March's* Mech Madness continues with 'protect the pilot' from Framing Device and 'a loss is not a loss' from Tyronne, giving us another chapter of warfare with mechs. One day I will name this series and tag it. Today is not that day, sadly. Enjoy!*yes, I know it's April but that doesn't have the same possibilities for alliteration.

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Retaliatory Impulse:

Llewellyn stared at the wreckage of Nutcracker through the conference bay window. It had been brought back to Hastar Development where techs and engineering droids were climbing over it like worker ants dissecting the body of a larger insect. They were removing the legs, head and lower torso, but the Lancer’s upper body was a total write-off. Nothing worth salvaging was left in there. They’d had to hose out the chest cavity. Not just for decontamination, but to clear what was left of Jay out. They’d gotten as much as they could for the funeral, but bits and chunks of the pilot still dribbled away with the radioactive water to be disposed off.

Jay’s family wasn’t even getting a body back. His remains would be cremated before they were returned. It was kinder than letting his parents and little sister know their son and brother had had to be scraped off the inside of his mech.

He was just a kid.

Jay – Lieutenant Jason Henricks, Tri-Planet Allied Mobile Armour Division – had only been a year younger than Llewellyn himself, but the other pilot had felt like he’d aged decades in the months since his fuckup. The brash, over-confident and borderline insubordinate Llewellyn Cargil was practically a stranger to him now – a stranger he’d like to punch in the mouth.

The doors behind Llewellyn swished open and Major Hall stepped through. “Lieutenant Cargil,” she said, tilting her head towards the other open seat at the table. Her voice steady, but carried a faintly disapproving note whenever she spoke to him. “If you will.”

He nodded, turning away from the window. There were two other officers present, the Lancer pilots serving in the European theater. Those men and women operating on different continents would get their own briefings.

The pilots’ chairs all faced Hall’s seat. Llewellyn took the position on the left. Furthest from him was Kajsa Jemstedt. She was very tall, very blonde and very Swedish. Her Knight and callsign were Cloudstrike. She had exceptional spatial awareness and made more use of the Lancer’s jump systems and thrusters than any of the other pilots, moving so quickly and so fluidly that her own comrades were often unable to keep pace with her. Her mech was modified with additional thrusters and given a dazzle-painted blend of sky blues, whites and greys to make visually tracking her as she danced through the air as difficult as possible. She was utterly lethal at close range landing among the foe to deliver a flurry of fatal strikes, flashing away before anyone could respond.

Nikos Hondros sat to Llewellyn’s immediate right. He was a former special forces sniper, his unit specializing in planetary recon and disruption tactics. He had no experience in the cockpit, but his medical records had revealed that he was a good candidate for Dr. Zeitmeyer’s mobility project and he’d learned fast. His Lancer Ghost was decorated with digital camo colours and netting for urban operations. As expected from his previous career, he specialized in hit and fade attacks. His beam rifle was modified for longer range and increased lethality while his mech’s head was outfitted with additional tracking systems. As far as Llewellyn knew Hondros had never used Ghost’s sword. He’d take out his targets with merciless precision, disassembling entire battlegroups one shot at a time as his Knight moved from fire point to fire point, always one step ahead of retaliation.

Llewellyn’s own Black Goat lived up to its name; painted all black with cosmetic modifications to the head and extra armour plating, giving it a bulkier and more menacing build than the others. Rather than the factory-line mechs that the Outies churned out, the TPA allowed and even encouraged some customization of its Lancers to allow its pilots to show off their skill sets or personalities. The Squire-class suits that were just starting to hit the front lines were more standardized. They were also easier to pilot with a much lighter neural load. From what Hall and Zeitmeyer had said, even regular troops could operate a Squire with manual systems, though it would take ML-compatible personnel to really unlock its capabilities – and only the latter would be able to use a Knight at all.

Hall laced her hands together. “This is a setback,” she began. She wasn’t a woman who minced words. They all knew what had happened to Jay. “But it’s not as severe as some are claiming.”

“Did you find out what happened?” Jemstedt asked. They knew that they’d lost a pilot and a Knight; the pilot’s question was about the how of it.

“We’re still attempting to reconstruct Nutcracker’s logs. The primary computer was destroyed and the black box was damaged but from what we can tell so far, two enemy Lancers ganged up on Lieutenant Henricks’ mech.”

Llewellyn shook his head. “Jay was better than that. He shouldn’t have gotten taken out by a pair of clankers.”

“As I said, Lieutenant Cargil,” the note of mild irritation came back as Hall directed her comment to Llewellyn. “We are still attempting to reconstruct Nutcracker’s logs. Once we do, you and the other pilots will be fully briefed on the circumstances that led to Lieutenant Henricks’s death. No one in the mobility project and or TPA Command wants this to happen again, but we told you from the very get-go that you are not invulnerable. Casualties will happen.”

