Scavenged Restoration 36

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 36

-VB-

“What the fuck is that?” 

Master Banner Josephine Gregorivitsky muttered as she looked at the bipedal battlemech that had trotted over the sand dune. 

It looked like someone put a pair of legs on a literal bird head. In fact, it looked like someone took the Stalker and made a light mech version of it.

Her MECH-IDifier also had trouble figuring out what mech this was. It kept changing between Locust and Stalker.

“Must be another new Capellan mech,” she muttered. 

She and her troops saw holovids of the Capellan Confederation’s new heavy mech, the Cataphract, in action. She saw how a pair of them held up against a Canopian assault lance until reinforcements came to help the Cataphracts. The fact that a pair of heavies managed to outlast a lance of assaults spoke at length about the kind of defense Cataphracts had. 

Which meant that she needed to take this bird-head mech with the same caution.

I.e. she needed to kill it as fast as possible. 

She raised her Shadow Hawk’s AC/5, aimed, and fired.

Her mech’s primary weapon spat out a burst of shells.

But … the bird-head trotted to the side even before she fired and the shells missed. 

Damn, it saw her already?! 

Then her computer pinged at her with a shrill alarm as the bird-head fired something and it landed on her.

She was being tagged.

Oh. Shit. 

Then she heard it.

Distant booms. 

She looked up.

One, two, five, ten, twenty, FORTY -!

“We’re falling back!” she shouted her order to the rest of her lance. “Move, move, move!” 

Because there were a lot of LRMs coming down on her position. 

-VB-

All across the Andurien border worlds, similar scenes played out against the defenders. 

Raven battlemechs, another new mech that the Capellan Confederation created, scoured those worlds for their enemies with speed, vigilance, and high tech. There was no hiding, no running. 

The Raven would catch up to them, TAG them, NARC them, and fend off attacks while its allies came to reinforce its position while also firing off tons of LRMs. Usually, this would involve LRM-equipped medium or heavy mechs lumbering behind with faster medium or heavy mechs coming to run down the mechs the Raven tagged. 

Since I didn’t tell the mercenaries and CCAF how to build that set-up, they went with what they had. 

Vindicators were often the best pursuit medium mech the CCAF had in abundance while, to my surprise, it was the Hunchback that was the best LRM boat. Or as the mech philosophers would put it, the Swaybacks. These Swaybacks fought with either two LRM 10’s (Hunchback-4J) or one LRM 20’s. In either case, the Swaybacks formed the backline, and they were piloted by the more … tactically aware individuals. 

But did it do a better job than Locusts as scouts? 

No. 

Locusts could spot enemies, run away faster, and engage like a constantly stinging mosquito. 

The Raven, on the other hand, wasn’t as fast, couldn’t disengage as quickly, and needed to be reinforced at every given turn.

What it was good for, however, was acting as a spotter for the artillery … and the aerospace fighters. 

Or rather, aerospace bombers.

Just as the CCAF held dominance in the air at our worlds, aerospace fighter specialized dropships allowed the CCAF to hold aerial and orbital dominance over the Andurien worlds. These aerospace fighters then followed the Raven-led companies around and dropped their payloads on the unsuspecting battlemechs, armored, and infantry. 

‘But it’s to me that I need to reduce Raven production,’ I thought to myself as I wrote the order for exactly that. The Raven was good. It was useful. It was not, however, a mech meant to be used in large numbers. The Ravens that did the best out in the field were those that had been experimentally refitted with LRM-10’s or went all in on frontal assault with Triple Strength Myomer. 

Yes, we did manage to get that. Or rather, the Maskirovka managed to get once I let them know that such a thing existed and I needed the details, blueprints, and reports about it from the Federated Suns themselves. 

The Ravens that attacked with TSM-boosted speed were like better Locusts. They were just as fast, could still TAG and Narc their targets, did enough damage, and disengaged with minimal damage. 

The Ravens that supported long range attacks with LRM-10’s and -15’s weren’t as useful as the TSM Ravens, mostly because acting as long range support deprived them of half of their design philosophy. 

