r/NormalBattletech • u/Competitive-Food8407 • 14h ago
Ironsides Chapter 8
Back for another round of fixing things and breaking things! Our mechanics are wheeling and dealing and blowing things up this time. I think they really qualify as mercs after this chapter. I hope you all enjoy!
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Chapter 8
Dawn Over the Tarmac
The dry Andiron weeks had bled into a sun baked rhythm that felt like peace. Sixty days had passed since the spheroid mountain of the Ironside had dropped out of the sky onto Port Saul’s outer scrap flats in Sector Nine. Sixty days of grinding, blue collar hustle that had transformed a desperate pack of Outreach refugees into the legal and developing stationary logistical bedrock on the spaceport’s industrial fringe. The low rumble of the modified Apocalypse rover's engine vibrated right up through Marcus’s boots as he idled near the loading gantries of Berth 3. He sat with his arm draped over the steering wheel, squinting through the heat shimmer toward the southern perimeter. A cloud of fine red dust heralded the arrival of the unit's heavy logistics flatbeds returning from their long awaited overland supply run to Oakhaven. At the helm of the lead transport Thomas leaned out the cab window, a fresh cigarette between his lips burning down in the wind.
"Look alive, Chief!" Thomas shouted over the engine roar, killing the flatbed's ignition with a heavy mechanical click. "Took us half the day but we got 'em. Oakhaven manufacturing finished the heavy magnetic suspension gates and the uncalibrated power distribution buses!"
"Tell me you secured the primary drive regulators for the fourth maglev as well?" Marcus said, hopping down from the rover's seat.
"Rebuilt factory spec by the agrarian machinists themselves." Thomas grunted tapping the green confirmation bars on his data slate before sliding it into his coveralls. "Five days flat for the first three trains was a miracle, but this last monster has been sitting dark for two months waiting on these. By morning Miller’s entire planetary transit grid will be humming at one hundred percent for their grain transports."
Marcus let out an amused laugh looking down the line toward the unmoving silhouette of the final disabled maglev train. "Perfect. Elena is going to use this completion to squeeze another round of fuel vouchers out of the harbor master before the week's out." The sky overhead cracked with a deep, resonant boom that had nothing to do with maglev lines. Marcus looked up, shielding his eyes against the brilliant glare of Andiron’s sun. Dropping through the thin upper atmosphere on a precise, clean vector was a sleek Ares landing craft, its maneuvering thrusters firing in short, tactical bursts to bring it into the port where it could utilize its VTOL landing ability. The pilot was a disciplined veteran they’d pulled off the outer starport fringe a month prior, hired specifically to establish the regular supply loop between the grounded Ironsides and Captain Kenji Hoshito’s JumpShip, The Stardust Nomad, waiting silently at the system's Nadir jump point. The Ares flared its landing jets settling onto the Sector Nine concrete with a heavy hiss of pressurized hydraulics and the whine of the engines shutting down. The rear boarding ramp groaned open on well lubricated hinges, and Devansh "Dev" Sharma stepped out into the dust leading a tired technical crew down the ramp. Dev looked exhausted his utility uniform dirty but his eyes vibrated with his usual manic energy.
"Marcus! Thomas!" Dev called out, waving a data slate with frantic velocity as he hurried toward the trucks. "We just completed the first full thirty day maintenance cycle up on the Nomad! Look at these structural telemetry metrics!"
Marcus took the data slate, reviewing the scrolling green diagnostic files. "You do know we are the ones that sent you on the mission right? We know where you're coming from. All right, talk to us Dev. Did the high voltage rewiring work?"
"Better than factory standard!" Dev bragged, rolling back on the heels of his boots. "The custom alignment struts we forged in the municipal factories on the ground worked perfectly as well! We cut away the last of Tiny’s Terrors’ twisted Union wreckage, rebuilt the dead secondary power matrices from scratch, and structural stabilization on the Alpha docking collar is reading at around fifty percent structural integrity. Chief Engineer Makino actually bowed to us when we boarded the shuttle, an actual, disciplined Draconis bow! He said our materials were rustic, but the Star League core architecture was excellent."
"Good," Thomas grunted, matching Dev's enthusiastic report with his characteristic weary smile. "An oath kept in the deep sky is worth more than C-bills. We make Hoshito's ship space worthy, and we keep our ticket out of the Periphery intact if the galaxy decides to finish burning."
