Today was the day of Jalen Elliott's big debut, so to speak, his first ever combat mission in a Titan, his chance to finally prove himself as a Knight Reliquar, as an equal to all of the good women and men of
Le Bouclier. And... Jalen was feeling awkward. He was feeling very, very awkward, shifting this way and that in his cockpit seat. It had been awkward to shove his way around people and objects in a winding path to just get into the
Arquebusier, it had felt awkward to familiarize himself with the controls of the Titan for the first time, and it felt awkward right now to just wait around in the
Arquebusier for minutes and minutes as it underwent its first startup in the theater. He was realizing very abruptly that whatever he faced down there was going to be different from his training - it was a point that Žaneta had made a point of hammering into him, and which Moos had actually reinforced through talking about stories of war on his homeworld, but was suddenly a lot realer. Still, Jalen forced himself to take a deep breath in and then one out - they'd brought two pilots along, and they'd told him his natural talent was enough to make the cut. Jalen couldn't disappoint.
The feeling didn't abate upon actual landing on Chopta. Once he disembarked the shuttle (which involved a bay opening underneath his Titan and a very short hop to the ground), he saw terrain that was... well, Jalen wasn't sure whether or not he could fairly call it ugly. The yellow nature of the grass clinging in patches to dirt that was mostly bare pointed to such, but it did at least have trees dotted along the flat, mostly featureless expanse, cut only by a stream, to give it
something. Still, it wasn't any of the romantic kinds of battlegrounds he imagined... but maybe that was just reality, huh. Sighing, Jalen put a more critical eye to his surroundings as he approached the rendezvous point. The base was a complex of a few buildings out in the distance - more than just some security checkpoint, but not the sprawling masses one might expect from a more central military hub, and it was situated on a slight raise in the course of the stream where it hadn't yet eroded a hill down to nothing. Pretty much everything from here to that was the same flat, tree-dotted ground.
Eventually, he got to the meeting area - and he saw the vehicle, which was... interesting. The vehicle itself appeared to be well-made, a large sixteen-wheeler of a vehicle with a surprisingly tapering profile for a cargo freighter. This appeared to be in the service of survivability, as Jalen could look at the vehicle and see that a moderate amount of armor was actually native to the vehicle, with extra armor clearly slapped on afterwards. The weapons on the other hand were quite ramshackle - the three medium railguns dotting the vehicle weren't literally bolted on, but they were somewhat close, the mountings for the weapons clearly having been put on by slightly cutting into the hull and leaving
almost all of the weapon external, just with enough room for the power supply to be left inside. Jalen cleared his throat and: "Uh... reporting, Captain Cano. Why was the point all the way out here.
This was met with a sigh from Vicente Cano, speaking from his vehicle. "Oh, you sound like a newbie. That's not exactly what I'd have preferred, but Hell with it, we'll press on. We and the Gacela people are both coming from land - from the west side of the stream, for that matter, though they're well to the north of our position. We need to get moving so they don't beat us to the base. We'll gun them down coming out of it if we have to, but we want to avoid getting the merchandise blown up. Come on." Not having much more in the way of input, Jalen elected to do so.
Jalen made first contact with the enemy two and a half hours later. He had been ranging out ahead of the slow, lumbering vehicle he had been assigned to escort, acting as a scout and preparing to make the hit and run attacks that the orders he'd been given called for. It wasn't like the
Arquebusier was a total speed demon, as its legs were never designed for speed and had only received some pretty basic work - but it wasn't
slow, either, moving at a competent clip, and that meant it could do this job just fine. In the unerringly flat terrain of most of the Middle Belt, in Titans larger than most of the trees, the Gacela vehicle and Titan first emerged into Jalen's site as a pair of indistinct specks, not different from the trees or occasional light terrain feature Jalen spotted in the distance. But then they resolved into something that, though small, Jalen could actually recognize - a Titan. "Captain Cano, Commander Vasiliauskas, I've spotted them. Uh," he winced at that sound escaping his lips, "I'm engaging in hit and run maneuvers." Jalen had the
Arquebusier unlimber the Dragonnade from its back, and he got moving.
A brief glance to his side caused Jalen to grimace a little - he wished that he had found the enemy a little sooner, as they had come a bit closer than he probably should have let them, about five kilometers out from the base. That still gave him some time, since these convoys weren't exactly the fastest in the world, but not as much as he'd have liked. As his Titan moved towards the foes, Jalen watched as the thickly-armored Titan (he could make out details now - the thing was a thick, blocky Titan with a massive grenade launcher mounted on an arm half-fused to its torso, with the other arm lacking a hand) moved between him and the vehicle, and though he sighed, he hadn't really expected not to get noticed. Well, fighting time, then. The
Arquebusier approached closer, and finally Jalen had the Arquebusier move the Dragonnade into position, leaned the Titan's weight onto its more stable leg, let the magical lines across his HUD confirm his aim, and...
