The fight with Zachery and Vigil ended well enough. Even with one arm, Vigil is still a dangerous foe, what with his skills in melee over Zachery.
In the end, no one who have been betting made any fortune, and some people grumbled. But they are quickly reminded that while the Company have been generous enough to let them use the company time to host such a thing that, as far as the executives up high see, is a waste of money, they might not be generous enough to not fire you and feed you to murderhobos or turning you into Foxhound's next live test subject if you continue to make a problem out of it.
That quickly got everything right back to working order in record time.
WEEK 4/4
First Castle. Operation: Brutal Vanguard.
Today's the day you set out. You've already been briefed about the operation, plans laid and your transports prepped. If you have any last minute things to do, now's the time to do them before it's time to board your Transports and have it pushed through the gate.
The higher ups have sent words that they tried getting you bigger artillery pieces, but the two 105mm howitzers that they've managed to obtain was the best they could do. They'll send two more along with a few mortars with the second wave after you've established a holding on the other side, though.
Tal's suggestions on giving every squad proper military-grade Hazmat suits were accepted, and everyone was given suits. 'Just in case.' They've got biometric lock on the crate that hold the extremely dangerous and lethal Sarin gas shells in the support and supply transport, coded to open by Tal's finger and password which they've told him, as he's the sanest person in the whole op who's probably not going to open it and throw the thing around for shits and giggles.
Which is also the reason why they've appointed Tal to oversee the whole Op. With how much they're spending on this, they want something incredible back in return. And hopefully the castle will provide.
The vehicles provided to Foxhound is clearly the best out of all the other vehicles in the Op, with the both of them being acceptably modern light armored vehicles, one armed with 30mm auto-cannon with dual-select fire between High-Explosive Incendiary Tracer and Armor-Piercing Tracer, and a TOW launcher strapped to the side of the turret. It of course comes with .50BMG coaxial machine gun.
And the another is a similar vehicle, but in the place of the 30mm cannon is a turret of quad 20mm auto-cannon. 'For the flying stuff.' they said. Understandably, both A and B Carmine are practically drooling over the vehicles, but it's going to at least need two people to man just one of the vehicles anyway. They decided that maybe the Doctors can be stuck into the vehicles to be their gunners or something to help man the thing.
The other squads weren't as lucky, however. They got oldish jeeps and technicals with .50 cals on them or small anti-aircraft guns that you had to aim manually. Like the ones they used some three or so hundred years ago. Though Battle Brothers got the better of the lot and was assigned 2 of the Company's armored SUVs. Retrofit for a fight, of course. One of them's equipped with a Chaingun on the open top and the other got an automatic grenade launcher, which is pretty neat.
Is there any last inspection Tal wants to do or anything anyone else want to do before heading over for the siege?