Scavenged Restoration 38 (Patreon)

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 38

-VB-

Mildred Humphreys sat within her Black Knight BL-7-KNT-L. 

Within its cockpit, she felt at peace. 

At one with a warmachine that commanded other god-machines of war.

But it was a false peace that she was feeling. How can she be at peace when she was going into a battle that came about as a war that her mother started foolishly? 

… Perhaps that was her being overly harsh on her mother. Though she hadn’t shared her mother’s overenthusiasm to take the fight to the Capellans, Mildred hadn’t tried to stop her mother at all. 

And now, the war had come to her doorstep in a span of time that shook her to the core. 

The speed of the Capellan offensive made her question everything she knew about their military: the new battlemechs, changes in their doctrine, and even the suicidal fanaticism that she had never experienced before.

What else was new? What else had she not seen yet? 

How could she fight back? How could she keep her family safe? 

There were eight regiments defending Andurien. Of those eight, she was in charge of one of three battlemech regiments: the 6th Defenders of Andurien. She possessed one hundred eighteen battlemechs and forty-eight combat vehicles under her command. With how many veterans there were in her command, she felt sure about being about to repel any force that was one and a half times the size of her force. However, she’s yet to personally encounter this “Raven” or “Catapult,” never mind whatever else the Capellans had up their sleeves. The best tactic, thus, was to deploy Locu-.

Ring.

She paused and looked down at her cell phone. She flipped it open and saw the caller’s name on the screen.

She answered. 

“Milly -.”

“I’m not leaving my command, John,” she said to her husband with a sad smile that was no doubt apparent in her tone. “This is my place right now.”

“But you’ll die!” 

“Maybe,” she hummed. “Or your feisty wife might come out the victor.”

“Please don’t joke about this,” her ever impatient man ground out. “Please. What about the kids? Daniel and Emma aren’t even adults yet!”

“They’re in their late teens. If anything should happen, then at the very least, they know the price of duty.”

“... What about me?”

She snorted. Ah, her impatient husband who wore his emotions on his sleeves. She loved him. She really did.

Was she hurting him by doing this? Of course. 

But could she walk away from her men and women? The soldiers who swore to protect her home? No. 

Right now… this was her place. 

And should the 6th Defenders of Andurien face something they cannot win against, then the least they could do was sell their lives dearly against those who would burn their home. 

“I give you permission to remarry if I don’t come back,” she whispered. “I only ask that you don’t forget me. I love you, John.”

Then she hung up before he could say anything to shake her resolve. 

She took a deep shuddering breath in.

Then she looked up.

The Capellan dropships entering the atmosphere burned a red hot trail behind them as they made a controlled descent toward Andurien. 

Mildred glared at them before she turned on her regiment-wide comms. 

“This is General Mildred Humphreys speaking. By now, all of you should be aware of what is happening. Our orbital defense fleet could not keep the Capellans at bay, and we’re faced with the biggest invasion Andurien V has seen since the start of the Third Succession War. We, the 6th Defenders of Andurien, have been tasked with keeping the capital city safe at all cost.” 

She took a deep breath.

“Look up. Those are the invaders. They come to burn our cities. To burn our industries. To burn our farms. To burn our schools and libraries. If they succeed, then they will enslave us and make us into one of their slaves. They will put chains on your parents, your husbands and wives, and our children. To burn our heritage away and make them into one of their drones! 

“So resist them.

“Even if it means you have to claw with your bare hands, resist them with all you have. Make them regret coming to our home! I want all of you to show what it means to be an Andurien, to be a people who have freed themselves from the Capellans and their deprivation! Who have struggled for hundreds of years and defended our worlds time and time again from their invasions and raids! 

“Do not show mercy. Do not expect mercy. Struggle until you have nothing else to give. Then get up and bite them just one more time. 

“Do not forget what is at stake. General Humphreys, out.”

-VB-

The first thing he saw upon leaving the dropship was the battlefield. 

The very landing zone had become a battlefield where the Anduriens tried to keep them confined to the beachhead. 

Unfortunately for them, there were simply too many of them. 