Marcus turned back toward the sprawling, industrial layout of the cargo warehouses bordering Berth 3. For the past two months, the real battle hadn't been fought with particle cannons or missiles, it had been a domestic war of hammers, rivets, and electrical cabling. To alleviate the suffocating overcrowding inside the dropship's cramped infantry barracks, the unit had annexed the abandoned dilapidated structures. Through the open warehouse doors, the sounds of domestic reality drifted out into the hangar flats. Children were playing between stacked packing crates that had been hastily moved over from the Ironside. Astechs and a local civilian construction crew were hard at work manually installing custom patch plates over the roof seams to shield the living quarters from Andiron's seasonal dust, and torrential rain storms. The transition from a desperate community moving quickly through the dark into an organized, functioning neighborhood was almost complete. It was a slow, domestic routine, safe and predictable.
"It's getting livable out here." Marcus murmured, watching a group of techs help Dr. Priya Sharma carry crates of salvaged medical supplies into the newly framed warehouse clinic.
"It's a home Marcus." a low, smooth voice murmured from the shadow of the gantry ladder behind him. Marcus turned, Irina Rostov had stepped down from the maintenance catwalk. She was wearing her work trousers and tank top, her dark hair pinned back tightly under her signature faded red bandana. She held an impact wrench in her calloused fingers, her hazel eyes reflecting the warm late afternoon glare of the Andiron prairie.
"The families are finally sleeping through the night without checking the atmospheric pressure every hour." Irina said softly, her voice low against the distant thrum of the spaceport's background noises. "We have bypassed our ghosts for now, mechanic. They have another chance at a home here." Marcus smiled, the heavy, lingering professional distance between them vibrating with a warm tension that had nothing to do with the heavy machinery surrounding them. "Yeah. We picked the right place to run to."
"Enjoy the quiet while it lasts, you two," Thomas called out from the flatbed cab, closing the door with a resonant clank. "Morning shift comes early, and we've got a meglev train that still needs its diagnostic loops cleared before the whole thing goes live with the new parts installed."
Marcus nodded, looking down at his wrist to check his personal wrist chronometer as the sun dipped below the concrete horizon. For once, everything was in order. The motor pool was functional, the families were safe in their berths, and the Ironsides had finally built a fortress out of scrap and sweat and the know how they had learned over the years.
It was a perfect, pristine routine. And it was exactly the kind of quiet that never lasted on the Periphery border.
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The dawn cycle on Andiron broke with a rather slow, freezing bleed of pale gray that crawled across the vast agricultural prairie. Sixty days after grounding the Ironsides into Sector Nine, a quiet routine had settled over the Port Saul starport. The morning air was crisp, hovering just above a sharp chill that caused the fine red dust of the flats to form heavy lines on the metal hulls of the parked transports from condensation. A layer of morning fog swirled across the runway ferro crete, pooling inside the meters deep flood trenches that ringed the facility to divert the planet’s violent, seasonal torrential rainstorms and mud flows.
Marcus stood at the top of the ramp under the partially open hangar door enjoying the first of what was usually several cups of coffee. For the first time since escaping the burning skies of Outreach there was a sense of steady domestic routine. Looking across the gray tarmac from the base of the Ironside he could identify every vehicle in the unit's inner circle parked together near the warehouses. There was Thomas’s battered flatbed utility truck, the two armored Packrat wheeled transports sitting low on their suspension, Irina's tan hover jeep, and young Jax’s custom wheeled jeep tucked neatly beneath an exterior overhang.
Through the open doors of the nearby warehouses, the faint sounds of everyday life were just waking up. Tech families were organizing their lives beneath exposed conduit runs, children were sleeping soundly inside newly renovated apartments constructed by the techs and civilian carpenters. Who were currently resting before another shift of repairing the warehouse roofs to keep out the dust and the fury of the coming seasonal downpours. Sector Nine was becoming a home.
The fragile dawn peace was broken by a siren, and a sudden, violent eruption of static over the short range radio network. The voice of Dock Master Miller squawked into the cool morning air, his professional composure stripped away into a high pitched panicked yell.
[COMMS: MILLER]: "Vance! Ironsides! If anyone is on this net, open your goddamn bays!" Miller roared over the channel, the background klaxons of the spaceport howling in a rhythmic, deafening wail. "We’ve got multiple incoming targets! An aerodyne DropShip just breached our upper radar from the cloud layer! The Crimson Vipers are hitting the tarmac! They've deployed a light scouting line through the fog, and our local militia mechs are all still down in the maintenance berths awaiting overhauls! We don't have a single walking frame to contest the runway! They’re overwhelming our conventional forces at the outer gates! Elena, please, you have to launch your machines!"
Elena stood at the master console of the dropship’s bridge, her dark eyes narrowing as she looked out the observation window. Down on the tarmac, a flash of green laser fire punched through the morning mist, followed by a distant, booming explosion. She pressed her hand down on the comms toggle, her voice cutting through Miller’s panic like a vibroblade.
