Liberation of Smithon

On board the Argo.  Drifting .5 AU from the Smithon jump point

Today hasn’t been so much of a wake as a bake.  It was just last month that we brought the

hydroponics bay online.  That added luxury was a gift to the whole unit after we liberated Panzyr.  

Morgan had insisted that instead of starting with food that we run a “test crop” first before we started

relying on it to produce our meals.  He had a few seeds he said that were from his family.

“Heirlooms,” he’d called them.

But today had been spent paying homage to Morgan’s memory by consuming his crop.  After

harvesting, drying and smoking his last “big idea”, the tales of his antics were starting to finally
slow down.  

It was also the first party on the Argo that he was going to miss.  



Early this morning, as the sun was just rising over the ammo dump we were there to raid, Morgan did

not run.  Despite the coolant flowing down the legs of his mech and its left arm showing myomer
bundles from elbow to shoulder, he did not turn away.  Despite his initially being far too cocky and
getting knocked down with 8 mechs bearing down on us, he just got back up and tried to continue.

Only when I put a target lock on him myself and threatened to cut off one of his legs did he finally pull

back from the line and move to the rear.  Of course he couldn’t stop popping up behind me and
vomiting SRMs the moment any enemy poked a little too close.

Fortunately, we managed to turn that early mistake to our benefit.  That setback caused us

to stop at the ridgeline and gave us cover. But that early “victory” also led our enemies to suffer from a
mistake of overconfidence.  Their bloodlust brought them crashing against our line time and again.

All of their training and plans were left behind as their scouts pushed forward initially without reason.  In
their minds, Morgan was one small laser shot from death and they were already painting a fresh skull
just below their cockpits. Their madness might have driven them forward, but our tenacity drove them
back repeatedly.  

The first across the ridgeline was a Locust. Its pilot truly must have forgotten what he was sitting in.  

His mad dash right at my Griffin never paused for a moment while he fired obsessively between my legs
at Morgan. To him, I was just scenery.  

I’m sure he was dreaming of retelling his tale to everyone he met.

"So my Locust, GiantKiller, and I single-handedly rush this guy who is over twice my size..."

He might have ignored me, but I did not return the favor.  One alpha strike tore off the left side of his

mech.  Then when he fell backward onto the loose and crumbling soil, I crushed his cockpit under 55
tons of vengeance.  The idiot was still glaring past me while stabbing at his controls in some vain
attempt to target Morgan. His efforts only stopped when my heel crunched through the ferro-glass
and his engine imploded.

Their Spider pilot watched all of this happen, but it gave her no pause.  She shot over the ridge right

behind him. However, at the last moment, her lust for a kill yielded to her training.  She stopped short
and instead of firing, chose a sensor lock and Morgan’s mech lit up for the entire world to see.

Glitch called out, “BIRDS!”.  But I knew they weren’t heading for her Centurion.  

The missiles created a smokey rainbow over my position as three distinct salvos impacted on

“something” to my rear.  The few rocks that bounced off the legs of my mech were nothing compared
to what must have just tore through the few remaining bits of Morgan’s armor.  

“All Green,” called out Morgan over the comms.  

That was immediately followed by Glitch barking out, “Bullshit!”

She sent two racks of LRMs back at their heavy mechs that had just wandered into range.  Her

recently acquired and heavily modified Zeus LRM 20 spewed forth an especially dangerous flock of
metallic avian predators.  However, it barely dented the 60 tons of Dragon and its pristine armor that
was moving toward the lake below our position.

Bypassing the heat alarms, I put another full alpha into the Spider.  At the last moment the little shit

managed to pivot and nearly everything impacted on her arm.  Considering she was busy targeting
Morgan vs. firing at anyone, the damage didn’t help us at all.  In fact, she moved further to my right
just out of my line of fire but held her lock.

Given that turning to attack her again would open up my side/rear armor to 7 other mechs, I just

ignored her.  Morgan was going to have to figure this problem out on his own.

Instead I called out, “Gamma” and turned to my left to hit their Jenner who had just volunteered to
take his turn being a missile magnet.

With near maxed out heat, I disabled my Medium Lasers.  But two swarms of SRM6’s chewed holes

all across the front of his previously pristine mech.  

We’d been fighting so many beat down companies and ragtag forces that we’d all become a little
complacent.  That’s partially how Morgan got himself in trouble in the first place. We’d become used to
mainly being a focused hammer of fire, but now we were in way over our heads.  We needed to absorb a
lot of damage more than we needed to deal it out in order to survive.