...missed, the spike fired from the large railgun digging a hole into the ground where the enemy Titan had been just a second ago, as even the slow enemy Titan was capable of dodging a shot or two at such a long distance with a weapon with projectiles as slow as the Dragonnade. And that's about when pure, utter chaos broke out. Jalen clenched his teeth as a loud voice started bellowing in a language he didn't understand behind him, all fire and fury and bluster - outside the enemy mech swept the large weapon on its fused arm, and a wave of grenades popped out, explosion after explosion churning dirt into the sky in a line that approached him - he stepped forwards with the agile left leg to let these grenades explode harmlessly and to his right - the Russian shouting was matched and countered by the increasing irritation of two voices in Spanish as the ghosts behind his targeting system got in a fight with the ghost behind his gun - he leaned back on his stable leg and took multiple shots this time, only to have to step away again as grenades fell - two spikes hit this time, lodging in the heavily armored enemy Titan's torso and giving it brief pause, but at the same time moving out of firing position wasn't quite fast enough and his Titan was buffeted by a nearby grenade, sending a wave of force through his torso armor and lightly damaging it - the titanic sounds of metal ringing heralded the arrival of invisible shells brought by the Dragonnade's curse, which bounced off of the enemy Titan's armor and for now simply left small dents, while Jalen was forced to finally back off from yet more grenades.
Clenching his teeth, Jalen pressed the button that made Zinovy Rozhestvensky shut the hell up, and he recapped mentally what had happened during that burst of chaos. He'd come in for a hit and run with the Dragonnade, and even with all the investment into accuracy, the muzzle velocity inhibited his fire at long range - but it was okay, because the other Titan suffered the same issue. Using the accuracy of the Titan's head and the augments to its legs, he'd managed an odd dance that had seen him take only mild damage from a series of grenades. This... could be sustainable. The other Titan had taken serious armor damage before its pilot had finally figured out he should remove the offending projectiles, so all he had to do was repeat this right?
A voice crackled on his radio - Cano. "Kid, I'm four kilometers away from the base. Looks like the Gacela forces are too." Jalen looked and a curse fell from his lips - the other Titan had managed to keep him distant from the vehicle, and was now moving to rejoin as best as it could, while still ensuring that any efficient path to the vehicle would end in another confrontation. Jalen could reach the other vehicle, but it would take multiple goes - and it would take time. He darted in, remaining mostly at long range as per orders - but slightly closer this time, of his own volition, to ensure some accuracy. A grenade detonated against the
Arquebusier's right leg, and stripped the armor around the shin, drawing a grimace from Jalen, but causing no deeper damage. A spike embedded in the right leg of the enemy Titan, causing it to stop firing for a moment and struggle to knock it out, but not succeeding without the armor around the legs being half blown to shit. But Jalen didn't dare get closer, counter to orders and into that launcher's range, and backed off.
"Three kilometers out, now. Getting closer to them. You need to get that Titan taken care of quicker!" Jalen looked again - oh, damn, of course the vehicles were converging,
they were going to the same place. Jalen went in again, and came out with more armor damage, this time a blast to the torso which got the armor there to a state just short of concerning, but this time the enemy Titan saw the armor on its Torso brought
thin, as far as Jalen could tell. "Two kilometers! We're running out of time!" The next brief engagement went very well for Jalen, as this time a spike slammed into the free arm of the enemy Titan, the tool it had been using to bluntly snap the spikes of the Dragonnade, and there was a wisp of smoke as internal damage to the torso caused by the Dragonnade briefly ignites a fire before suppression systems put it out. This was a death sentence for the other Titan - without a way to remove it, the only way to stop the rain of shells now coming down and slamming at the armor of that arm was to bring down the
Arquebusier... and the other Titan wasn't fast enough to catch Jalen. Jalen even managed to finally get in reach of the other vehicle and lodge a spike into it, with a resounding clank and thud of metal. But it was too late. "ONE KILOMETER! Get something figured out NOW!" The electric
cracks of a pair of railguns, and the hissing of missiles, announced the start of combat between the vehicles.
Jalen had a realization, and he let out a sound that tore at his throat, a strangled gasp of sudden horror. The arguing of the ghosts behind him faded away into the background, and his senses narrowed to a fine point - the enemy titan, the two vehicles and nothing else. There was only one way to prevent Captain Cano's vehicle from getting shot at by both the enemy Titan and enemy vehicle, even as the Gacela vehicle's armor began to buckle, even as it lost one of its launchers to a well-placed ghost shell, even as that cannon fire spread from the enemy Titan's arm to its torso, blasting away the remaining armor in slabs on one side and revealing a significantly damaged torso. He had to present a barrier the same way the other Titan had to him. ...he had to get into the middle of the combat, and this time
he couldn't run away. Hit and no run. And feeling a little bit like a man on the way to the gallows, he
ran the
Arquebusier into position - position that turned into medium range with the other Titan.
