Part 14: A Bridge over Troubled Waters.

Update time! One hell of a hard mission.

The raid over the Peseta River. Goddamn that was a day I'd love to forget. We'd been ordered to assault an enemy roadblock preventing our siege company from advancing to the city, and as it happened they'd picked a perfect place for a trap.



He was getting on my nerves. However, Olson sorted him out. Said he'd be on a charge unless he started following orders.


I smiled.





Everyone knew the importance of this mission.



And I'd been reading the briefing a lot more closely than the others. Hovercraft are damned useful for aquatic ops.



These are satellite photos of the area. See those grey ones? They're nasty fuckers. Experimental GROSTER class siege mechs.




Their reach and mobility counted for nothing in front of my unit's missiles and armour.




However, those experimentals were on a rampage. Yang was forced to eject after the thing opened up with both cannons on her.




Sakata, Natalie and Frederick delayed the Groster while Alder tried to ford the river. With that monster on the bridge, we were locked down. It took Natalie down in seconds, but Frederick blew its arms off. Things were looking up.



Paul got the final hit in with his multi-launcher. But there was another one on the opposite bank.



Alder's gambit failed. There were just too many of them.







The second Groster was racking up a nice kill count as the bridge funnelled my men into its guns. But it was getting weaker.


JJ made a push for the enemy artillery. He was quite successful.


But the Groster hunted him down.


Peewee showed rare courage by taking a hit while I struggled with the autoloaders on my rocket tubes. It put the truck out of commission, though. I was alone with that fucker staring down my sights.




Two homing missiles directed straight into the cockpit and the thing fell, though. The repair bill for this mission was seven thousand bucks - we only got $12,000 commission! A few of those tanks would have been nice as well. But still, a victory. And I suppose it was a sort of punishment for our transgressions.

Peseta seemed a nice town. I just hope it was worth the cost.

Damn this mission is hard! Those boss units can really fuck you up - they have machine guns which are twice as powerful as those you can buy at that stage and are such a high level they can have up to three turns of shooting to your one. So you've got 3 lots of 5 hits of 20 damage - 3x5x20 is 300 damage, and when even my tanking units (the Junker) only have 280ish HP, you can see why they put up such resistance. Add to that astronomical defense (usually Clevain can one shot kill an enemy if all his missiles hit the body, but these things absorbed fire like it was nothing) and massive amounts of support from enemies a bit better than you and you've got a nasty level.