I expected to see MJ in our other Shadow Hawk hitting the Jenner from the left, but Marjorie (aka

Behemoth) was nowhere to be seen.  Some people’s callsigns never stuck no matter how many times
they insisted others use it. The closest that it got was when Decker called her Bee once.  She
punched him in the nose. Eventually she just settled for us calling her MJ.

I glanced at the HUD and realized she was way out of position to the left.  I had a full salvo of

profanities to launch at her but as I toggled the mic I realized she was chasing down ammo trucks that
were trying to escape.  Morgan might be close to buying it, but the reason we were there was to stop
that ammunition from getting into the wrong hands.

Sometimes you make choices with your heart and sometimes with your head.  I might have been focused
on protecting Morgan, but she was on-mission. She knew her job just like the rest of us.

I quickly wiped the sweat pouring from under my neurohelmet onto the sleeve of my cooling jacket and
tried to put my own focus back into the Jenner.  However, that little snake used the extra time I’d given
him and bounced back over the ridge before I could take another shot.

More missiles were coming in.  

“Cover up Morg!”

The hills around us granted the possibility that Morgan could get out of sight and the Spider’s lock

would be broken.  While he actually listened and pulled behind a rocky outcrop, it only lessened the
impacts vs. blocking them. Now that the heavy mechs were in range, even more LRM fire was arcing
over me.  I wasn’t certain how many impacted, but I could hear the explosions over the comms each
time he’d ack back.

“Green!”  called Morgan.

“Idiot.” I responded without keying the mic.  I doubted he needed to hear it. He knew that’s what all

of us were thinking.

There were still 7 mechs out there with 5 untouched and half were at least our size.  Our only hope

was to keep them off the ridgeline so we could focus on them while they couldn’t focus on us.  But
that position was quickly becoming unsustainable. We couldn’t push forward or their turrets would
tear into us worse than they were.  We couldn’t fall back as there was nowhere to go.

Fortunately, other than the crazy focus on Morgan, they seemed to be having a hard time focusing

on the rest of us.  They would decide one mech was important for a moment and then change their
mind to another one. It was allowing us to continue to hold them back off the ridge for the moment.

Of course, the LRMs never stopped falling on Morgan who now had buttoned up behind the hillside and
was just trying to ride it out.

I was fairly certain he’d just let go of the controls, pulled off his helmet, put on his headphones and

was listening to Bob Marley.  Maybe “One Love”. Resting there with his eyes closed and patiently
waiting for all of this to be over. Imagining lying on some beach where his greatest concern was a sunburn.

I was a little too busy to do the same.

A Cicada pilot had caught up with the light mechs and was making his presence known.  I’d had a few

PPC shots slip by me earlier but none had connected. Once he crested the ridge they started
impacting my Griffin’s armor and I had to adjust.  No single shot was going to bring me down, but those
were highly concentrated blows. Each one tore a hole that I couldn’t allow to be hit again. But I was
far too hot and couldn’t push him back alone.  In fact, he was threatening to push me out of position and
into the open which would be far worse.

Morgan apparently decided that it might be time to get back to work.  He stepped around my left side

and alpha’d the bug right in its smooshed in face.  The Cicada thought he could take on one lightly
wounded Griffin, he had second thoughts about facing another 55 tons of Shadow Hawk as well.  
With now 24 SRMs impacting his canopy, his footing was getting unstable. It didn’t matter how much
backup he had coming, if he lost his balance and fell now we’d end him.

Sanity prevailed and he scooted back over the ridge.

More missiles were incoming.

“Green!” They hadn’t even hit yet and Morgan wasn’t even shouting.  It was kind of sing-songy.

Almost like he was mentally taunting them: “Nyah Nyah, can’t get me!”

His mech rocked from the impacts and barely remained upright.  Before he did anything else stupid, he
scooted back behind the hill and hunkered down again.

Now the mechs to our left stopped playing around and started pushing hard on Glitch.  

She’d been throwing LRMs nonstop since the battle began. Every missile thrown at us had a return to

sender notification from her.  But she couldn’t push the enemy back off the ridge any longer. A
Firestarter had moved up and decided to try the Spider’s trick of just target locking Glitch.  There
wasn’t much she could do at that close range so she just kept lobbing fire at the oncoming heavies
and ignored it. Then the Jenner figured out that she was vulnerable and had jumped over to assist.  

