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Chapter 9[]
Dead Man's Hand: A Taste Of Ashes[]
Skies above the Rogue River, Sweet Water
Coventry Province
Federated Commonwealth
10th July, 3057
"Gladiator One to Gladiator Flight." Lady Eliza 'Cutlass' McCabe sat at the controls of her MechBuster, Faith, carefully monitoring the data-feed, "Looks like our friends on the ground came through. Follow me in."
There was a series of affirmatives, and she put the nose of her down into a steep dive.
The McCabe family always had a somewhat realistic outlook when it came to ruling Sweet Water: there were always going to be people who wanted to bend the rules, live just outside the law, and as such, her ancestors had come to an unspoken agreement with certain elements. Mostly, so long as they kept their activities to clearly defined areas, and nobody who didn't want to got involved, the authorities wouldn't see anything they didn't want to. As such, the Blue Pines Forest was known to produce some of the best bootleg whiskey in the entire Coventry Province, with very official looking customs stamps that could pass all but the strictest of inspections. This hands-off approach to running parts of their world, coupled with their genuine desire to keep it a place worth living, made sure that the people of Sweet Water tended to be extremely loyal to the McCabe.
So, when word got out that they wanted a grounded pirate DropShip located, immediately, a lot of people with experience of moving around the forest without being seen had gone looking for trouble.
The night sky around McCabe lit up as the pirates opened up with everything they had, trying to swat the four CAS fighters from the air. She held her nerve, giving the RCA Instatrac Mk II targeting computer the time to accurately zero in the the patchwork hull of the grounded Union.
"Smile, you son-of-a-bitch!" McCabe grinned as she release her entire payload of semi-armour piercing, high explosive bombs.
Given the general state of disrepair the DropShip was in, ten bombs would have been more than sufficient to keep it from taking off again without extensive repairs.
Forty was nothing short of overkill.
The members of Gladiator Flight felt their MechBusters kick and buck as the DropShip was consumed in a series of explosions that blew down every tree within a hundred metres. Debris rained down across the forest, starting several small fires. Enemy losses were total, in exchange for a few glancing blows that in no way impaired the airworthiness of the militia strike craft.
"Scratch one enemy dropper." McCabe laughed, "Okay, Gladiators: let's go hunting!"
Rogue River, Sweet Water
Coventry Province
Federated Commonwealth
10th July, 3057
The first sign DeWalt had that her party was about to be crashed was when a Rifleman to her right suddenly stopped, raised its arms to the sky and opened fire with a long burst from both of its autocannons. Tracer fire kept up into the night, tracking something, and she slammed a fist down on her secondary screen until it begrudgingly displayed a radar return.
Rifleman Heavy BattleMech
Four contacts, descending fast from above.
Too far away to get a solid lock, given the dilapidated state of her targeting and tracking system... thought DeWalt
A pair of azure beams struck down from upon high, bisecting the Rifleman. Notoriously thin armor crumbled, giving way under the onslaught, exposing the ammo bins beneath. The stricken air-defense 'Mech was consumed in an instant. The pilot barely able to comprehend what was happening, before they too were consumed by the flames.
To hit anything at such a range, and with enough power to gut even an infamously thin-skinned Rifleman could only mean one thing: Clan tech, which in turn meant that the mercenaries had arrived to try and end her fun.
"I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven!" She called out over the radio, "Let's give our guests a warm welcome, boys and girls!"
Joker watched her first target disintegrate under her fire with what could only be described as clinical detachment.
While not one to shy away from violence when needed, she had never been one to indulge in it needlessly, and certainly not one to take a life without cause. She knew fully well that this was a holdover from her days at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, where the nuns had drummed into them that you should never seek vengeance, as that was the Lord's domain, and his alone.
Well, God was going to have to wait his turn.
Feathering her jump-jets to eek out the last of the fuel, Joker send a flight of missiles into a pirate Centurion, knocking it back, right into the path of a double-flight of LRMs from Aung's Archer. The medium 'Mech stumbled and fell, the pilot struggling to stand back up. Emerald lances from her ER Medium Lasers tor into its left hip, making a difficult job all the harder, and the pilot responded by firing a volley of LRM' s up at her from a prone position.
They were the older stye missiles, and followed a broadly straight trajectory, unlike the more advanced models starting to reach the market, which were designed to be more erratic, making it harder for them to be engaged by anti-missile systems. Her Loki possessed just such a system, and it roared into life, claiming six of the ten missiles, two more missing wide, while the two that did hid did negligible damage. Landing a few meter from the Centurion, Joker made way over to it: she could see the pilot struggling to bring his autocannon to bear, but she was on the other side, and the arm housing it lacked the needed range of motion.
Raising her right leg, she brought it down, hard, on the cockpit of the Centurion, rushing it under foot.
Hostis Humani Generis.
Every soldier, be they regular, militia or Mercenary, knew those words. Hostis Humani Generis: Enemy Of Mankind. By interstellar law, pirates were deemed beyond legal protection and so could be dealt with by any nation, even one that had not been directly attacked. There was still some debate as to exactly what it meant, legally speaking, but every soldier knew what it meant to them: Give no quarter, for you can expect none when fighting pirates.
Hostis Humani Generis.
On paper, they were still expected to accept attempts at surrender, to allow the courts their pound of flesh. After all, it was the unwritten contract that you make with society that separates you from the likes of pirates and slavers. What gives you the right to say "I am better than an animal like you."
Hostis Humani Generis.
"Judgement, like Vengeance, belonged to God," the nuns had said, "so judge not, less thee be judged."
Well, if that was indeed the case, Joker considered it her place to expedite a direct meeting between the two.