Scavenged Restoration 94 (Patreon)

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 94

-VB-

Coby took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. 

He’s been the ruler of this continent of the Badlands for the past decade, and for that decade, he’s done everything to ensure the continent remained in his hands from the grubby hands of his rivals and the Taurian Concordat. 

And the Taurians were here in their latest attempt to drive him and his rivals off of Badlands. 

Worse, they brought the Capellans with them.

Since when did Taurians ally Capellans?! He may not be a good student of history, but wasn’t the first big interstellar war between the Capellans and Taurians where they nuked each other to kingdom come? It was before the Star League or something, and he didn’t remember the details that well…

But the point was that they should be paranoid about each other! 

“It has to be that fucking Chancellor,” Coby grumbled as he rang the alarm throughout his base. He leaned down toward the microphone. “Attention! We have some unwanted pieces of shits on our land! I want all of you out there, now!” 

His plan was not to meet the Taurians and the Capellans out there in combat. There was more than a regiment of them, and he barely had half that number. On top of that, most of the mechs used by the vast majority of the disgraced mechwarriors that fled their respective nations and joined him, willingly or not, were in lowly bug mechs, easily repaired but weaker mechs like Phoenix Hawks, or in better mechs in disrepair. 

Which meant that he was not winning! 

He pulled out a radio tuned specifically to a channel for his most loyal followers. “Alright, boys. Our stint as a warlord is coming to an end. The Capellans and Taurians are here in force, and the entire warband’s not gonna be enough to even try to take them out. So we’re going to leave the rabble as bait and get the fuck out of it. Grab whatever you need to and get to our dropship ASAP, got it?”

Fight that? Pfft, hell no. Even if those were the weakest Capellans and Taurians, taking them out was the same as inviting more of them to come after him. 

He quickly deleted everything in the command room and rushed out to get to his dropship.

He did not see the DMI agent step out from one of the rooms he passed by and pull out a silenced pistol. 

Similarly, elsewhere in the pirate warband’s fortified compound, another DMI agent calmly walked over to the pirate captain’s personal dropship, an Overlord, and under “supposed orders” to get it ready for lift off, planted explosive charges in its thrusters. 

After he walked away, all of the major thrusters on not just the Overlord but the smaller dropships used by the pirates exploded all at the same time, stranding them on Badlands against a foe determined to see them rooted out. 

-VB-

Kai frowned as he moved his Vindicator-P03 along with the rest of his lance. He was not in command, and as such, he listened to Colonel Loren Jaffray, who was also his lance commander. All of them were moving through sandy brown and rocky grey canyons towards the center of this geologic formation where the largest pirate base on this continent lay. 

‘It’s strange,’ he thought to himself as he looked around. ‘The pirates of the Badlands are known for their slavery. They should be sending waves of slave-soldiers in poor equipment like Hetzers, Savannah Masters, and armored and armed up civilian trucks. But instead of that, all we’ve been encountering so far have been a lot of nothing.’

“Contact,” the colonel called out. “190 west, three bug mechs. Lance 2 met and eliminated them.”

‘Just three bug mechs?’ 

“Could be that they aren’t organized at all,” someone in the lance channel drawled. 

“Could be,” the colonel responded with a hum. “Even pirates should be able to organize something, but that’s not what we’re encountering at all.”

Kai was about to speak up but his sensors blared at him. Then the blare turned into a shriek. 

“Contact, 45 east! Multiple LRM launches!” 

‘Finally!’ Kai thought as he quickly ran his Vindicator towards the call and up against the canyon walls. The LRMs came down in the dozens on not just his position but that of the entire lance. 

“That’s more like it,” the colonel’s feral grin could be heard through the radio. “Seismic sensors are saying that there are three mechs and four tanks on the other side on this canyon! Lance 1, status update!” 

“Green!” Kai reported. 

“Green!”

“Green!”