She pulled back a bit to the left and away from Morgan and I. However, she quickly discovered that

the enemy turrets now had her in range.  Autocannon 2 shells ricocheted off her left arm and forced
her back closer to the Jenner. With only a single Medium Laser to defend herself with at that range
she was close to being overrun.

Then, just in time, MJ got back to the group.  She had needed to sprint her mech back toward Glitch,

but it gave her a chance to cool down before she arrived.  Fortunately, the numerous holes in her armor
from turret fire weren't anywhere important.

Once she arrived, she threw everything into the Firestarter’s right side and stripped him of his right
arm and torso.  He reassessed his future prospects and decided that the grass back on the other side
of the ridge appeared greener so returned to it.  

Marjorie then turned to do a number on the Jenner who was still pressing Glitch.  She was only

moments from putting a full load into it’s rear when the Jenner’s pilot did something completely
unexpected.  It triggered its jump jets and launched gracefully over the rocks and boulders resting
between our two pairs of mechs.

It landed square on Morgan’s head.

His mech rocked under the impact of the little weasel’s assault.  If he hadn’t been braced for the

missile fire then I was not certain he would have survived.  Although there was an enormous cloud of dust
from the landing and the collision, I could see that the Jenner was badly damaged.  

The radio chimed out, “Green!”  

But that was both Glitch and MJ laughing and calling it out in unison.  Morgan didn’t respond in kind.

In fact, I could see the sparks coming from the head of his mech and the comm’s array.  I wasn’t even
sure if he had heard them.

He was a little busy just keeping his mech upright.  

He wavered for a moment but managed to get his footing. Then his focus changed as he positioned himself
to smack the ever living shit out of the Jenner.  

But while that pilot may have missed a killing stroke on Morgan, he’d also planned his escape.  Before he
could respond, the Jenner bugged out at top speed back over the ridge. His damaged leg actuators were
groaning all the way, but they still scooted the light mech along fast enough to get him back to safety.

There was still no response from Morgan on the radio.  His mech instead extended one of its two

surprisingly still attached arms and flipped the retreating Jenner the bird.

Meanwhile, the Spider had decided to trade places with the Firestarter.  He’d ran to our left flank and

took a fresh crack at Glitch. But MJ ended that nonsense in a single precision salvo to its engine.

There was a brief pause for everyone on the field.  They had lost two of their comrades. People they knew.
People they had joked and laughed with.  They had the advantage of firepower and size and defenses, yet

we’d somehow managed to take out two of their friends.  

For a moment, it took the wind out of them.

But it was still 6 vs. 4.  And the six were still fairly fresh, including that Dragon.  It was a pause in the

mayhem, but it only lasted a few seconds.

Then more missiles came in.

No more pithy remarks from Morgan.  I’m not sure if he was still talking or not.  I had no idea how he

was still active. His center torso had been in the red since almost the first few salvos when they all
targeted him at once.  For now, he was staying huddled behind the boulders.

But it looked like the enemy had finally lost their lock on him and had decided to target Glitch instead.  

It seemed only fair since she was the one throwing missiles at them. But Glitch knew missiles better
than anyone on our team.  The ones that hit landed in places there weren’t critical while most just
cratered the ground around her. She had found a sweet spot between two boulders that blocked most
of the turret fire.  She seemed content to trade missiles with them for the remainder of the battle.

I wasn’t so certain.  The Dragon was coming and the other heavies and mediums would soon hit the

ridgeline.  I didn’t believe we’d make it through to collect our paycheck or perhaps even survive.

We’d stopped their trucks from escaping and taken out two lights, but we were in horrible shape.  

And the heavies were getting close to the ridge.

In the end, we had a job to do and we knew the rules of engagement.  The ammo couldn’t fall into the

wrong hands, but our employers wanted it to fall into the right hands.  That meant keeping it around
for them to collect.  However, we also needed to be around to collect. I’d kept things fair until that
moment, but a mercenary has to know when to cash out part of a paycheck so they can collect
another.  So I keyed my mic.

“Glitch, hit the dump.”

She told me afterward that she’d had the closest ammo pile targeted the whole time.  

She’s a survivor.

While MJ and Morgan were more about the money, Glitch has always wanted to live more than
anything.  Maybe that’s part of what keeps her in the backfield and lobbing missiles from a safe
distance. I’d never call her cowardly, but she definitely recognizes that being alive and poor is better
than being dead and rich.

Regardless, at that moment she sent 30 heavily modified LRMs on their way to a large pile of

munitions that just happened to be right next to the three heaviest of our opponents.  Including that
nearly pristine Dragon.

