Cray
03/02/04 07:52 AM
147.160.1.5
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IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT...
The arcology consisted of 12 major buildings in two parallel, winding rows of 6. They were mostly long, rectangular buildings about 12 floors high, some L-shaped to form wings that broke up the exterior's monotony and provided some "neighborhoods" or separated business districts. Between the two rows was an open atrium of variable width (okay, the rows of buildings weren't that parallel), roofed over in glass - it was a city park and a place for "open" air shops. Each building in a row was linked by a glass wall that served as an entrance to the atrium; the ends of the rows were likewise glass clad. The buildings included everything a town of 30000 needed: one end was largely business/commercial, the other residential, with municiple government buildings and a hospital in between. Light rail access slipped through underground tunnels below the atrium. All in all, a 21st Century visitor would have found it much like living in a super-sized 'Mall of America' or Edmonton Mall, with attached apartment buildings. The arcology was one of hundreds in Palma de Majorca; there were few buildings other than arcologies in Palma.
Currently, Lieutenant Raban of the Immortals was stalking across the reinforced roof of one of the apartment blocks at the south end of the arcology. He did this by carefully planting a foot and rolled heel-to-toe into each step. The rubber tread of the feet kept the noise of the 85-ton mech to about the same as a wheeled vehicle rolling over gritty concrete. He was also desperately hoping any civilians left in the block had retreated to the further-reinforced shelters (aka, the parking garage and subway) under the arcology. The major frames of the building spaced every so many apartments were meant to carry the largest battlemech's mass. On the other hand, the roof in between was deliberately designed not to. A hostile mech unaware of the building's design would have an awkard, bumpy fall through 36 meters and 12 floors to the more solid ground level, hence the the hope that civilians had evacuated. Unlike invaders (who had yet to get on the roof), Raban had the advantage of an architectural database for the entire Grand Duchy of the Balearics - the structure of the building below him and his Battlemaster was a ghostly blue transparency, the load bearing members obviously thicker and more opaque than lighter sections.
This was an entirely computer generated phenomenon fed to Raban via his neurohelmet (from both the inducer elements and a visor display). The roof was actually endless red concrete colored to mimic the traditional red "Spanish" tiling favored for Grand Duchy roofs. Another completely computer generated illusion was the FedCom Enforcer stalking through the atrium, a product not of a database but rather of hundreds of cameras in the arcology's atrium. It was not transparent and blue; it was as photo-realistic as if Raban was looking at it with his own eyes. Not a minute before, the Enforcer and its friends had been hot on his tail. He had lost them in the winding atrium, dodged outside through a glass wall between arcology component buildings that some other mech had already crashed through, and hopped to the roof in two jumps. Several condo owners with choice exterior balcony spots were going to be pissed when they saw what Raban's Battlemaster's feet had done to their decorative wrought iron railings and expensive patio furniture.
"Got'em. Got local sun roof command," his backseat Sensor Systems Operator (SSO) said tersely.
"Noted."
The arching glass roof over the atrium, some 45 meters wide at this spot, could roll back to let in gentle spring breezes. (And it stayed shut during the hot summer so the miracle of air conditioning could keep the arcology's "outdoors" pleasant for residents.) Now, during the rainy winter, it was also shut, which was currently to Raban's advantage. The IR- and UV-filtering glass that lowered air conditioning bills and minimized sunburns was also doing a wonderful job of keeping his looming Battlemaster invisible to the invaders below (while ECM blocked their active sensors). Raban's SSO had accessed the controls for this sunroof system and without any "hacking." The all-pervasive IR and laser wireless network in the Grand Duchy gave (authorized) local users wonderful, magical control of their surroundings. Generations of Grand Dukes had ensured that "authorized user lists" always included on-duty police and military personnel. The standard interface formats and centuries of cumulative ergonomic design efforts made it easy for even a stranger to access the controls via a few tabbed menus that the local device (the atrium's sunroof, in this case) supplied. Like police handheld computers, the Battlemaster's computers and sensors could quickly pinpoint every accessible device and display them on a simple, virtual overlay for either crew member. Standard practice was to leave that work in the hands of the SSO, who wasn't piloting one of the most complicated war machines humanity had ever created.
Raban was piloting one of those machines, and now he was getting busier than ever. "Don't open yet. Wait for it."