“Good, good,” the colonel grunted out not unhappily. “This is Colonel Jaffray on the Cavalier’s command channel. We have engaged a reinforced medium lance at … Sector 9F. Enemy lance is on Sector 8E. Lance 1 is engaging, over.” There was a pause before he spoke over the lance-only radio channel. “Alright, obviously, we can’t go around this goddamn canyon, so all of us are going to have to either jet over this or climb. McDaniels, Liao. You two are the only ones who have jump jets in this lance right now, so when I give the signal, you’ll jump up and distract the enemy. Understood?”

“Acknowledged, over,” Kai said as he readied his jump jets. 

“Got you, cous.”

“Good. Don’t play hero, let us jump out and blast the shit out of them.”

Then the heavier mechs in the lance began to climb. 

From the rumblings and his own seismic sensors, Kai knew that the enemy lance was coming closer from the high ground as his lance’s heavier mechs climbed up using their hands and feet. It was a slow progress considering the fact that mechs were double digit tonnage warmachines and canyon walls weren’t meant to support that kind of weight, but they were making it happen. In the case of the colonel’s Warhammer, he was making use of a very narrow pathway up on the side.

And as they got into position…

“Now!” 

Kai turned on his jump jets and boosted over to the top of the canyon walls and onto the flat-ish plateau on top. At the top of his jump, he immediately recognized the enemy force: two Griffins, one Hunchback, one Grasshopper, two LRM carriers of some kind, and, most importantly, two Po heavy tanks, the very tanks that the confederation was exporting to the Draconis Combine. 

He quickly got rid of any and all thoughts unrelated to the battle in front of him and fired his Medium Laser on his way down. 

All of the mechs turned to focus on him and McDaniels in his Phoenix Hawk, which had also fired off a Large Laser in tandem with him. Though his attack didn’t hit unlike Kai’s Medium Laser leaving a scorching line on one of the Griffins, it got all of their enemy’s attention. 

And that’s when Fredrick’s Firestarter came up from the side and the colonel’s Warhammer finished coming up from the other side of the plateau from the Firestarter. 

The Warhammer’s lasers scorched away, and the Po tanks answered back with their AC/10’s. 

With the enemy focus split, Kai decided to charge in. Activating his Vindicator’s Sprint Module, he blitzed forward while firing his SRM-4 at the same Griffin he racked with his laser. 

The Griffin saw him coming and opened up with its PPC. 

Kai leaned just a bit like he’d practiced, and the PPC barely grazed him. 

But by the time the Griffin realized what was happening, Kai was upon him. He raised the Vindicator’s Hatchet and brought it down with the added weight and momentum of a full-sprint Vindicator’s tonnage. 

The melee weapon crunched down on the Griffin’s cockpit and … 

Kai tried to ignore the bloody smear the insides of that cockpit ended up becoming and instead turned to take out the next mech. 

Right just then, McDaniels’ Phoenix Hawk fired its Large Laser to Kai’s left and Kai turned to see that the Enforcer had tried to shoot him. Instead, its AC/10 got raked by the Large Laser and something went wrong with it. Instead, it opened fire with its pair of Large and Medium Lasers. 

Kai winced as the two lasers raked over his mech’s left side and front and turned around. He unleashed another burst of SRMs on the Enforcer just as their Firestarter also blasted the Fedrat mech’s rear. 

The combined heat and damages made the mech stumble back and forward and then right into Kai’s “welcoming” downward swing of his Hatchet. 

Unlike last time, he missed the cockpit and instead struck the exposed right torso.

Something sparked underneath his Hatchet. He tried to pull it back but he failed; it was stuck inside the Enforcer’s ruined right torso. The sparking became bigger, and things started to visibly crackle. 

‘Ammo explosion?!’

His eyes widened and he let go of the Hatchet to jump backward but it was too late. 

The Enforcer exploded from within.

Explosion rippled and ripped the mech apart, and engulfed Kai and his damaged Vindicator in the immediate vicinity of the mech-turned-grenade.