The effect was not minor.

None of them died, but it was clear they soon would.  Moments before they had witnessed the death

of their second teammate.  Then they realized they had the advantage. They imagined they would
soon make us pay for what we’d done.  Now they were realizing that we weren’t going to pay for
squat.

While they were recovering, I dropped the Cicada and MJ took down one of the other heavies. I had been
So focused on the other mechs that I hadn’t even bothered to ID it.  When I noticed the twisted remnants
of the Griffin after the battle I was glad I hadn’t seen it sooner.

Now it was 4 on 4.  But there wasn’t time for them to mourn.  They were too close to us to run and too

beat up to advance.   Everyone on the field knew this now was clearly to the death.

More missiles were coming, but Glitch was handling it.  She was throwing everything she had back at

the Dragon. Its pilot had decided that it no longer wanted to crest the ridge and now was just sitting
still and protecting itself.  Glitch’s missiles were hitting hard, but the damage was minimized and
spread out across its body. Each mech just stood in place and dared the other to fall. While Glitch
had taken some damage and was outmassed by her opponent, in a war of attrition I was now fairly
certain she’d come out the victor.

From out of nowhere, an armless Panther crested the ridge and managed to head butt Glitch right

in the chest.  Maybe that mech had been the source of some of the PPC fire from before, but now it
was just a weaponless husk. Morgan decided that it was again perhaps a good time to wake up. He put
The thing out of its misery before it got a chance to try and repeat the maneuver.  The fusion engine
actually blew out the front of the mech before going critical when his SRMs hit home on its thin rear armor.

3 vs. 4.

The Firestarter thought maybe he could take a poke at MJ and overheat her.  The flames were mostly

inconsequential, but the ferro-glass was damaged on her cockpit from some turret autocannon rounds
prior.  Some of the fuel got into the cockpit and burned her legs badly. She stumbled back from the
ridgeline in pain as much to avoid overheating.

But Glitch had had enough hiding in the backfield.  She stepped up and punted the the Firestarter

right in his gimpy leg.  It gave out and the mech tumbled onto the rocks. Before it could slide down
the ridge, I put four Medium Lasers into its CT to finish it off.

2 vs. 4.

Glitch was only a few meters from the Jenner, but she only had eyes for the Dragon.  It was now close

enough that she could hit it with her Medium Laser as well as her LRMs.  This was going to be the last
push.

They were defeated.  The Jenner barely had legs while the Dragon was stripped of armor.  We had the

height advantage and most of their turrets were unable to target us.  MJ and I moved up to flank the
Jenner and prepared to end it while Glitch took some final shots at the Dragon.

Then that fucking Jenner pilot took us by surprise again.  Two mechs facing him with 20 tons on him

each and he fires right past us.  Right into the Center Torso of Morgan’s mech. It was a component
that had been cored since the beginning of the fight.  A component that had survived salvo after salvo
of LRMs.

A component that now failed.

In the end, Morgan just couldn’t hide in the back.  He needed to fight. And that’s how it ended for him.  

He would have appreciated a ridiculous death.  

"Ejected from four mechs going critical and survived one hundred battles.  Died from broken neck after
slipping on soap in the shower.”  

This felt meaningless and unnecessary. We had it handled. Why come out of hiding at all? But being true
to his nature, he just couldn't.

I took extra pleasure in removing the Jenner’s left leg and then the right.  If the pilot would have

survived it I would have done the same to him personally.  The Dragon lost the battle of attrition with
Glitch as I knew he would.

The payout was extra rich since most of the ammunition survived.  Everybody got a bonus.

But Morgan is the first squad member we’ve lost since I took command.  It weighs on me.

We each, of course, have lost others during our careers. However, this past year has been charmed.  We
overcame every contract where we were just completely outmatched per hardware or utterly surprised by
poor intel.  We never even lost a single mech.

I’m having a hard time listening to this jackass Karosas telling me how much his family has lost and

how they’ve suffered.  It’s hard to empathize with another’s pain when you are weighed down by your
own. Especially when the other is some rich aristocrat who controls the wealth of a planet.

I sure hope this arrogant prick can tell us what this Star League LosTech is and I hope it is at least

worth the price of the repairs on Morgan’s old Shadow Hawk.  Not to mention the time spent cleaning
what’s left of him out of his neurohelmet and into the compost and nutrient tea feeding the
hydroponics setup.

It isn’t like we can afford to throw anything away...