Other battlemechs were in the arcology below. Another Immortal Battlemaster crouched in the back of a food court balcony some fifteen meters above the floor of the atrium. A hulking FedCom Fafnir was taking up the rear of the lance, led by a pair of Zeuses, then the Enforcer. One of the Zeuses had paused in front of the food court and was pivoting. It wasn't nearly tall enough to see into the food court from ground level, so why...?
"Crushed railings," Raban's SSO commented.
Duh. How often had Raban played hide and seek in mech combat simulators and found his target through damage to surrounding buildings? The other Battlemaster, Lewis's, had physically climbed up the sloping terraces of the arcology's interior to reach the food court rather than firing its noisy, hot jump jets. (Some) terraces were meant to carry that burden, but there would be superficial damage like torn railings and crumbled concrete edges.
"Lewis," Raban said clearly, prompting his mech's communication suite, "Jump the lead Zeus, us the Fafnir."
"Agreed," came Lieutenant Lewis's terse reply.
Raban hoped his SSO had remembered to set the comm suite to 'stealthiest.' When there was no reaction from the FedCom mechs, Raban guessed he had. The Battlemaster's flexible communication suite had used the wireless network's laser links and cables to relay the message to the other Battlemaster. The same network technology that minimized cross-talk between wireless devices made directional, untappable military communication easy...within the Grand Duchy's borders, and for friendly forces. The same network technology that kept veteran hackers out was not easily fooled by the fumblings of foreign military personnel who had never worked with the Grand Duchy's network protocols before.
"Hold on," Raban warned his backseater. He flicked a switch, causing flexible heater elements lacing his Battlemaster's myomers to kick on. In seconds, the myomers had reached their activation temperature and their performance improved dramatically. The heater element system was much more reliable than trying to juggle heat sink operation and weapons fire to vary the Battlemaster's ambient heat level, but the heaters generated almost as much waste heat as one of the mech's Hellstar PPCs. Once the myomers activated, it was time to act.
Raban moved the Battlemaster forward again. In moments he was on one of the thick reinforced concrete arches that sectioned the atrium's glass roof. Up, up, and then he was towering sixty meters over ground level. By this time, the other Zeus had joined its fellow into looking up at the food court balcony. One was backing up to the far side of the atrium to get the best possible view of the balcony. The Fafnir was advancing to join the Zeuses, while the Enforcer was peering around a corner to examine the shattered glass wall Raban had exited through. Now that he was in position, it was time to get stupid. The Fafnir was just about in the correct position...
Lieutenant Raban relaxed and began to ignore his body and senses. There was a shadow in his mind, a weak "ghost limb" phenomenon of another body. The body was blockier and stiffer than his own, and it was an illusion induced by his neurohelmet. By concentrating - or rather, relaxing and letting his thoughts flow - he could move that stiffer body, the Battlemaster's body. He could even feel the trickle of rain across its complicated steel surfaces, a whisper of wind, and the shift of muscles as the body instinctively leaned into the wind. Supplementary commands through the standard foot pedals and control sticks reinforced the meaning of his intended commands to the Battlemaster's computer. (The eggheads said the next generation of neural interpretation systems would be running on recovered, Star League-era computers that clocked several orders of magnitude faster than the current systems. They could run more complicated interpretation software even faster, perhaps even eliminating manual controls. However, they had yet to say that they could increase the signal strength of the neurohelmet's inducers without literally cooking brain cells. They kept saying ugly words about "electrodes" and "implants" when it came to improving signal strength and clarity.)
Under his control, the Battlemaster bent and planted its hands on the arch. Raban's SSO triggered the sunroof, which slid open with admirable speed. Raban continued the Battlemaster through its motion, stepping it backwards while keeping the hands planted. With its feet now over open air, gravity took over. The mech swung down, its rotation retarded by the hand actuators' grip on the arch until its feet were just over the Fafnir. Then Raban let go of the arch. Overall, it was an outstanding example of battlemech piloting. To a child on a playground jungle gym, it would've looked as dextrous as an arthritic knight in plate armor swinging off of a bar.
As a rule of thumb, mechwarriors supplied balance information to their battlemechs via the neurohelmet. It was not that 31st Century technology could not keep a large, bipedal robot upright. That was a trivial effort. A variety of motion sensors etched into computer chips gave a battlemech a sense of balance far more precise than a human's inner ear, while limb actuators and a multi-ton gyroscope provided potent means of keeping the mech upright. But computers could not interpret the battlefield and decide when it was okay to be off balance. That required the input of a mechwarrior, and the only way to get such complicated information into the battlemech was via the neurohelmet. There were times, however, when the ultra-precise, ultra-fast sense of balance of the battlemech was preferable to the human pilot's fallible and sluggish judgement. For example, when dropping feet first 20-some meters onto the lumpy upper surface of another battlemech.
