Chapter 7:
New Kyoto, 21 December 3004, Black Cat PMC Main Base.
Morgan Kell was feeling as off-kilter as ever when reverie woke him that morning. He had figured that, as they were heading back into the Commonwealth and their time away was finally coming to a close, he would be feeling more even and levelheaded. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and the call to be up had him questioning his life's choices and cursing Katrina's orders for him.
"Wait, watch and report when we arrive. Sure, Katrina, I will happily spend another week as if I were back at the Nagelring. Damn me and my stupid mouth," he mutters to himself as he stands from the surprisingly comfortable bed and pulls on something to work out in.
Why did he agree to meet the tiny terror in the Sims again? And at 0 dark thirty as well. He was really off balance if he had forgotten how the Military worked after only a year of bouncing around the Periphery. Grabbing his Mech gear bag, he headed for the door, hoping that he might be able to hit the mess hall for some coffee before he had to meet the Colonel.
"Let's not forget that even though she looks like a child, she is decidedly unsettling and sets off all of my alarm bells. How does she manage to keep that stoic demeanour all the damn time, even her voice doesn't seem to change." He sighs to himself under his breath, recalling the meeting with the Woman. Only to be startled wide awake by a voice from behind as he steps out of the Officers' building.
"Don't let the Colonel catch you saying that; she might just decide that you deserve extra attention today," said a soft, husky and lilting voice, tinged with a slight French accent.
Calmly, despite the rapid rate of his heart, Morgan turned his head to look at the speaker, only to double-take at the sight of a Cat. Now the Canopian Cat-girl is well known, but usually they are in skimpy outfits serving drinks or dancing alluringly, not in military fatigues with officers' pips, smoking on a military base.
"I had not planned on it, at least not before I figure out if I can take her in Sims yet." He responds, lifting his bag lightly. The Cat-officer just laughs.
"Listen, kid, you manage to take that monster in the sims, and I guarantee you will have a line at the Officers' Lounge of folks wanting to buy you a drink and find out how." The woman shakes her head to go with the laugh, "In the five years I have been with her, she has only ever lost when matched against a minimum of ten times her number, with almost forty times her weight in metal. So if you manage it one-on-one, you will definitely be up there as far as mech jocks go." She finishes before stubbing out her smoke and flicking it into the trash can nearby.
"Now, you're with me, as I am to show you to your likely multiple virtual executions. But first, go dup everything except your profile chip. Not a chance the Colonel lets you use those shitty helmets and vests. I will wait." She says, pointing a thumb over her shoulder back at the door.
Slightly bemused, but expecting something interesting based solely on the armour of the "Protection" detail that Katrina, Arthur and he had received, he double-timed it back to his loaned room and dropped off his gear bag, after carefully pulling his profile chip from the helmet.
"So what, you lot have loaner helmets and better vests or something for guests to use?" he asks, the rank tabs say Lieutenant, as he once again joins her outside and falls into step with her. Getting slightly sidetracked by the sway of her hips and tail, as well as her shapely rear, thus falling slightly behind.
"More like if you are staying as a guest, you are probably as important or more important than the Daimiyo, who's the one paying our bills, so you are probably going to be getting presents. So I expect that you are going to both love and hate this session of Sim time." She responds, glancing over her shoulder to catch him staring before sighing and shaking her head.
The flush of embarrassment at being caught is matched only by the rapid increase in heart rate as the Lieutenant picks up the pace, and he has to almost jog to pull alongside her. The rest of the trip is made in silence and doesn't take too long. Ten minutes later, find them at a large annexe building near the mech-stables.
"Well, good luck, kid, and hopefully you get something out of this. Most of our pilots are on a waiting list for time in the Sims with the Colonel, so do your best and try not to get too discouraged." She says, patting him on the shoulder and heading left towards the mech-tables. Looking in that direction, he can see several freshly painted Hammers and Stalkers being worked on by the Techs, as well as many bays further in where the illumination seems to come from numerous welders, cutters and other tools of the trade.
