Battletech: Welcome to New Caledonia

[Tanis]

Silence.

The evening had just turned dark as the sun set low against the western sky, half above and shining, half below and hidden. The forests and plains turned cold, critters dodging into their warrens. Harrison lounged back in the command seat, all systems of his Marauder turned off...all except the heating system for the cockpit. He had slumbered for about ten minutes when the hand held radio clutched to his chest beeped once. No communications. It beeped again and Grendel stirred.

He reached a gloved hand out to the communications system and kicked it to the 'on' setting.

"Sit rep."

"Fish in the barrel."

Harrison was suddenly incredibly awake, he's eyes scanning everything nearby from the cockpit of his Marauder. With his mech powered down except for a few mandatory systems, he grabbed his binoculars and scanned the road that led away from the tree line and into the distance: The Clanner's training facility. It had been hit once, but this...this...this was a supply run.

"What do we have?" Grendel asked over the com.

"Hrmm...looks like three tanks in the front, five J-27s, one tank keeping up the rear. Two mech escorts moving up from the facility."

"Go passive systems only, but be ready for a full startup. Ground team, are you in position?"

"Locked and loaded captain."

"What do we do now sir?"

"They're about twenty minutes out moving that slow..." Grendel estimated looking through his binoculars. The mech team was all shut down, hiding in the tree line near where the winding dirt road was about a hundred yards out from the small forest.

"We wait." Grendel replied.

[kongurous]

The fury of a Clan warrior was something that any smart person would never wish to experience. A spectacle for an outside party, surely, but between the offender and the enraged warrior, it may as well have been a death sentence. The fury of a Clan garrison commander, whose very honor and remaining position lay in his success as a commander, was something most only experienced once, as everyone in the room tended to die horrendously or hoped that they had. Especially if this warrior had a bloodname as grand as Kerensky.

This fury had lasted for approximately two years, nine months, and twenty-six days. While certainly not good for his blood pressure and while nothing had actually happened since the first months of the attacks, he had a good feeling about this one.

Something in the air, something in his blood... something stirred Sergei Kerensky's mind and made him undertake this mission.

Of course, as always, it seemed to be that nothing would happen this mission. His sensors picked up nothing and no one had reported anything. The captain sighed in frustration and focused on the view ports around him. His mech wasn't new, but it was still very dangerous and he fully intended to put up the most fight he could if the enemy showed itself.

[Tanis]

Grendel stared through his armored cockpit window as the convoy rounded the last bend that would bring them as close to the forest as they were going to come. It was now or never. His mech still powered down except for the comm system, he adjusted the frequency. They were changing channels every few minutes to keep the Clans from hacking their communication systems. He kept going until he hit the correct channel.

"Blaze."

"Lead tank is locked."

"Eagle."

"Booting up the ECM now. We'll only get ten or fifteen minutes of jamming before their senors burn through it, sir."

"Blaze, fire when you're ready. Target the Blackhawk."

The Hollander, hidden a little farther back in the forest, came alive every so slightly as it's torso twisted a little bit, the massive Gauss Rifle mounted on it's shoulder tracking the medium weight Clan Battlemech. Grendel leaned forward in his cockpit and pushed the start up switches. The Marauder heated up immediately, the cockpit being washed in red and blue blinking lights.

The first Gauss Rifle slug slammed into the Blackhawk’s knee. Grendel exploded from the tree line, arm mounted large laser blasting the lead tanks as the Hollander, still hidden in the trees, fired off a second shot that tore one of the escort tank’s turrets off. Grendel pivoted his torso to the left, cutting across the convoy’s path perpendicularly, firing as he strafed. The shoulder mounted auto cannon on the Marauder started spitting 90mm HEAT rounds at the other mech, a large and imposing Supernova.