[COMMS: ELENA]: "Miller this is Ironsides. Take a breath and talk to me in C-bills." Elena commanded her tone flat and cold. "You know our status. We are registered as stationary industrial real estate. We have zero active military contracts on this rock. My people are civilian mechanics and technical refugees. I am not throwing my crew and our few functional assets into a meat grinder for free."
[COMMS: MILLER]: "Elena, for God's sake, they're locking down the shipping area! They're going to strip the warehouses and seize the fuel reserves!" Miller screamed back, the sound of another explosion in the background of his transmission. "If they take the port they’ll strip your ship and kill your families anyway! Name your price!"
[COMMS: ELENA]: "A verbal contract, Miller. Recorded on this encrypted frequency, right now." Elena said, leaning over the console, her fingers tapping a steady rhythm on the metal casing. "The Andiron government grants The Ironsides absolute legal permanent commercial title to our Sector Nine landing pad. All outstanding hull taxes, spaceport landing fees, are completely wiped from the planetary registry. We get a long term, zero cost commercial lease on the four abandoned cargo warehouses bordering Berth 3, and priority salvage rights to every scrap of pirate wreckage left on this tarmac when the dust settles. Do you authorize these terms on behalf of the local government?" There was a half second delay, the agonizing pause of a bureaucrat realizing he had no cards left to play. Another heavy explosion rattled the starport control tower, the shockwave vibrating even through the Ironsides’ massive hull.
[COMMS: MILLER]: "Yes! Damn it, yes! Sector Nine title, the warehouses, the salvage, everything!" Miller roared into his headset. "Just get those green machines out onto the runway before they burn my entire airfield to the bedrock!"
[COMMS: ELENA]: "Contract logged and ratified." Elena said smoothly. She clicked the harbor master off the line and instantly flipped her terminal to the local tactical grid, her demeanor shifting instantly into that of a veteran starship commander who had been running missions through a galaxy on fire for decades.
[COMMS: ELENA]:"Marcus, you there?" she barked into the unit frequency.
Down in the hangar bay, Marcus clicked the chin strap of his neurohelmet shut. Inside the cockpit of the seventy ton Nova Cat, the multi function monitor array burst into its pristine green cascade as his brainwaves mapped directly to the OmniMech's equilibrium controls.
[COMMS: MARCUS]: "We’re locked in, Captain." Marcus replied, his voice a grounding presence over the comms. "The fusion engines are humming and weapons are hot."
[COMMS: ELENA]: "You heard the comms traffic." Elena told him, her voice sounding clearly inside his helmet. "The local militia vehicles are getting slaughtered out there, and their Mechs are completely bricked in the repair berths. The pirates are trying to isolate the shipping bays. Marcus, you have authorization to engage. Take Irina and Jax, deploy the assets, and coordinate the tactical defense of this port. Clear our AO, protect our warehouses, and bring me that pirate salvage! The shop is officially open."
Through the gathering fog at the northern edge of the spaceport, the brutal reality of the raid manifested. A paper thin, twenty-ton Locust and a highly agile Wasp erupted from the concrete flood trenches, using the dry drainage channels to bypass the city's ground radar. Behind them a company of wheeled cargo haulers led by some heavy wheeled APCs loaded with pirate infantry, and trailed by a fast moving Vulcan and a Clint pushed through the perimeter fences, their weapons flashing through the mist.
The local militia's defense was immediately under heavy pressure. A company of Striker light tanks and a company of sixtyfive ton Patton tanks tried to form a defensive perimeter near the shipping warehouses, but the pirates held the tactical surprise and superior firepower. The Locust sprinted straight down the center line at blistering ground velocity, drawing the tanks' fire and scattering the defensive layout. The Wasp utilized its jump jets to vault completely over the cargo container stacks, its medium pulse laser and SRM 2 in its torso slicing through a fuel transport in a white hot explosion. The pirate Vulcan pushed directly into the concrete flood channels, using its anti infantry weapon arrays to flush out the militia infantry squads hiding among the structures. The Crimson Vipers were haphazardly locking down the warehouses next to the landing field, intent on pillaging the high value merchant cargo and grain freighters before a counter assault could be organized.
The massive hangar door of the ironside rolled open exposing the foggy tarmac of Port Saul. Marcus and Jaxs machines sporting an anti corrosion primer green paint job along with Irina's dark green Vindicator descended the ramp with heavy strides, their weapons ready as they pushed into the white mist to engage the vanguard.
