Recently I hit a patch where I thought I was doing too much gaming, and decided to take a break. Then work winded up and punched me hard, so I took a longer break. Eventually, decided to restart gaming with a new run in BattleTech the game, running a new merc company. So I’m keeping a log…
How did the Ghosts get started? Well, the Boss and myself, we were both orphans of a sort. Boss was a freelancer, or a Sphere merc, can’t remember. Hooked up with my old company for a gig, but my old Boss took an autocannon round to the head, and the company fell apart in battle. Made too many enemies from that one, so the old bunch decided to split. The two of us ended up on Independence, cooling our heels.
Boss had grabbed a few ‘Warriors and decided to form a new company. Managed to convince some weird junker Dropship to provide us transport, even has a Leopard to do combat drops. So Tigertail, Rebound, Beetle and Ghoul signed up as ‘Warriors. Me, I took too much sharpnel to be active duty, so ended up in the CIC on the Leopard.
We only had 5 mechs: Commando, Locust, Blackjack, Centurion and Panther. Not the best mix, neither the Boss nor myself liked the Commando or Panther very much. Those two are still better than the Locust, which the Boss loathed. So that one went into the can, to be rid of as soon as possible to generate cash. TigerTail was the most deft at the controls, so she got the Commando. Blackjack was to split between Rebound and Beetle, with Rebound winning the Ro-Sham-Bo to go first. Ghoul could take the heat, so he got the Panther. Boss took the Cent, of course.
And that’s how we dropped into the Ghosts’s first contract. Boss got us a contract with the locals to drive off some pirates. We got dropped into steaming jungle, and straight away our inexperience showed up — we didn’t scout properly, so we had to double back to cross a river. We were shit poor at this, but the enemy were pirates, so eventually we were able to win through. Boss and Rebound got on the scoreboard, but TigerTail took quite a bit of damage. Boss wasn’t happy, so Yang was told to strip out the SRMs and uparmour the Commando.
One odd thing is, Yang somehow magicked up an Assassin for us while we were gone. Boss and I were scratching our heads on that one. Couldn’t find a good way to refit it — the stock weaponry was really poor. And Yang also managed to get some sort of odd tech in that shipment too, some sort of shotgun cannon and a weird short-ranged PPC. Boss looked over the specs and maybe we can refit both the Centurion and Panther with these.
Next contract, Canopus wants us to rob pirates. Like Darius said, we ain’t above robbing to get paid. This one was cakewalk — we rolled over a ridge and slammed into the 2 defending Mechs. 20 seconds of weapons fire took down a Jenner and a Javelin. TigerTail got on the kill board, but also took some damage. Pay wasn’t great, but we did score some salvage.
Next was for Taurian, but a tricky mission — some crap about killing both target and another “interested party”. Boss and Darius decided better to let the two sides fight and boy, they were really right on this one. Turns out, one side is pirates who somehow got a Griffin and a K2 Catapult, the other is House Liao mechs. We let the two kill each other a bit, those Great House ‘Warriors really know their stuff — the Liao Phoenix Hawk KICKED the arm off the Catapult. Not going to mess with that ‘Warrior without numbers on my side.
In the end, Rebound screwed the pooch and we failed to salvage a Catapult, but we did managed somehow to drag the Phoenix Hawk off the field. Thank goodness the Boss negotiated for more salvage; really pleased with that one, and that one went into Yang’s shop quick, to convert to lasers-only. Knowing the Boss, that’d replace the Commando — as much as the uparmour was good, the Commando couldn’t jump, so in some cases wasn’t as good as we’d liked it to be.
So the weekend came around… and the Boss made us go out again. This time, to help the locals get rid of some Taurian remmants. Turned out a bit scarier, and showed why the Phoenix Hawk was a good find. Sumire dumped us right in front of a narrow pass into a valley. A jumper could have crossed via the left of the pass, but we had two grounders, so we were sort of forced to use the pass.
Turns out, there were a lot more Taurians than we were told. A lance of Mechs and a lance of light vehicles, intermixed. Strikers and Scorpion, plus some weird Galleon TAG tank. They were coordinated, and we kept taking LRM fire, particularly Ghoul. The Panther’s PPC fire was particularly scary because we couldn’t see it, and was worried it was another heavy mech. Was a bit iffy at a point, because the Taurians looked to be concentrating faster than us, but a good push by the lance left burning tanks and a near-pristine Javelin and a mostly wrecked Locust — Ghoul scored a head shot on the Javelin with his PPC, and Boss cooked off the LRM ammo on the Locust-M. Which is exactly why we shit-can our Locust real quick!
Mopping up took longer than I like, because we couldn’t shoot straight. Eventually we manage to snag enough parts of the Javelin off the field — left the head, didn’t want to have to hose it out. Not that we wanted to use the Javelin, it’s a little too light. But Yang can tape it back up, and then we can sell it.
And that’s just in the first week. Boss is a hard driver, but it’s good to be on a winning streak again. Independence is pretty much played out as contracts go, so Boss is lining us up for another planet. Travel means downtime, so refits are already in the pipe — Panther’s getting the new Snub PPC, and upgrading to SRM6, that should make Ghoul happy.