After all, if the CCAF wanted a long range support light mech, then the Raven was twice as expensive as the Valkyries, even after import costs. 

It was this kind of data and experience the CCAF needed for the new mechs. 

Speaking of new mechs, the Cataphracts demolished resistance wherever it showed up. 

Just like the Raven, there was a kink that needed to be fixed, however. It was the centerpiece of any brawling/assault and nothing else. 

Cataphracts without ferro-fibrous armor and endo-steel were still armored enough to survive against assaults and heavies and dealt enough damage against its contemporaries. It was great at crushing mediums but had trouble chasing after faster medium mechs. 

What it was good at was surviving damages. A damage that would destroy any heavy mech would have the Cataphract just shrug it off because parts could be easily sourced from basically anywhere. 

It was, however, also twice as expensive as the standard heavy mechs: Crusader, Thunderbolt, Warhammer, and Marauder.

All of this meant that the Cataphract was better at defense than offense, but better did not mean useless or inefficient. 

The Cataphract brought with it morale. It was an all Capellan mech! It was the mech that defended Tikonov! It was the mech that defended Sian! It was tough, it was mean, and it was angry. For a Capellan mechwarrior to have one was both an honor and an acknowledgement of their skill. Only the best Firebee and Vindicator mechwarriors were offered the chance to pilot the Cataphracts. 

And that system of putting skilled pilots into Cataphracts not by who owned what or what noble deserved this but by skill and temperament made the Cataphract simply made sense.

Because unlike the rest of the Inner Sphere, I had forced the CCAF to put mechwarriors with mechs they were best suited for in skill and temperment… not what mech they came with.

… It really should have been an obvious kind of thing, but I knew that it hadn’t been a practical decision for any of the Successor States, never mind the confederation, until now. 

And it paid off like nothing else.

All Cataphract mechwarriors were the tough, mean, and angry sort of mechwarriors. The ones who knew how to endure punishments. The kind of people who marched forward even when bombs detonated in their faces. 

The Anduriens and the Canopians, in contrast, weren’t able to specialize their mechwarriors and mech distribution like that. They still operated with the Third Succession War mindset and doctrine. 

And they paid for it in repairs. 

For each Cataphract that went down, one of their assaults or two of their heavies went down. And unlike a Cataphract, parts were hard to find for, let’s say, the Warhammer and Grasshoppers. 

Yeah, Warhammers and Grasshoppers were far more ubiquitous.

No, they needed Warhammer and Grasshopper specific parts. 

The Cataphract? 

‘A leg got blown! A Marauder arm works just as well as a Cataphract dedicated arm component. An arm got blown! Well, Phoenix Hawk parts were everywhere, either in the market or as salvage. The Cataphract can use that. Oh, the cockpit’s damaged? There was a Shadow Hawk cockpit somewhere around here…’

That’s actually what a mech-familiar comic artist drew up right here on Sian, and her weekly newspaper comic got really popular really fast. 

And this sort of ease of part access made the attrition so much worse. 

Because a Cataphract, a loyal Capellan mech, will take the beating, fall, and then get back up.

Enemies mech would fall and stay fallen. 

-VB-

On the Andurien border world of Lurgatan, a Humphreys felt what that experience was like. 

“I killed that thing! I cored it!” Force Captain Conrad Humphreys, the third son of Duchess Catherine Humphreys, hissed as he stared out across the battlefield at the Capellan frankenmech that he knew he had cored just last week.

How did he know? 

Because he distinctly remembered putting his Atlas’s AC/10 into the left torso of the mech that had roman numeral “VII” painted on its center torso! No other “Cataphract” had the lime green, sky blue, and roman numeral “VII”! He’d watched it fall and stopped on it for good measure, too.

Sure, he had to retreat along with the rest of his company, so maybe the Capellans were able to salvage it. 

But to repair it this quickly? 

How?!

“[Captain, one of that bird beaks are coming around! It’s to your 5!]” someone shouted through the comms, and he whirled his Atlas around as quickly as he could while backing up.

