Theodore 'Turbo' Andrews fidgeted in his seat.
The Light to Medium Battlemech hummed cheerfully underneath his buttocks, it's never ceasing fusion reactor a reassuring sensation underneath him.
His neurohelm, a Lyran Standard sat on his head uncomfortably.
The empty patch of skin where his hair had been shaved off, coming into contact with something that could only be called alien sitting atop it.
Sure it was just the neuro-connectors that were patched onto his skin, but, sitting here, waiting… well, it felt strange and alien.
Especially with all the waiting that they were doing.
"Oi, Manny, have you got access the orbital telemetries?" Kaiser called out onto the Lance net.
His Lance mates, his sibkin in the speak of the Clans.
They had grown up alongside him, a living testament to the history of mankind.
The greatest of the great condensed into a single Clan.
Unfortunately they never had a chance to prove that, hiding themselves away on Tetersen, refusing to engage with the Inner Sphere.
The greatest of mankind's blood hiding themselves while the Inner Sphere burned itself to ash, the Great Father would be ashamed.
But now, with the raising of the House Vu regiments, they could fulfil the Great Father's dreams of bringing peace to the Inner Sphere. Even they who hadn't gotten into the Triple Vs under cousin Slim. Especially since they were 17 years old… like himself.
He was about to become Clan anyway, so it didn't matter if they joined would it?
His thoughts were interrupted as Manny spoke up.
"Turbo, we're about to get into the fight. You ready for this?" Asked Manny who had earned her name from the way that she ate hamburgers and hotdogs. With voracious and never ending demand, inhaling it with the minimal chewing necessary. The bigger the chunks, the better they felt in her stomach she said.
"I was born ready." He said, echoing the old joke of his Clan.
"Me too you idiot. I mean, like, actually, we're about to get into a fight."
"About? It's days away. Like, literal days before the Combine land themselves and get into a fight. The only shit happening right now is in orbit which is why I want to look. Seriously." Kaiser interrupted, his own callsign not being because of his imperious nature… well, kind of. No, it was because of his love of Kaiser rolls, preferring to eat them straight.
In fact, from the fact that he was chewing into their ears right now, Turbo could tell that he was eating one right now.
"You know that roll is going to be soggy with your sweat later right?" Slurper called out. Slurper, well, she drank her water with an unfortunate habit of, well, slurping them.
"Salty. Love it." Kaiser replied, "no, seriously, I'll eat it before we go start shooting, duh. Anyway, orbitals!"
"I'm working on it Kaiser. Been working on it since you asked actually, not that I got a please you fuckwit." Manny replied without heat.
Kaiser's embarrassment radiated even trough the empty air.
They had snuck into their Battlemechs to run 'diagnostic checks', meaning… they weren't meant to be here.
But who wouldn't want to sit in their Battlemech for as long as they possibly could?
It was the greatest feeling ever.
"Right. Got it. I'm piggybacking off of Colonel Slim's net. Don't tell anyone or we're going to have problems, of the throw into prison kind." She said finally.
"Here we go. Here we go. Here we go." Chanted Kaiser.
Turbo's own console lit up, the screen that would usually show the area around his machine now showing a map of the orbitals. Lines going up and down indicating how far 'up' and 'down' they were relative to the flat plane of the map. The centre was obviously the observation point.
The blinking red dots that were moving in had velocities marked to them in Gravities.
The defenders were… "where are the defenders?" Asked Kaiser. "They're about to get into a fight and they're just waiting? Seriously?"
"They're on the flanks. I'm seeing Navy dropships taking potshots at them, but they're not getting closer." Kaiser continued, voice sounding furious. "Why aren't they charging in?"
"They're hemming them in, what about our fighters?" Slurper asked.
"They've got fuel remember? They can't head out just yet." Turbo answered, eyes glued to the display. Impact was set to be within 10 minutes.
"They have 1 pass you mean. At that speed, the defenders get just one chance to hit them before they have to turn around and catch up." Slurper added in, her voice filled with a frown that he could feel from here.
"C'mon, c'mon. Where are you!!" Kaiser's impatience was reaching heights only possible for someone watching a sport and not actually participating to reach. Turbo liked to imagine that his temple vein had made another appearance and was now throbbing.
"Defenders launching!"
"Fuck yes!"
"Oh fuck me. Why are there so few of them?" Kaiser moaned.
"Fuuuuck. Those are our guys. They're greener than we are!"
"Attackers launching ASF." Commented Manny, the 34 red dots ejecting what looked like confetti onto the display as hundreds of smaller dots resolved themselves into several smaller ones. 'Wing 1', 'Wing 2', helpfully taking their place on the display to unclutter it.
"Ha! They baited out the stupid fuckers." Slurper muttered, living up to her callsign as she drank from an open bottle.
"Those attacker ASFs… they're going the same velocity as the dropships." There was a pause at Manny's words.
"And?"
"It means that the defenders get one pass at them before they fly right into the jumpship yards."
"And?"
"And it means that it's nearly impossible for them to slow down. They've basically turned 34 Dropship suicide rams into… 17 and a half Wings of suicide ram flechettes with 34 Dropships." Turbo finished for her as it dawned on him what that meant.
"Ooooooh, fuck. That's diabolical." Kaiser said.
They sat and watched as the defenders sortied out, striving, with what looked like vain hope to reach the inbound cloud of suicidal rage and do something about it.
"5 minutes before impact."
"They're about to furball!"
"5 seconds."
"Defenders hit!" There was a brief cheer at that.