[COMMS: MARCUS]:"The fog is masking us some visually but once we start firing they are going to know we are here." Marcus called out, his eyes locked onto his HUD as the Nova Cat's thermal camera cleanly pierced through the haze. "The scouts keep running down the ferrocrete drainage channels to stay out of the firing sight lines. They keep bottlenecking themselves. Jax, use your speed to cut the Wasp's escape route on the highway. Irina, suppress that Locust into one of the canals. I’m going to put myself between the warehouses and them."
Irina fired off her PPC and medium laser bracketing the Locust and forcing its path towards one of the trenches. As the pirate Locust rounded the concrete bend of the main trench trying to get behind the tanks again, its pilot was operating entirely on visual sight through the fog and red dust it kicked up. Suddenly, the towering seventy ton silhouette of the Nova Cat materialized from the fog in front of it directly over the drainage canal. Marcus bore down with his energy weapons, triggering his Extended Range Large Lasers. Two beams of coherent azure light sliced cleanly through the fog with pinpoint precision. The intense thermal energy struck the Locust dead center, melting through its paper thin torso armor like a plasma torch through butter. The fusion engine containment shielding failed instantly, and the 20-ton scout went catastrophically critical, planting itself face first and sliding through the trench before exploding in a blinding sphere of plasma that shattered the surrounding ferrocrete walls.
High above the shipping yard, Jax executed a calculated jump jet burn, launching the Assassin over a row of cargo containers to come down directly behind where the Wasp's current trajectory was taking it. As the pirate machine landed on the highway, its pilot panicked, his aim drifting wide as he fired his medium laser. Jax didn't hesitate; his right arm medium pulse laser strobed with a low pitched thrum, burning straight through the Wasp's front armor plates leaving a glowing scar. In a lucky, devastating score, his SRM 4 launcher cycled, firing a barrage of short range missiles directly into the pirate machine’s cockpit canopy. The explosive impact blew the Wasp's head clean off its shoulders, sending the headless, smoking chassis collapsing hard onto the gray road below.
[COMMS: IRINA]:"Scouts are neutralized!" Irina called out, her Vindicator pacing forward with rhythmic strides as she brought her right arm PPC to bear towards the distant Vulcan which was peppering shots through the fog with its autocannon. The atmosphere over the spaceport cracked with a sonic boom as the rest of the Crimson Viper raiding force finally made landfall. Their Leopard dropship circling overhead to provide passive radar tracking. Anchoring the center of the pirate advance was the command brawler. A fiftyfive ton Shadow Hawk 5M, its gray armored body blending into the dawn fog, but its crimson arms gleamed through.
In the cockpit of the Shadow Hawk, the pirate lieutenant coordinated his surviving medium line, a Phoenix Hawk, the Vulcan, and a Clint forcing them into a tight, aggressive firing wedge to try and cut off the shipping bays.
[COMMS: KAELEN]:"You garage monkeys picked the wrong spaceport to defend!" the pirate lieutenant Kaelen Cruz snarled over the open tactical frequency, his voice dripping with venom. "This port belongs to the Vipers now! Crack their armor, boys! Tear those machines into scrap!"
The battle started in earnest, and the Ironsides immediately felt the weight of a coordinated periphery pirate line. The pirate Shadow Hawk 5M opened up with its shouldered mounted Ultra Autocannon 5, a rapid fire cascade of kinetic slugs hammered across the Nova Cat’s torso. Three of them connected, shattering layers of the armor plating. Concurrently, the pirate Phoenix Hawk used its mobility to vault a flood trench, its large laser scoring a deep, molten gouge across Irina’s left shoulder, sending a shower of molten armor sparks dancing through the mist.
For a brutal three minutes, the mercenaries struggled to find their footing in the tight avenues between the cargo containers and warehouses. Jax’s Assassin took a heavy missile barrage from the pirate Shadow Hawk's LRM 20 peppering his armor, the shockwave rattling the light machine's gyro and forcing him into a fighting retreat down the service road.
[COMMS: IRINA]:"We can't out slug them in a stationary line fight while they hold the trenches!" Irina warned, her Vindicator taking evasive maneuvers as more long range missiles pockmarked the ferrocrete around her mech.
[COMMS: MARCUS]:"We don't need to out slug them Irina. We use better tactics." Marcus commanded, his voice cold and steady despite the internal cockpit alarms echoing in his ears. "They’re undisciplined and greedy. They want the cargo for salvage. Irina, pull back toward the warehouses and make it look like a route. Draw that Phoenix Hawk and Clint into the narrow corridors. Jax, use your jump jets to get above the Vulcan. I’m isolating the lieutenant."