Shaking his head at the amount of metal he is seeing, and knowing that what is on show is the 'New Metal', he can't help but think over what the Lieutenant had said. Apparently, the Colonel was either a monster in her mech, the other people were kissing ass, or something really fucky was going on. He would have to go and see, but it would likely be an interesting experience.
Walking into the Sim-hall, He headed for the door marked Lounge, hoping that there would be refreshments and coffee there. Stepping in, he found a tasteful if utilitarian layout of multiple couches, armchairs and even a bar with stools in front of it. Behind the Bar, Visible only because of the colour of her hair, being so distinct from the dark wood, the Colonel was tending to a behemoth of an Espresso machine. AS he approached, she pulled through four cups worth before combining them into two separate mugs and then topping with the pitcher of milk that had apparently been steaming off to one side.
Turning around, she placed one in front of an empty stool and carried the other around from behind the bar before, somehow, sitting on one of the stools, as if she levitated, not spilling a single drop.
"Good, you are here, I was hoping that you would still have some ingrained behaviours from the Nagelring." She says before taking a sip and indicating the other cup.
"Morning, Colonel," He replied, coming to attention briefly before taking a seat and sipping the fresh coffee, which was surprisingly good, similar to the few times he had had coffee at his cousin's estate. "So I was told that I would not need anything except my helmet profile logs, so I take it you have some interesting new and improved cooling vest and helmet for me to use in our Sims?" He asks, setting the coffee back down.
"Interesting, definitely, new, not quite. They are around three hundred years old. Original SLDF Royal helmets and cooling suits. Found several pallets worth of them all bundled up with the new Metal I had my team retrieve from Epsilon Eradani." She replied, slowly working her way through the coffee, which now that he was looking was in a mug marked 24flOz and seemed to have a colour indicating only the barest hints of milk added.
"Really, SLDF cooling suits and helmets, and you are just lending me some for the duration of my stay?" The generosity of such a thing was definitely more than he was expecting.
"Lending? Gods no, you are keeping both, no way in heaven or hell is someone else going to wear your sweaty seconds. We have spares, and it costs me nothing really for you to keep the two items." There was an actually detectable shiver that passed through her, with her reply showing a shockingly large amount of reaction from the woman.
The shock of being given, as close to brand new, SLDF Royal quality, Neurohelmet and Cooling-suit was a blindsiding sort of gesture. Those were highly valued and highly prized, among not just nobles but anyone and everyone who used the things. And her he was receiving a set as if they were nothing. The thought of how much wealth the unit must use was mind-boggling if they could afford to give away these sorts of items.
"That is very appreciated, Colonel. I don't actually know what to say or do for a gift of such magnitude." He eventually says, after having drunk most of his coffee in silence, trying to figure out how this was all making him feel.
"Nothing, just go find them in the marked locker and get changed and ready, we have Sim pods, one and two, for the next three hours. Hopefully, you can now keep pace. Go get changed, Mech Warrior, we have work to do." She replies, knocking back the last of her coffee before, once again, seeming to float from the stool she was on, as if walking down a small staircase, leaving her mug behind and heading for the clearly marked locker room.
Morgan entered the Simpod room ten minutes later, dressed in his new cooling suit and carrying his new helmet under his arm. It was weird; the suit fit perfectly, none of the usual weird seams itched, uncomfortable riding up, or even just material that felt weird to wear. The suit simply slipped on and fit like it had been tailored perfectly. Which, considering these were mass-produced during a war, was a near impossibility.
As he walked in, he noticed a crowd gathering around one of the sections of pods, close to twenty other Mechwarriors. All in similar suits, most with helmets casually held at their sides or resting in carry bags on their waists. They were all watching a screen, showing what was happening inside the Sim that those particular pods were running.
He made his way over to see what was going on, catching money changing hands as the crowd let out a groan. On screen, a Mongoose had just done a baseball slide, resulting in a Stalker's knee and feet actuators completely failing and causing it to fall. That was not possible; mechs couldn't move like that.
As he watched the falling Stalker, judging that it was aiming to collapse on the prone Mongoose, he thought that it was some sacrificial play. Surely the pilot of the Mongoose knew they couldn't escape. That was his thought until the Mongoose rolled, like a dog, or down a hill as a kid, and stood in a motion so smooth, it could not have come from any mech he knew of. Mechs did not move like that.