Raban let the Battlemaster know it was time to maintain balance at all costs. The mech came upright in mid-air through vigorous application of its gyroscope so that it crashed feet first onto the head of the Fafnir. Torso jump jets popped and roared to keep the Battlemaster from falling backward, its arms swung, and legs pistoned over the collapsing, shifting surface (the Fafnir) beneath its feet. When the Fafnir completed its topple forward, Raban stepped off smoothly into decorative shrubbery and the abandoned tables of an "outdoor" cafe.
A good mechwarrior knew when to trust his machine.
As the shrubbery helpfully scraped red goo off the Battlemaster's left foot (something that had squirted out of the Fafnir's cockpit), Raban stepped toward the nearest Zeus. The Zeus's mechwarrior was clearly torn between facing him and the second Battlemaster stepping off the food court balcony. The other Zeus had no such conflict and unleashed a hail of laser and PPC fire at Lewis's mech. Lewis used his jump jets to extend his drop until he was right in front of "his" Zeus, riding through the blast of armor ablating off his torso like an aerial speedbump. Then the combat got messy.
In all honesty, the Immortals were outgunned. At this range (arm's length), their effective ranged weapons were four medium lasers apiece (which were salvoed). The Zeus' extended range PPCs and large lasers and their medium pulse lasers were actually rather comparable to the Battlemasters' medium lasers, but the Enforcer's rotary autocannon and large laser increased the FedCom's firepower over 50%. However, the Battlemasters were at arm's length and their triple strength myomers were hot. Raban pinned "his" Zeus against the wall with his left hand, punched with his right, and kicked. The Zeus's pilot was able to shift his mech enough to avoid the head shot Raban had been attempting (instead taking the blow on the shoulder), but he did not avoid the wrecking ball kicks. Two kicks took off the Zeus's left leg. A moment later, Lewis's third kick similarly amputated the other Zeus's right leg. Despite the savage fire from the Enforcer, the two Battlemasters continued to kick their fallen opponents in a robotic parody of a gangland beating. The Enforcer fled when the Battlemasters straightened and fired four subatomic blasts at it.
Well, it tried to flee. With their myomers hot, the Immortals were just as fast as the Enforcer, and they had jump jets. Lewis hopped back to the food court balcony, then out the "sun" roof (which was letting the deluge of the rain storm inside) while Raban thundered through the atrium. The Enforcer was turning around the very corner Raban had dodged out of-
"Don't! You're just going to miss and hit-" Raban's SSO started, but Raban fired his left arm PPC anyway. As predicted, he missed and evaporated an apartment.
"Ron, the Grand Duke pays out for damage incurred during war, you know that!"
"That was my apartment! Muscles was still in there!"
"Oops! Uh...sorry," Raban lied. That damned pitbull had "marked his territory" all over Raban's shoes at the last New Year's party.
Raban got his Battlemaster around the corner in time to see the Enforcer steer around the exterior corner of the building, completing a U-turn from the atrium. Then it stopping cold when Lewis's mech punched it - Lewis had dropped off the roof in front of the Enforcer. Before it could be further abused by 170 angry tons of assault mechs, the Enforcer was saved by a broadcast Defense Department order: hostilities were to cease, and the Enforcer was to be escorted back to its dropship. The FedCom commander had finished skimming a history book or tourism brochure and figured out that the Grand Duchy wasn't a rebellious province siding with Victor. The Enforcer's mechwarrior apparently got a similar ceasefire order between the time the mech regained its equilibrium and brought its weapons up. Raban later learned the DD had held off its broadcast until the FedCom commander had started transmitting her ceasefire orders.
The Enforcer didn't make it back to its dropship (which had settled into a scorched landing zone in center of some carefully preserved cloud forest) unscathed - it returned minus both arms. Aside from a couple of stray laser shots, one stray PPC bolt that (fortunately) killed a dog, and some cosmetic damage (shattered glass walls, bent railings, crunched patio furniture, torn up shrubbery), the battle in the middle of an arcology had resulted in only minor damage...except for where the Enforcer had hosed its 50mm rotary autocannon. Hundreds of the shells had hit Lewis's Battlemaster, while hundreds more of the high explosive armor piercing rounds had sprayed across apartments and storefronts. The bursting shells had done little to the massive structural members of the arcology, but the cosmetic mess and destruction of private property was daunting. The "x-ray vision" from linked arcology cameras let the four Immortals see the fog billowing from apartments where misting sprinklers fought fires.