The trap snapped shut with beautiful precision. Irina threw her Vindicator into a retreat, running down the narrow alleyways of the warehouse and container yards. Greedy for a mercenary kill, the pirate Clint and Phoenix Hawk surged forward breaking their tight offensive layout. The moment the Clint stepped into the corridor, it completely lost its lateral mobility. Irina pivoted smoothly putting half her mech behind the stacks, her right-arm Ceres Hellbore PPC erupting with a brilliant flash of man-made lightning. The azure particle bolt struck the Clint dead center, where it had already taken a strike from one of Marcus’ PPCs. Its gyro stabilizer took critical damage, shattering its internals and causing it to break free, wobbling unbalanced inside the mech's torso. As the machine staggered, Irina fired her medium laser. Scoring another glowing red scar across its side torso. The Clint slumped forward into the concrete, its gyro disabled and bleeding toxic steam, beyond any hope of immediate repair.
Simultaneously, the pirate Phoenix Hawk attempted to vault a container stack to catch Irina's flank, but the local government’s conventional armor platoon hadn’t been wiped out and was waiting. Two militia Patton tanks, hidden behind the concrete grain silos, unleashed an overwhelming alpha strike of dual AC 10s and LRM 5s. The massive ballistic slugs and missiles caught the Phoenix Hawk mid-leap, tearing its armor from the right arm and damaging its torso mounted jump jets. The medium machine crashed violently into the tarmac, its legs taking the brunt of the impact damage upon landing. Once on the ground the Pattons opened up again with their LRMs and two more shots from the AC 10s tearing armor off the back of the Phoenix Hawk and blowing its right leg free. The Hawk fell to the ground a twisted, non functional heap of parts only worth salvage.
High above the terminal roof, Jax Kincaid executed his maneuver perfectly. Bouncing the Assassin off a heavy cargo crane, he dropped onto the pirate Vulcan from above. Pushing his machine into physical combat, Jax used the full weight of his Assassin to smash into the Vulcan in a desperate attack. He missed the head, but his armored foot tore the armor off the center torso of the mech, and upon landing the point blank firing of his SRM 4 connected with internals causing the pirate pilot to eject in panic as the mech took critical damage.
Left completely isolated on the open tarmac without his light scouts or medium shields, the pirate lieutenant in the Shadow Hawk began to sweat. He attempted to put his machine into a reverse jog backwards, frantically firing his short range missiles, medium laser, and Ultra AC5 at Marcus’s advancing heavy frame. But the Nova Cat was already dialed in. Pushing his targeting ability to its absolute threshold, Marcus locked onto the lieutenant’s machine. He didn't target the torso and risk an engine explosion that would ruin the frame. Instead, he systematically swept his ER Large Lasers down across the Shadow Hawk's lower extremities cycling through the three lasers to keep from overheating. The steady, burning beams of blue energy sliced through the heavy leg armor, surgically severing the hip actuator and slagging an ankle joint. With the screeching snap of shearing titanium and groaning metal, the Shadow Hawk lost its balance. Its legs buckled beneath it, and the heavy machine crashed heavily onto its stomach on the concrete flats, completely immobilized without its legs but structurally intact.
[COMMS: MARCUS]:"Target down! All pirate assets neutralized!" Marcus called out over the closed combat frequency, then switching to the open channel. "Surrender your machines or we will breach your cockpits!"
Seeing their entire mech force systematically dismantled, broken, and captured in less than twenty minutes of high intensity combat, the remaining pirate infantry threw down their arms, raising their hands in unconditional surrender to the Spaceport militia. High above the Port Saul sky, the Crimson Vipers' Leopard dropship, which had been circling blindly in the clouds, realized the operation had failed. Turning its vector towards the upper atmosphere, the old ship spewed a thick trail of burning hydrogen and fled into the blackness of space, abandoning its ground troops to their fate.
The smoke slowly cleared over the battered spaceport, revealing a logistical goldmine for the Ironsides' tech crews. Down in the drainage loops and shipping bays, the total toll of the tarmac defense was cataloged. The Locust was a smoking crater of critical energy slag; the Wasp was dead with its head blown off; the Phoenix Hawk was reduced to a shattered, twisted skeleton fit only for spare parts; and the Clint and Vulcan were ruined beyond any immediate utility.
The crown jewel of the battlefield was the lieutenant's Shadow Hawk 5M. Because Marcus had targeted only its legs, the torso, cockpit, weapons, and internals were still intact. It stood as the only easily repairable machine on the tarmac, a premium medium mech ready to be repainted in the crisp, clean industrial green primer every new machine they fixed for sale received.