The Stalker had its bullet-shaped front end make contact with the ground, and the pilot was rated as Mission killed. The Sim ended in a win for the Mongoose operator. Now, was it unusual for a Light mech to beat an Assault mech, highly and definitely. Was it still doable? Sure, but it normally took a long time. The Sims stats displayed after that showed that this match had taken literally long enough for the Mongoose to meet the Stalker and make contact. That was it, it found the Stalker, and beelined in for a baseball slide that destroyed the Left leg entirely, causing the mech to faceplant. And that was the total of the match.
Watching the two sim pods open, he saw a burly mech pilot climb out of one of them, while stepping out of the winning pod was the Colonel. Morgan's thoughts paused as he thought back to the match and the impossible movements of the mech. This was what the Colonel could do? Pilot a mech like it was an extension of her body, and defy physics?
Shaking his head, he made his way over to the Colonel, who was looking at something on a noteputer that was attached to her pod. She actually had some bare flicker of annoyance on her face at the moment, which was the first hint of emotion he had seen from her.
"No, this is not right, I guess that several of the parameters are out of range. Performance was slower than it should have been, but the resulting damage was exponentially higher than would have resulted otherwise." She was muttering just loud enough to herself that she could be heard over the other mech warriors good good-naturedly ribbing the loser of the fight, and also apparently congratulating him on not losing to the 'Finger of Death', whatever that was.
"That was an impressive move there, Colonel, how'd you manage to pull it off?" he asks, coming alongside her and looking at the tablet. The screen showed a breakdown of code and mathematics, and... his eyes started crossing and his brain skipped for a second until the Colonel switched the noteputer to a different screen.
"Testing out a modification I am working on for my personal mech, unfortunately, the Simpods need to have certain datasets re-evaluated before it can work as it is supposed to. I also need to make extensive refits if I hope to do it out of the sims, but I should be able to if the sims prove that reworld application is viable." She responds as she looks up at him from the screen.
"So an experimental model that is not necessarily going to be workable in real life, and that only worked because you messed with some sim settings?" He asks, finally realising that she has probably only ever pulled off her ridiculous feats in the sims, and that was why everyone thought her unbeatable.
"For that mech and that manoeuvre? Yes, normally I just have the system running on base settings and turn up the difficulty, though, as it is far too easy to have fun in the Sims that I can't do out in the real world otherwise. Also before you think that I tweak things to let me win, you can have a go in my pod with my settings before our match to see what things feel like for me." She responds, cutting his thought train off and causing the other mechwarriors to immediately quieten down and look over at him. Some have a pitying gaze, others are snickering, and two people, the latest loser included, are openly laughing at him. The responses cause him to flush slightly.
"I trust that you are an honourable Colonel; it is just that some of the things your other pilots have been saying seem impossible and ridiculous." He responds, scratching the back of his neck.
"Well, for now, let's run you through the training sims so that you can get used to whatever mech you choose to pilot for our duel. After that, you can tell me whether or not I am stacking the deck." She replies with one perfectly arched eyebrow. That is the second time she has displayed emotion, and it was still just the slightest of things.
Morgan is directed to the pods that were going to be used, passing several of the other pilots and getting a consoling shoulder pat or two, as well as hearing several bets about how long he would last, what scenario would be run, and how many mechs he might down in the warmup round. He was really unsure at this point how to feel about all the low values he was getting, but it definitely firmed his resolve to go at this full force from the get-go.
He climbed into the pod and strapped in, connecting the helmet and strapping in. Just after he did, the viewscreens came online and he found himself in a briefing room. This took him by surprise as normally you just ended up looking through a menu. Sitting opposite him, was a visual of the Colonel, legs crossed and looking relaxed. Between them was a Holotank, with a menu showing several categories. Mission type, Mission limitations, and Mech Stable.