“I know, ma’am,” he conceded. “It’s just... it shouldn’t have been him.”

Despite those words implying that it would be better if one of his fellow pilots had died there, both Jemstedt and Honros gave small nods. They hadn’t been a squadron per se, but they’d been a unit. Twelve final candidates had made it through everything Zeitmeyer, Hall and the project could throw at them. They’d made friends and rivals in that time and they’d bonded as tightly as any other unit. Not just because because of what they were, but because of who they were: they were Alliance and their homes were under attack.

Earth was the line, the final line and the Outies weren’t going to cross it. They’d throw them off this planet, re-take Mars and then shove the bastards back across the asteroid belt and make sure they never, ever came across it again. They all had that same goal, but now one of them the youngest and perhaps bravest, was dead. Murdered by some outer-world shitbags in tin cans.

“Do they know?” Honros asked. The man didn’t talk a lot, but when he did it was something he felt was worth saying.

Hall shook her head. “At the moment, there’s no indication of that. Before Nutcracker was brought down, Lieutenant Henricks managed six additional mech kills. If the SOWCF was aware of any vulnerabilities, it’s unlikely that he would have been able to get as far as he did. Right now, our best guess is that this was simply an unfortunate outlier but until we have more information, I’d avoid leaping to conclusions – one way or the other.”

“Do we at least know who did it?”

“Yes. Based on decrypted chatter from the enemy column Nutcracker engaged and information from other assets, we’ve identified the units responsible as members of Red Talon and Charon squadrons.”

Honros nodded slowly. “Charon. They’ve been giving us problems for the entire war. I lost friends when they brought down the Callisto. Kid did good taking three of them out.”

Kaja tapped her fingers on the table, glancing from Honros to Hall. “Where are they now?”

“They’ve fallen back to Mishi-Khar. And before anyone asks, no. No strikes will be authorized.”

Jemstedt stiffened. “They killed one of our pilots, major! We can’t just let them get away with that!”

“No one is planning to let them ‘get away’ with anything, lieutenant, but we have been over this. Mishi-Khar is too heavily defended for a blitz attack, even if we had all four pilots for this theater. You might be able to dodge or intercept small numbers of artillery shells. You can neither avoid nor stop a grid-square bombardment. Once the Outies see you coming, they will turn the ground around that base into a sea of fire that not even a Knight can walk through.”

The old Llewellyn would have argued on Kaja’s side. The new Llewellyn knew exactly what the TPA was up against and no amount of wishful thinking would get them through it. Mishi-Khar was the Alliance’s biggest problem left in Europe. While the TPA had been focused on re-taking Paris and Western Europe, the Outies had been digging in like a tick, turning a secondary lift site into a fortress. Some forward-thinking asshole had relocated three artillery divisions to the spaceport just as everything was going tits-up for them. Veterans from the front liked to joke that there was no such thing as ‘light’ Outie artillery, and they weren’t far off. Outies brute-forced solutions to interception fire. Splinter shot, reinforced armour or using so damn many shells that even the best TPA point defences couldn’t stop them all, and Mishi-Khar was sitting right in the middle of a kill zone.

Thirty kilometers of scorched-out wasteland surrounded the base with range markers and targeting patterns already laid out. If they got a sniff that a Knight was headed for them, they’d do exactly what the major said. Alliance mechs could normally fight through most bombardment, punching enough holes to maneuver freely. They couldn’t handle the entire fucking sky being brought down on their heads, and the Outies had backed up the base’s guns with a defence grid capable of intercepting incoming missiles and bombers. The silver lining to all that was that Mishi-Khar was a secondary landing site for the European theater, not a staging ground. It had never had a strong garrison and thus, almost no ability to launch offensive operations.

“We don’t have the forces to strike at Mishi-Khar directly,” Hall continued, “but that’s only temporary. Command is re-evaluating options for dealing with that facility.”

Honros pursed his lips. “Major, with all due respect while Command ‘considers’ what to do, Mishi-Khar is building up its forces.”

“That hasn’t gone unnoticed, lieutenant. But we also need to remember that the majority of those forces are decimated and walking wounded retreating to a safe haven. Due to the actions of the Mobile Armour Division, few of them are in any position to take the offensive. I can’t share much more at this time, but a plan is in the works. I can tell you that pursuant to Nutcracker’s loss, a shipment of Squire-class Lancers and their pilots has been diverted from Oceania to Eastern Europe.” She paused, her fingers curling into loose fists.

“We’ll let them hide behind their guns for now,” Hall concluded, meeting her pilots’ eyes. “But we haven’t forgotten who started this war and we haven’t forgotten what they’ve done. They’ll be made to pay for every life we’ve lost, and if they dare poke their head out from their little burrow, you three will be there to cut it off.”