Events, once again, burst into chaos and weapon fire. But this time, despite the panic clawing at his throat and gripping his heart, or perhaps even because of it, Jalen caught all the details of it. Rockets began to thin on the enemy vehicle as the Dragonnade did its work, but not enough to prevent the Gacela vehicle from redirecting its fire at the
Arquebusier, peppering it all over. A rocket slammed into the torso structure of his Titan, and blew an internal bulkhead, and another pair reduced the thin armor on the agile but fragile "Arcanebusier" leg to practically nothing. Jalen began firing the
Arquebusier's arms' lasers and the Dragonnade into the damaged torso of the enemy Titan, simultaneous to the enemy Titan firing off a barrage of grenades, and simultaneous to Captain Cano's vehicle sending a barrage of railgun fire to help execute that Titan. Jalen screamed at the top of his lungs as several grenades impacted. Two hit the
Arquebusier in its core, tearing steel and blowing apart arcane components and power sources - the weapon mounting therein was completely shredded. Another grenade impacted directly against the more fragile of the
Arquebusier's legs, buckling it and forcing Jalen to lean entirely on the "Arquetwosier" lest it suddenly totally fail. But at the same time, the Dragonnade punched hard enough into the enemy Titan that the spike came out the back, the lasers
detonated something in the enemy mech even as invisible shells began to tear it entirely apart, and then the railgun fire came to finish the job, two thunderous impacts that tore straight through the enemy Titan. The combined effect was to essentially hollow out the enemy Titan, the titanic sound of metal tearing ringing out as it collapsed in on itself, nearly disparate parts connected by a hulk of scant, twisted wreckage.
From there, it was easy - the world began to restore itself to Jalen as the majority of the danger disappeared, and the shouting of the ancient ghost in his cockpit (a calmer part of Jalen in the back of his head noted that it probably wasn't actually that intelligible even in his own language) heralded the neutering of the Gacela vehicle, as shells aimed at the exposed rocket launchers stripped the freighter of all its weaponry. From there, it wasn't long before the hostile vehicle was disabled completely and then thoroughly destroyed - the two remaining railguns of Cano's vehicle, as well as the ever-escalating cannonballs of the Dragonnade, ensured that. Jalen let out a long sigh, and forced himself to radio back to
Le Bouclier. "Mission's... mission's success. Mission success. Ah..." Without a word to him, Cano's vehicle entered the abandoned base and began the process of scavenging it.
As for Jalen... he was still shaken. On some level, he'd of course known he'd been risking it. But experiencing it... he didn't think that feeling of terror was ever going to completely subside.
Mission Success!Damage Incurred: Chest heavily damaged, Medium weapon mounting destroyed (requires 1 Mech and 1 Magic Scrap). Left leg moderately damaged, structural failure likely under stress (Requires 1 Magic Scrap).
Battlefield Scrap: Mech Head Scrap, Mech Scrap with Rapid Rotary System
Jalen Elliott has gained a Trait: Panicky (Having no choice but to put himself into the line of fire has marked Jalen deeply, and he's much more nervous now, a deep pit of panic welling to the surface. On the bright side, this actually means that Jalen is unlikely to become complacent, better at identifying what presents the most threat and how to deal with it in how he directs his fire - but he is unlikely to want to take on much risk, and will try quite strenuously to avoid getting caught in slugouts between Titans.)
The communication that
Le Bouclier received from Cano showed him with his mouth twisted into a grimace - the man wasn't quite furious, but it was clear that he wasn't quite happy. "So, listen, here's the deal. We did successfully recover the materiel left in the Fif base, including the weapon we'd heard about that we promised you, so you'll be getting full payment as promised in the contract. As for how I personally feel about your performance..." He sighed, much of his flamboyance from earlier in the month replaced by serious contemplation. "I suppose I'm ambivalent. The damage to the vehicle could have been much worse, since you'd brought the other Titan to the breaking point by the time it actually got close enough to be a threat. But it could have been avoided if you hadn't fully committed to a hit and run strategy on a damned escort mission - I shouldn't have had to get into a slugout with the other vehicle in quite that way. I'm not strictly averse to working with you again in the future, but I would like to see the next mission go more smoothly."
Mission Rewards: 1 Mech Left Arm Scrap, 1 Mech Right Leg Scrap, 1 Mech Scrap with High-Power Battery, Mark 3 "Crown Amethyst" Plasma Beam (specs will be shown in the later Navigation Phase post.)
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Topic: Ramshackle Titans - Knights Reliquar Thread - M2 Deployment (Read 9841 times)