“Ko Lance! Into the enemy lines!” his lance commander shouted over the comms. 

Servitor-Mechwarrior Tu Wang stormed towards the enemy position inside his Vindicator. He was one of the few who had been able to gain a different mech after distinguishing himself on Tikonov. And he loved this mech far more than he did the Firebee he had to pilot. 

But how did he remain a servitor? 

It’s because he gave away each and every single one of his achievements to free his family from their servitor-ship. Only his mother and eldest son weren’t servitors, so everyone else in his family of nine needed to be freed, not including himself. 

So far, he had three confirmed kills, which enabled him to free all of his children from servitor class. Now, only his siblings and father remained. 

His hands twitched over the controls as he put his mech forward. In its right hand, he held an axe. In its left hand, he held a shield. It was a light thing that lost a lot of mass every time it was shot at, but it was good enough for him to reach the enemy lines. 

He looked up and saw his target: a Grasshopper. 

It had most of its firepower built into its torso. Perfect for him. 

It was also focused on a larger mech behind him. Even better. 

He shed his shield as the last of its pieces fell off, and pushed his Vindicator to the max speed. 

The battlefield narrowed and he watched as the Grasshopper finally noticed him. It turned to shoot at him while backpedaling but it was too late. 

He tackled the enemy mech’s right mech, and the larger heavy mech buckled under his assault. But he wasn’t finished yet.

His axe came up and slammed into the Grasshopper’s left hip. The attack struck right into the lightly armored hip and crushed the armor and structure underneath it. 

The heavy mech buckled as it lost control over its left leg.

And that’s when Tu Wang revealed his final card. 

He flipped the covers over several buttons and slammed down on them.

The jump jets fired behind him and he used his left arm to wrap around the Grasshopper’s right leg.

The jump jets roared and he struggled to lift the leg up.

This wouldn’t have worked if he had done this before he attacked the Grasshopper’s left hip.

But then again, he did do that after, didn’t he? 

The Grasshopper lost balance after just a moment of struggle and keeled over backward. It tried to grab him with its free right hand but missed, noisily scraping the paint away over his cockpit. 

It crashed onto its back with a thunderous crash and Tu Wang wasted no time. He let go of the leg and brought his axe back up before slamming it back down just over the cockpit. 

The mech struggled. Twitched. Stuttered.

Then it went limp.

Tu let out an explosive breath of air and briefly watched as a shell slammed into a Hunchback that had come right up toward him.

Oh shit. When had it gotten so close? 

“Watch it, mechwarrior!” his lance commander shouted as he drove his Cataphract up to the frontlines. The Hunchback - it had an AC/20! - buckled… and then an AC/10 slammed into its center torso. 

Tu wasted no time. He pushed his Vindicator to its limits and struck out with his axe not into the torso but the right torso housing the AC/20. His attack crushed the armor and the gun.

The pilot didn’t get to do anything else before another AC/10 slammed into the medium mech and sent it to the grave. 

“Thank you for the save, commander!” Tu made sure to say that. 

He then briefly looked around. 

The battle… it was intense. He couldn’t tell if they were winning or losing. 

“Go back to the dropship and get another shield, mechwarrior,” his commander grunted.

“Yes, sir.”

-VB-

Jojoken.

It was the capital city of Andurien V and the heart of the Duchy of Andurien. It sat in a defensible position in a valley surrounded by mountains on three sides (on the hexagram map), and the Amur River which covered the fourth side was a very deep river. This meant that all bridges that crossed it were death traps for the invaders because any successful invasion through the bridge would see her people blow it up before they make it through.

This left just one location that needed to be defended: the Emalphi Pass. 

And it was now under assault heavily by the Capellan’s new heavy mechs.

The Cataphract. 

It was a name derived from ancient times when humanity had still yet to explore even all of the Old World on Terra. It was a name given to very heavily armored horsemen, and were a terror on the battlefield against those who could not pierce their armor. 

Mildred fired her Black Knight’s large laser at the blocky Capellan heavy mech and grimaced as her laser failed to critically damage the heavy mech.

