The Let's Play Archive

Battletech

by PoptartsNinja

Part 482: Combat Theater Vote 16 Results

Combat Theater Vote Results:
- The players and 40 of their friends will be going Behind Enemy Lines
- The Kalma-Youngblood Mercenary Company, LLC sort through 38 applicants, but don’t find quite enough.
- The Three Front War is off to a rough start, only 14 mercenaries answer Duke Sandoval’s call.
- 13 voters are Trapped between the Clans and the rebels in Skye.



In some ways, the misjump that had carried the 4th Free Worlds Guards’ 5th Company to Abadan had been a godsend. True, the JumpShip carrying the unit’s three Leopard-class had blown a seal the moment it’d emerged from hyperspace, stranding the unit nearly thirty light-years away from their intended destination, but Abadan had been nigh-undefended at first, and the locals were still Free Worlders by birth and had welcomed Carlos and his men with open arms. Word of the 4th’s near-complete annihilation had reached Carlos’s command only a few short weeks after his company had made groundfall: the speed at which the news had traveled suggested the Capellans had been laying in wait for the first regiment to try to retake the league’s ancient capitol.

Carlos and his lance had taken the news out on the newly-arrived Capellan administrative drones, culminating in a strike that had slain Mandarin Yeh and defeated his single lance of bodyguards. 5th Company’s retributive act might even have been enough to constitute the reconquest of Abadan had a full battalion of the Confederation’s Prefectorate Guard not landed in the capitol city only three weeks later to seize control of Abadan’s extensive industrial facilities.

Carlos had lead his company into the badlands to hide among the stone pillars and the planet’s richest mineral deposits to wage a guerilla war against the Capellan Confederation as they traveled a circuitous path between the unit’s three scattered, carefully-hidden DropShips. They had met little success, unless one counted survival as a success, which Carlos chose to. They’d engaged the Prefectorate Guard only once, ambushing a light scout lance. Most had escaped, but two downed and one crippled `Mech was a start. But the Capellans could reinforce with impunity while the young Prince of the Free Worlds League could not.

Carlos stared at his maps and scratched at the uncomfortable beard he’d grown. They needed to get the word out and not simply for his own sake. Marik was a symbolic prize but Abadan was a material one: the production facilities there would be crucial to the League’s continued survival, and with only a single battalion defending it—even one as elite as the Protectorate Guard—a concerted counterattack could liberate the world and its factories and deny the Confederation its mineral wealth. Carlos’s lance commanders watched him in silence, weary but hardly broken. They’d already scored one victory on Abadan under Carlos’s command. A second couldn’t be long in coming.

“Alright,” Carlos said finally. “Here’s the plan.”



Behind Enemy Lines




Unit Lists
Lance, 5th Company, 4th Free Worlds Guards



Elements, 3rd Battalion, Prefectorate Guard



Possible Enemy Reinforcements
Unknown


Neutral Units






Mechwarriors
Viva Miriya
The Merry Marauder
Narsham
DivineCoffeeBinge


Alternates
Gwaihir
MadGamer
tuluk
Technowolf


Special Thanks
Scintilla
Lil Jonas
Ardlen
AJ Impy