"I will set the mission type to a warzone assault and leave the limitations off for the first run. We are going straight into the thick of things. The map is a 100km2..The enemy will be directly ahead. Atmosphere is Terran standard, temperature is 30C and humidity is 85%. One large branching river, several large stands of trees and shrubs, as well as rolling hills. No complex terrain, this is a straight seek and destroy battle, so we can keep it simple." She starts working through the settings for the mission, the map on the Holotank changing in real-time to match her inputs. A large square forms, then a large branching river, with rolling hill sides that gradually become mountains along two sides of the map. Scattered across the map are several large corpses of trees. A simple, straightforward valley, with the opponents indicated as being on one side and their drop zone indicated as being on the other.
"No limits on the mechs aside from having to run configurations as is. We can get into the customisation options some other time; it would take far too long if I let you tune whichever mech you choose to your preference." She continues catching him off guard. These sims let you change from standard configurations and tune the mechs as you want? That seemed like a fun way to find your perfect set-up, as well as a good way for him to use up some of the time before Katarina and Arthur arrived.
"Final setting, how do you judge when the mission ends and who did better? The limit cap on enemy forces is now set to four times our tonnage. Not including ASF, Tanks, and fixed emplacements. I will be kind and not leave it on default, as this is a warm-up for you. Also, enemy forces are set to Kurita, and Capellan joint forces, cause I always enjoy beating the crap out of those fools." She finishes as the final settings slot into place, and the Holotank makes a single final adjustment. The enemy Icon is now dividing into two icons and splitting up into what looks to be a force disposition, though it is listed as potential locations and nothing as to force composition.
He keeps looking over the displayed map for a little longer before the Colonel does something, and he suddenly finds himself looking at another menu, this one apparently being his mech selection menu. Looking it over, he finds a search bar with a dropdown menu that has a number of filters across it. Weight class, majority loadout disposition, role, armour ratings, speed ratings, the list of filters is extensive, and as he plays with it, the list of available mechs slowly pairs itself down to just five.
One is an Atlas, of a type he has not seen before. Alongside that is a Nightstar, a Marauder, a King Crab and finally an Archer. All of them are in configurations that he is happy with, but he still has to choose. Eventually, something the Colonel said the other night comes to mind, and he looks at the Archer's loadout.
The Archer ARC-2Rb was a Royal variant, running endosteel, CASE, Double Heatsinks, and Artemis IV for its launchers. The mech seemed to be everything he needed, and with the caveat that the enemy would be a number of mechs equaling four times the combined weight of the lance he was working in, he decided not to go full assault weight for this warmup.
Locking in his choice, the screens around him went black before Betty came on and ran through the startup sequence. Once the sequence had begun, the screens changed to the view from an Archer's cockpit, finding him in the bays of a small Dropship, shaking about as it apparently underwent re-entry while under fire.
As he was getting over the whiplash of suddenly being in the assault, his comms lit up and a small video window opened showing the Colonel.
"Alright, Mech warriors, listen up, we are in for a hot drop on an entrenched enemy position. Our lance is search and destroy, targets are all enemy metal on the field. Current intel predicts enemy force distribution as roughly anywhere between ten and twenty enemy mechs, supported by two dozen combat vehicles and VTOLS, with a flight of six ASF. All these forces will have support from fixed emplacements, but there is no artillery in the field at this time." As she spoke, a small map appeared and populated similarly to the Holotank before he got to choose his mech.
"We will get a chance at reinforcements and repairs if we can take out these four locations that have the Orbital guns and AA platforms, as well as this location that has the main repair base for the region." As she spoke, five separate locations were highlighted on the map, with popouts showing the targets and general layout.
"We are hotdropping behind enemy lines, so don't expect to get saved if you have to go to silk. It will be entirely down to you to make it back to safety. So keep an eye on your armour levels and your ammo counts. We won't be getting more unless they have some automated systems left down there in the SLDF's old repair base." She finished as the lights in the dropship suddenly turned over to a flashing red.
"Ten seconds to drop, be ready, as we are not hanging around for long", comes a voice over the comms from the dropship's pilot.
The gantry that his mech was in then started to rotate such that he was now facing what appeared to be a door. The dropship made a final lurch, and those doors slammed open far faster than he had ever seen happen before, "Alright, kidds off the bus doubletime", came the voice of the Colonel as the light turned green, so he immediately went to full throttle to get off the Dropship.