If they allowed the bird beak mechs to get behind them, then they would get TAGed and Narced, which would end in a disaster for them from the pinpoint accurate SRMs and LRMs the Capellans were so fond of. 

But the same Cataphract he knew he’d cored fired off its PPC and struck him right at his right leg.

The damaged leg’s actuators buckled and strained from the damage, and Conrad felt his mech slow down.

“Fucking hell!” he hissed to himself.

His 2nd company of the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Defenders of Andurien had been fighting the Capellan invaders for what felt like a month but was probably just a week of brutal assaults every single day. 

But he still turned around because he was the only mech in his current lance that was defending the rearline mechs.

Something moved in the periphery of his vision, and he stopped himself and swung out with a punch. The mech that had moved to flank him, a Vindicator, dodged his attack and struck back with an axe. The axe slammed into his right arm and crushed the medium laser there. 

“Fucking Lyran-copying pieces of shits!” he roared into the comm as he pushed out with the same arm, grabbed the Vindicator’s arm, and then turned around to aim his AC/10 at its face. 

And fired. 

The Vindicator’s right torso disintegrated from the explosive shell and it fell backward. 

Then something struck him in the back. 

He whirled his mech’s head around and -.

The fucking bird beak.

His computer blared red.

Conrad looked down. 

[Incoming missile].

He looked up and grimaced. 

That had to be at least forty LRMs. 

He raised his already damaged right arm up and held it over his cockpit while raising his left leg and stomped down on the downed Vindicator. 

Then the LRM rain struck and the world became a cacophony of explosions. 

The moment of the LRM rain ended, he whirled around to face the bird beak… but it was already retreating. 

“Oh no, you fucking don’t!” he shouted as he slammed down on his own LRM release. 

Twenty LRMs shrieked across the battlefield and slammed into the light mech. Everything around it exploded and went up in a black smoke. 

… But a moment later, it limped out of the smoke with a damaged leg. 

Conrad spared it no mercy. 

He fired his left arm’s medium laser, cutting into its good leg, and then let his AC/10 loose. 

The light mech shattered into pieces. 

His computer blared again.

“Fucking bird beaks!” he hissed, knowing that he would have to endure at least four more LRM rains. 

He raised his left arm up as well next to the right arm, because there was no way it was surviving all five LRM rains. 

And the world, once again, exploded around him.

-VB-

“Did he make it out?” 

Despite the fact that she was the ruler of the Duchy of Andurien, she could not stop herself from asking that question out loud. 

“Fore captain Conrad Humphreys made it out, Your Grace,” Colonel Jimmy Lee replied. “However, his Atlas is in a dire shape.”

She let out an explosive sigh of relief. Her son survived. Sure, she had more sons and Conrad was the fourth in line of succession, but she loved all of her children. 

“And Lorgatan?” 

“... It surrendered after the 5th Andurien Defenders’ 2nd and 3rd Battalions retreated offworld.”

She grimaced. 

Two weeks. 

That’s what it took for all of the border worlds to capitulate. She knew why. They had expected to fight Capellans in their usual formations: bug mechs and medium mechs. Instead, the Capellans broke their expectations and came in with their Cataphracts leading the assault on all of the worlds. The worse part was that, according to the reports, these Cataphracts were not just better armored and better armed, they were ridiculously easy to fix, which allowed the Capellans to send wave after wave of assault, retreat for a few days to fix, and come back before her mechwarriors and their mechs had been fixed. 

It was a war of intense attrition.

Worse, some of the mercenary regiments, citing false intelligence, pulled out of the duchy in this war, turning what could have been a stalemate into a war of steady losses. 

The holocommand table pinged and its entire display shifted from focusing on the larger picture of the duchy to focusing on the Andurien System.

It then refocused on the Andurien star… where hostile jumpships and dropships were blinking. 

“The Capellans,” someone muttered. “They’re here.”

“When was this?” Catherine demanded. 

Someone tapped away at their console. “Four hours ago, ma’am!”

… Ten days. 

They had ten days to prepare all of Andurien V’s defenses.