The ancient saying was that in space, no one could hear you scream. That also applied to lone mechs within 10 meters of two RCA Guardian-class ECM suites.
THE IMMORTALS
The so-called "Immortals" are the Grand Duchy's elite (and only) mech unit. They are built around a company of Battlemasters, though there is reason to suspect the unit may be at least twice as large (see below).
There is a deep and fascinating story about how the "Immortals" earned their unit name. It starts in a pub many centuries ago and involves young soldiers in the newborne Grand Duchy's militia, plus a lot of beer. They picked a "mean and tough" name and one of them had read a book about ancient militaries, hence the nickname "Immortals" was chosen between several pitchers of beer and games of darts.
Okay, that's not deep or fascinating story, but it's where the name came from.
The Immortals are, understandably enough, masters of urban combat. Though this is assisted by the advanced neurohelmets they use, it is mostly the result of a lot of training. They are able to take their mechs through spaces few other mechwarriors would attempt, climb with ease, and launch ambushes. They are particularly adept at getting the full use out of their mechs' hand actuators, which aids in climbing, impromptu club attacks, and close range hand-to-hand combat. If anything, they are deadlier in Palma, which has been adapted to mechs to some extent. The roads are hardened and the heavily built Balearic skyscrapers and arcologies are designed to endure the weight of mechs...mechs who know which floors to put their feet on and which columns to grab hold of. Arcologies (which consist of several apartment buildings and a mall-type business area sharing a common roof and walls between buildings) are easily accessed by mechs without crashing through the reinforced buildings, but rather passing/crashing through the light curtain walls between arcology buildings. For the mechwarrior familiar with this environment (and the Immortals have run through very realistic simulations in them for much of their mechwarrior careers), it's about as ideal of an urban combat zone as a mechwarrior could hope for.
For a friendly mechwarrior, it's even more ideal. The all-pervasive police and traffic sensor networks that cover the Balearics (as far as hallways outside of apartments) is linked by ECM-proof fiberoptic cables. An authorized user can "see through walls" or get a "god's eye view" with intervening buildings filtered out, or reduced to ghosts. Integration of architectural databases into the targeting computers of the Immortals' mechs lets them know which walls they can easily fire through, and which walls may obstruct the shot.
The Immortals also have several other fairly unique skills. They are talented at underwater marches and amphibious assaults, a side effect of being expected to march from one island to another should the train tunnels be captured. (Naturally, the undersea tunnels have mech-scale airlocks should one or both of the ends be destroyed.) The past several Grand Dukes have faced criticism for "wasting" money on "expensive white elephants" like battlemechs, and thus have pressed the Immortals into stunts for good public relations. These stunts have settled on search and rescue missions and emergency engineering during disasters (putting up temporary bridges during storms, quickly building dikes, etc.) This latter role has made the Immortals pretty fair combat engineers, almost unique in their practiced use of battlemechs.
The Immortals' aerospace support gets far less attention. The Balearics seem to have refitted their secondhand Thunderbirds with more modern technology and an altered weapons array. Said one captured pirate dropship crewman: "The PPCs were bad enough, but when they buzzed us at fifty kilometers...[begins to sob]...the lasers...so many lasers...it was death by paper cuts..."
While dubbed the "elite" troops of the Grand Duchy, the Immortals are actually mostly veteran, with over half of the SSOs being "regular." (The SSO position in the Battlemasters is used as an "apprenticing" role for mechwarriors.)
MECHS, ODDITIES, AND ENIGMAS
The Immortals, as noted, are built around a company of Battlemasters but the origins of these Battlemasters have not been confirmed. They are of an unusual model not seen elsewhere or modifications of an existing model. An old SLDF cache under the Balearics is improbable because the Grand Duchy was settled before the Star League was formed and is not known to have hosted a significant Star League presence. Since it was ignored throughout the Succession Wars and always had a lot of money, the common theory is that the Grand Duchy has simply purchased salvaged and new Battlemasters over the years and refitted them. It certainly has the money to pay for their upkeep.