“How does it have an AC/10 and four medium lasers and have so much armor?!” he hissed angrily. 

She lurched in her seat as another inferno rocket slammed into her. 

Her mech screeched at her for the climbing heat, but she couldn’t do anything. 

Despite the fact that her command lance should have been in the center and pulling back, both of her lance’s flanks were filled with Capellan mechs swarming over her regiment. 

And all of those swarming mechs were Firebees with their damnable inferno rockets! 

What followed behind them were Vindicators with their axes and PPCs. Since when did the Capellans have a PPC factory?! 

And then after the Vindicators came in to soften the burning mechs, that’s when the heavier mechs like this Cataphract came in. 

Mildred looked back down at her mech display. Her armor was red everywhere except her at her center torso. Her heat was at 90% and climbing. With her laser loadout, she couldn’t fire anything right now!

She got her Black Knight to backpedal again as the Cataphract kept trying to close in on her. 

“General, the flanks are gone!” Major Thomas of the 3rd Battalion reported. “We have to fall back!”

“Goddamnit, where’s the 1st Defenders?!” 

The Emalphi Pass was narrow, barely two kilometers across. It was narrow enough that her 6th and the 1st Defenders should be able to successfully keep the pass under their control.

But that’s not what was happening. 

Both of her flanks were open; the left flank (adjacent to the river) used to be held by her 6th Defender’s 2nd and 3rd Battalions. However, they sustained critical damage and needed to retreat. Her right flank was held by the 1st Defenders… or should have been! 

“General, this is General Schnizehl. I’m sorry. I couldn’t hold my sector,” a call came through.

“How?!” 

“Their Firebees. They scaled the mountains and attacked our rear. If it was just that, then I could have held it but the Capellans tore our frontlines with artilleries”

She froze. 

Huh? 

How?! 

No. It didn’t matter.

… Her flanks were gone. The center was crumbling. If she didn’t retreat, then she was going to lose a whole battalion. But if she did, then the capital city and all of its suburbs would turn into a battlefield. 

… She had no choice. 

“FFUUUCCCKKK!” she shouted inside the cockpit of her Black Knight before turning her comms back on. “All forces, retreat to Point Thetas! I repeat, this is General Mildred Humphreys. I am ordering all forces to do a fighting retreat to Point Thetas!”

Point Theta. Or rather, Thetas. They were military bases that were directly inside the capital city. Falling back to it was an admission that the Emalphi Pass had fallen into enemy hands.

The entrance to the capital city, Jojoken, was now wide open.

-VB-

Pavel Ridzik looked at the hexagram display laid over the map of Andurien V. 

The battle was going in his favor by a wide margin. The Anduriens lost too many dropships and aerospace fighters in orbit to contest his aerial and orbital superiority, and he had abused that to kingdom come. 

The Andurien mech regiments were still supported by their militia regiments, but most of those had not been mech regiments but conventional regiments with a few mechs here and there. 

So in essence, he hadn’t been fighting a defense force nearly the same size as his (but definitely smaller) but a defense force that was barely half his in effectiveness. 

The Ravens helped a lot. While Locusts were the better scouts, Ravens not only scouted but also coordinated artillery and missile strikes. Combined with their ECM, they reduced the Anduriens’ effectiveness even further. 

And the Firebees… 

The mechwarriors of the Citizen’s Hopes have been instrumental in at least three engagements, the latest of which had been the Battle of Emalphi Pass. 

A hundred Firebee mechwarriors made the attempt to cross over the steep mountains that kept their capital city safe. Coupled with anti-air defenses, dropships could not cross over the mountains without sustaining unacceptable losses. 

And, obviously, combat vehicles couldn’t either because it was mountains.

One hundred Firebees made the attempt. 

Only sixty-three made it to the other side.

Of the sixty-three, twenty stayed to delay the reinforcing enemy forces. None survived.

Of the remaining forty-three who attacked the rear of the 1st Defenders of Andurien, six survived the battle. 

