Part 673: Snake Pit - Turn 1

Snake Pit 1
The sweat that trickled down the back of Captain Rose D’Antonio’s neck had nothing to do with the heat inside the cockpit of her Mongoose. The dedicated scout `Mech was hardly a heat-hog by any means, even with the machine’s primary armament upgraded to pulse lasers. She’d volunteered for this—the whole of the 2nd Amphigean Light Assault had wanted to participate, but hers was the best scout lance in the regiment and they had enough ECM units to protect the slow pigs the local resistance were using.

In theory Rose had overall field command, she was an experienced company commander—but in practice the scout lance existed to support the heavies, so she had only moderate reservations about letting Lt. Korean or the Crucis Lancer liaison call the shots once the battle was joined. They were relying on each other, and if her scout lance had to clear a path for a bunch of clumsy Heavy `Mechs so be it. She had to trust them to back her in a pinch, after all.

“Alright,” the company had been hastily outfitted with laser-based communications equipment. It meant they needed line-of-sight to communicate, and in a pitched battle the computer would have difficulty keeping the slow-turning laser system on lighter, faster units, but until they needed to expose themselves the lasers meant there was no real risk the Clanners might intercept a broadcast.

“It looks like the local chinpira made good. We’ve got a basic passive sensor net all the way to Tai-sho Kaczynski Boulevard, we should have a rough idea where the Clanners in the area are even if we have no real idea what they are. Until we make visual contact, we’re operating under some base assumptions: the Clanners don’t know we’re here, and their Heavy `Mechs are wicked-fast.”

She paused, and explained her recon plan. “I’m preemptively tagging anything that matches the rough movement profile of a Wolf Spider as a Wolf Spider in our systems so we can avoid them. Anything faster, I’m flagging as a light scout—remember even though the Shadow Dragon can casually break a hundred KPH and can hit two-hundred if it really wants to, several Clan mediums can edge close to that at a full run, so just because I’ve flagged something as a small target doesn’t mean it is one. Lastly, if we get exposed, don’t forget to switch back to standard broadcasts. I don’t want to fiddle with the laser-comms in the middle of a pitched battle. This is mostly a reminder for the local Yaks listening in, as well as our friends in the resistance. It’s just one switch, don’t forget to flip it.”

The distant rumble of explosions was both a comfort and a reminder that the misfit hit-squad was on a bit of a time-table. The echoes should disguise any weapons-fire in the short-term. Rose sucked in a breath, “We’ve got a whole army of people counting on us, so let’s do this right. Find the enemy command center and hit it as hard and fast as we can. If you get shot out of your `Mech, go to ground in a civilian building and try not to eat any stray laser-fire. The local Yaks have promised to try to spirit us out of the city if we get shot out of our rides, but that won’t help if you die. So please: Don’t. Get. Headshot.”




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Player Status:




Opposing Force Status:
[Unknown]



Special Rules
Half-Blind – Enemy scout units are marked by blips, they are patrolling along set paths. If line of sight is established the players have 3 turns to destroy enemy scouts, or two turns to destroy enemy Star Commanders before reinforcements are summoned.



Primary Objectives
- Find and Destroy enemy command post (0/1)
- Evade or Destroy enemy scouts (0/1)

Secondary Objectives
- Destroy alerted enemies before they can call for assistance (0/?)



Orders Due: Midnight Tuesday!



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