Clearing the dropship and then the washzone that was helpfully displayed in his helmet's HUD, he used his map to group up with the rest of his lance, finally looking over the other mechs that would be working with him.
The Colonel was in the same Mongoose, though this one definitely moved more like he was used to seeing. Standing beside the Colonel, whose Callsign was apparently Titania, was a Maruader 2R, callsign Wolfhound, and beside him was a Nightstar, callsign Tinman. Looking over the comms panel, he saw that his callsign for this sim was simply Kidd. which was slightly insulting, but also understandable. None of these people had ever seen him pilot a mech before, and he had come incognito, so no one aside from the Colonel was supposed to know who he was. It still did not stop him from sighing at the moniker, but he would take it for now until he earned another one.
Sim Battle, Search and Destroy, Current Enemy Disposition: 20 Mechs, 12 IFVs, 8 VTOLS, 30 Turrets.
I was officially back in the hot seat, running through the map we had chosen, on point and scouting for the rest of the lance. See, the reason that I always went with my little light mech was because, between all of its systems and my own abilities, the only way to find me was with tremor sensors, and getting lucky with the Mark 1 eyeball.
One of the things that I had figured out was that there were camo patterns that caused the targeting computers of most mechs, Royals had a slightly tweaked pattern, and I guarantee Clanners were the same, to not only possibly misidentify a mech, but also potentially ignore a mech altogether.
Now, was this all that useful? Not really, you stood out like a sore thumb to normal vision. The problem was that it required you to crack your cockpit and not use your cameras. Yes, I had found a visual glitch in the firmware for around 60% of mech cameras, which possibly made you invisible. But that disappeared the instant you lost enough of the paint, so it was only really useful before contact was made.
That said, the surprise factor, when combined with Null-sig, Chameleon and my piloting, always resulted in fun things happening. So off I went, ranging ahead of my lance and painting all the targets I was finding. All my sensors were set to passive, and I was mainly doing this all through visual confirmation, but the results were some very accurate and deadly firesupport from Morgan.
His LRM20s were simply sandblasting everything I pointed out with little to no trouble, thanks to the tweaks I had made to all of the targeting software on my machines, and thus uploaded into the sims. He was racking up kills, taking out IFVs and turrets, but we still had yet to meet any Mechs.
Just as I thought that, I ran into the first of the enemy scout lances, two Locusts, a Jenner and a Panther. Now, normally, one would want to retreat and call in their support. Especially as this lance would fold with the weight I have behind me. But I was interested to see if the standard difficulty mixed lance, controlled by the AI, would be able to handle me when I was not holding back, and whether they could put any damage on me.
The two Locusts were ranging ahead slightly. Their heads were on a swivel, but I still blindsided them both as I put three lasers directly into the cockpit glass of each mech. Independent targeting for each arm is a difficult-to-manage system for some people. Not for me. And so the Locusts died, their pilots cooked behind the glass of their cockpits.
The attack caused my chameleon and null-sig to be broken, and should have made me visible to the Jenner and Panther, but their systems were not seeing me, even though the pilots could. Discount 'Phantom Mech' for the win.
The Panther was the next to be dropped. I kicked in the Supercharger, still moving full tilt and planted a flying kick in his cockpit. See, mechs could technically jump, it was just not advisable, and if you did not do it exactly right, the gyro would make it impossible to land safely.
I was not worried. I was one with my machine, and gyro or no, I was able to move the mech like it was my body. The kick did result in slight damage to the joints of my mech, but the Panther was dead, and my armour was still green.
The Jenner had at this stage decided that launching his SRMs blind in the area he knew I was would probably hit me, which was a good call, but honestly, that required me to be standing still. Right after I landed from the kick, I was already moving to use the crumpling mech as a shield, before popping up after the missiles and falling mech to poke my finger straight into that badly designed and situated cockpit.
That was forty seconds and four dead light mechs. All with technically light and repairable damage. So I updated the threat map and dropped a waypoint for where I expected the next set of opponents to come from, followed by a second for where I wanted the Lance to move to set up an ambush.