If the Grand Duchy had more than 12 mechs, all this might be cause for concern. As it is, the Balearics are hardly more of a threat than an independent Periphery planet, so MIIO has ruled. (Questions from junior MIIO agents regarding whether or not MIIO should follow up on possible security breaches at NAIS have been ignored. There's WoBblies, Clanners, Cappies, and Snakes [oh, my!] to keep an eye on, and the twerps are worried about a city-state? Bah, they obviously have too much time on their hands and should be reassigned to the front lines.)
Speaking of the Grand Duchy's 12 mechs, that brings up the mysterious case of the "bi-located" Immortals. There is some evidence (more tourist footage) of the Immortals appearing on parade at the same time they were assisting AFFC units (pre-Civil War) to squash Tortuga Dominions pirating activities. The tourist's time/date stamps on the home video are questionable, especially since the tourist has recently been indicted for fraud involving fake Star League-era "relics." On the other hand, having a second company of Immortals would explain why the Grand Duchy so frequently sends its "entire" mech force abroad for combat experience. Whether the Grand Duchy also has twice as many aerospace fighters as commonly thought is uncertain – the aerospace fighters are only seen abroad.
BATTLE HISTORY
The Immortals have served with the AFFS as "mercenaries" (to maintain the Grand Duchy's neutrality while gaining combat experience for its troops). The vast majority of their combat experience is from these "merc" contracts. In FS Civil War (in the 2500s), they did clash with some of the warring factions, notably after Smolensk was nuked by one faction. (At the time, of course, they did not use Battlemasters.) Likewise, in the FC Civil War (in the 3060s), there was a brief clash with a Loyalist unit that did not (at first) understand the Balearics were an independent nation. That Smolensk avoided heavy fighting during the FCCW is amazing - it is a short jump away from Kathil, the meatgrinder of the FCCW.
Aside from the clash during the FCCW, the next most recent combat seen by the Immortals was in a pirate hunting mission against the Tortuga Dominions (in 3062). This produce some dramatic battle footage worthy of Solaris VII, but was not an overwhelming military victory (16 pirate mechs, average tonnage 38 versus 12 Immortals, average tonnage 85; pirates trapped in a steep canyon between two groups of Immortals).
THE IMMORTALS TO&E
FIRST PLATOON (veteran)
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
SECOND PLATOON (veteran)
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
....BLR-GDB Battlemaster
AEROSPACE SQUADRON (veteran)
....Thunderbird
....Thunderbird
....Thunderbird
....Thunderbird
....Thunderbird
....Thunderbird
SUPPORT UNITS
....vary a great deal
The Grand Duchy of the Balearic Islands' Department of Defense seems to regard companies as the ideally sized "plug and play" units. Consequently, there seem to be no permanent units larger than a company within the Balearic military, though some infantry battalions have been together for years. The Immortals have been seen with attached artillery companies, attached mechanized infantry companies, attached medium armor companies, and attached conventional fighter squadrons. When deployed abroad they are always accompanied by a mechanized infantry battalion that guards their dropships and field bases.
OTHER GRAND DUCHY UNITS & DEFENSES
The Balearics seem to have a great deal of infantry, but this is understandable for an (almost) entirely urban nation. Current estimates place the infantry units at about a regiment, but it's hard to tell where the Royal Defense Forces infantry units begin and the police end because the infantry are frequently deployed on policing duties. (Reasoning: the Grand Duchy doesn't fight in many wars, so there's no sense in letting the military get slack.) The military is also known to incorporate several squadrons of generic conventional fighters and at least one artillery company, plus the light and medium armored units used by its mechanized infantry companies.
As an island nation, the Grand Duchy understandably has a credible Coast Guard. This is known to consist of high profile hydrofoils (of about 100 tons) that perform regular CG duties and some rather more mysterious submarines of about the Neptune's size.
The Grand Duchy has acquired a pair of Sha Yu battlemechs through uncertain means. After several weeks of "playing tag" on Palma's streets with the Immortal's Battlemasters, the Sha Yu were never seen again except for rumors of "disassembled Super Locusts" in Hangar 51b of the Palma Spaceport. The military seems hot for battle armor, too, which would be an outstanding weapon for urban combat and is probably within the industrial capacity of the city-state to build, unlike battlemechs. To this extent, it is known to have purchased samples of battle armors from the Gray Death Legion, Capellan Confederation, and FWL.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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