"Defenders through. Attackers through. Damage… like… half a wing? Is that it?" Kaiser sounded disappointed as he watched a few of the numbers flicker and not much else.
"They had one pass to do the damage. All laser." Manny said replied to Kaiser.
"That still leaves what, 17 Wings left?"
"Yeah."
"What about our guys?"
There was a pause as they read the numbers.
"8 left… we just lost 24." Manny said.
"24 for 8? That's… shit." Kaiser said.
"Yeah, they're green, what did you expect?"
"Better than that at least! When I'm in the fight, I'll at least kill 2 before I die!" He continued.
"They're getting closer, what's happening next?"
"Station Defence ASFs launching! Seeing 112 of them in the air! 7 Wings!" Kaiser shouted.
"3 minutes until impact."
"They're hitting them! One direct pass, 5 Wings destroyed! Ha! Take it you fucks!"
"Navy dropships are closing in behind them."
"12 Wings left."
"Defence… jumpships launching?"
They all went silent as the vessels that resolved into 'DC3-001', 'DC3-002' and so on launched.
51 of them.
The first batch, the first generation that were meant to have changed the Lyran Commonwealth and their homes for the better launch themselves on an intercept path with the Dropships.
"No. No, don't do that." Whispered Slurper, her heart in her words.
Turbo felt his mouth go dry, his clothes uncomfortably tight.
"They're going to body block the suicide rammers." Manning said, her voice calm.
Turbo didn't trust himself to speak.
"Fuck." Kaiser muttered, his voice filled with the sadness they were all feeling in their hearts.
"Time of impact on the jumpships, 2 minutes." Manning continued to speak.
"Commodore Berlin to all forces." Turbo felt himself jerk back in shock.
"How is he talking to us?" Whispered Kaiser.
"Because we're tagged in with Colonel Slim. If we weren't we wouldn't even know he was there." Manning said at normal volume.
"Well don't say anything, what if he hears you?" Slurper added.
"He won't, we're receive only for that channel." Manning was about to say more before she was cut off.
"All vessels standby to recover the crews of the DC3s. They will be leaving their vessels by lifeboat at the moment of impact." The Admiral said as Turbo listened, mouth agape.
"You can do that?" He asked.
"You can try. The velocity of those Dropships hitting the jumpships? The shrapnel is going to kill everyone within a few kilometres easy." Manning replied.
"So a suicide mission then." Slurper said.
"Kickass motherfuckers."
"Impact in 30 seconds."
"Why'd they wait so late to launch them?" Kaiser asked.
"Because if they did it earlier, the dropships could have adjusted to hit another target. Since they did it now, they can't adjust course. They were all funnelled in by the dropships. Smaller area means smaller number of targets, which means more chances of successful interceptions." Manning said with the finality of someone who had already planned and stamped the deaths of hundreds in her head.
"What about the shrapnel you were talking about?" Turbo asked.
"Well, lots of shrapnel over the entire defensive network is better than a few big hits in a few places right?" Slurper said.
"Impact in 10 seconds!"
They watched the little dots with an intensity that even their parents wouldn't have imagined possible from teenagers. Especially teenage mechwarriors.
"5."
"Are they still on a straight line?"
"Yes."
"Impact."
And the little dots on the screen vanished in a shower of fragments that went all over the orbital map, showering the slipways with shrapnel weighing dozens of tons each.
He watched as smaller craft were simply shredded, as the enormous defences of some of the slipways were peeled apart to such a degree that they could see it on their monitors.
But…
But the defences held, the slipways were safe!
"Fuck yeah!" He roared, the sound echoed by everyone else in the lance channel.
He wished he could look up, but they were under hundreds of metres of solid rock here.
"Get me a positive ID on IFFs!" The voice of Commodore Berlin cut across the channel.
"3 IFF signals. 3!" Came another voice.
They sounded cheerful, but Turbo felt anything but.
"3 out of how many?" He asked.
"Lemme count." Kaiser muttered back, the sound of his finger jabbing the screen echoing over the link into their ears.
"13. There are 13 left. That's-"
He was cut off as Manning answered for him, "38. 3 surviving lifeboats from 38 Jumpships."
"Fuuuuuuck." Turbo groaned.
"Oi! Fuckwit Lance, where the hell are you! We need you digging trenches out here!" The roar filled all of their heads.
Oh right, fuck.
Woops.
"Let's go you chuckle-fucks, you're assigned to sector 4. Dig trenches according to Pattern 28, link them with Sector 3, 5, and 17. We've got 45 hours before the DCMS lands. Let's make it hard for them."
"Wait, we weren't scheduled for duty, why are they calling us?" Turbo whispered.
"Because we can hear you, you fuckwits. You broadcast that entire battle to the entire regiment, all of our monitors even." The voice returned.
Ah?
"Yeah. We're not on duty yet. But fuck it. After that show above? Fuck the Combine. If they want to use patsies as suicide bombers, or be used as patsies by the suicide bombers, we're going to dig as many fortifications as we can to make their lives as fucking hard as we can. Letting those bastards up in space take all the glory? Fuck that. We can die properly too! We're Clan too!" The captain roared.
Turbo heard the hurt in the voice, they had clan mates in space, especially the earliest slipways… it would have been clan mates piloting those jumpships. They wanted revenge, and the Combine would be offering themselves for catharsis.
It would be impolite to not take them up on it.
"We're taking the fight to them. No sitting in the mountain. Get digging you idiot Lance, we won't let their sacrifice above to go to waste."
"Sir!" The four of them yelled.
The guys in the sky had done their part.
Now it was time for theirs.