It was a catastrophic loss of mechs and lives, but Pavel Ridzik, the Strategic Director, knew that those losses hadn’t been wasteful. The Emalphi Pass could have become a grinding siege that took weeks, if not months, to break. It had the same advantage that rugged terrain had that so many Capellans took advantage of in Styk. 

But where the Federated Suns had lacked the numbers and firepower to siege and break the defenders of Styk, he and his ten regiments (against their three mech regiments) did. 

… If he came here with only five regiments, then he would not have dared to siege their capital city. 

He was actually thankful that the Anduriens hadn’t chosen to fight him in open battle where their combat vehicles could have been put to good use flanking and harassing his mechs. By deliberately fighting at the narrow pass, they limited their own chances of success! 

… To be fair to the Anduriens, he had forced them to that battlefield by making his move toward their capital city both bold and visible with where he landed all of the dropships and drove his regiments toward. Their military leadership must have been panicking.

But the pass also prevented his stealth armor’ed aerospace fighters from making their bombing runs. It was narrow enough that the Andurien AA could have filled the air with lead to score kills. 

No, those fighters had done their duty, and he was not going to waste them like that, because unlike the Firebees, those stealth armors were not only experimental … but expensive.

Firebees… Firebees were cheap, but considering that one hundred Firebees had helped break a medium-heavy mech regiment, he got his bang for the buck from the Firebees.

Now, his orders were simple. 

He was going to hold. 

Why? 

Because the chancellor had one last surprise to show the Anduriens. 

To cow them into submission.

In fact, it should be jumping in some time today. 

---

Catherine Humphreys looked down at the map of Andurien V. 

Blue showed their area of control and the red showed the enemy’s. Simple. 

What wasn’t simple was just how much of the planet was red. 

However, most of the controlled areas weren’t of importance. 

“How long can we last without resupply?” she asked.

Her advisors looked around uneasily before one of them spoke up. He was a friend of James. “Duchess, if this siege continues as is, then we have enough supplies for four months.”

Four months. 

That was … not a lot.

---

“Sir.”

Pavel turned around to look at the sensor officer. “Yes, lieutenant?” he asked as he walked over. 

“We’ve detected a new jump. It’s at L1, sir.”

“How close?”

“0.05 AUs, sir.”

“Hmm. Communications?”

“... Receiving, sir. It’s a text message. ‘CCS Tikonov II.’”

Pavel felt a grin stretch across his face. 

---

Catherine paused along with the entire room when their holomap flared with warnings. 

The technician in charge of it quickly navigated through its labyrinthian and ancient directories until -.

“It’s a new jump, ma’am. Close. L1 Lagrange point.”

“Reinforcements?” 

“Negative, ma’am. It’s just four -.”

The technician froze as a live feed video of what the L1 point-fixed observatory telescopes were seeing. 

And everyone else in the room froze when they saw something alien.

“That’s a Star Lord,” someone muttered. “And two Invaders.”

Catherine’s mind brought up a number quickly. Twelve dropship collars. That was … a lot.

Especially if it was another Capellan reinforcement.

“No… no…!” one of her generals shouted in horror as he stood up from his chair. 

Catherine looked to him in shock. “Alfred?” she asked in confusion.

“Tech, zoom in on the ship in the center of that formation. Now!” Alfred, her old friend from her days serving in the Defenders of Andurien, ignored her and shouted at the technician instead. 

The tech, who also looked horrified, did so. 

She ignored the breach of conduct for now and focused on the picture.

That was not a standard jumpship.

It looked … very heavily armored. And armed. It also bore the Capellan insignia. 

“What am I seeing, Alfred?” she asked instead. 

“... Essex class.”

She wasn’t familiar with that jumpship class. 

“It doesn’t have any dropships attached to it,” she commented and was about to say more until she noticed something.

Alfred’s fists shook. White knuckled. And he was pale. 

“... Alfred?”

“D-Duchess… Essex is a destroyer.”

“... What?”

---

Pavel grinned. “Wonderful,” he spoke. “Send one final message to Jojoken, if you will, Lieutenant Chang,” he said to the comms officer. “You have until the warship flies over your world to surrender. Everything after that is on your head. End.”