"Right, Lemmings, we're going on a raid. I'll be leading this one with Goldfish as my 2IC. Together with Ironwood and Dodger, we'll be the door openers. Random, Alf and Brickyard, your job is to secure or destroy the supplies. The scouts report a couple of points of Toads, a Rifleman and a Summoner as the defending force, together with some emplacements. Leave the fighting to the door openers and scoot with the loot. I don't want the lights mixing it up with those guys, and I would prefer you to secure the supplies and skedaddle quickly if you can. They will come in handy later. Scouts have identified a route in that should get us close enough without the chickens seeing, and they have also marked a couple of the caches. I have pinged the approach routes and battle plan to your noteputers and synched with your mech's onboard systems. Note that the supplies are inside a mountain cave system, so DO NOT trigger your jump jets in there if you have them! Mount up and let's move out."
- Devastator DVS-2 (Tom "Headcase" Skalle)
- Archer ARC-2R (Turi "Ironwood" Skogen)
- Mad Cat (Timber Wolf) B (Anne "Goldfish" Rikke)
- Spider SDR-8K (Finn "Random" Feil)
- Wasp WSP-5A (Alf "Alf" Dusin)
- Phoenix Hawk PXH-9 (Noel "Brickyard" Atterli)
- Patton Tank (Lene "Dodger" Stolen)
The Lemmings had successfully negotiated a series of canyons that led close to the opening of the cave complex where the supplies were cached. By approaching from this direction, they only faced a single emplacement, although signatures from a Summoner could be detected a little further into the cave.
They advanced out of the canyon and the Summoner came to meet them. Moving as a group, the Lemmings divided their fire between the Summoner and the emplacement. The latter was reduced to rubble. The Summoner kept coming despite smoke pouring from various holes in its armour. Standing in the middle of his force, Headcase found himself the target for both the advancing Elementals and the Summoner. His armour melted like slag under a hail of fire that would have annihilated any of his other lance mates.
"You're welcome," he muttered to no one in particular as he thumbed the firing stud as fast as his weapons would recycle and reload.
"Withdraw and make them come to us. Be ready!" Tom hoped to draw the enemy out and then deal with the emplacements within the cave, which had managed to get a bead on Random in his Spider and now Random was no more; a hail of autocannon fire had shredded his cockpit.
The plan worked and the Summoner died in a hail of fire, followed shortly by the Elementals, their battle armour cut to ribbons. That left only the Rifleman that had been further into the cave. The remaining Lemmings advanced.
"Alf and Brickyard, grab those supplies. We'll deal with this Rifleman."
The two pilots did as ordered and soon had two crates of the cached supplies. The others focused their fire on the Rifleman and reduced it to a broken husk. The pilot never even considered surrendering. Meanwhile, Goldfish and Ironwood had got behind the two interior emplacements and reduced them to rubble with a hail of concentrated fire.
As they did so, new signatures appeared on the Lemmings' displays.
"Reinforcements incoming," Tom called to his team, "Deploy near the cave entrances and use them as cover. He and Dodger did just that and waited.
The reinforcements turned out to be a Locust and a Baboon, but they were too little and too late. That did not stop them trying though. Tom's Devastator took a further pasting, but both mechs were on the receiving end of more firepower than they liked. They ran, trailing smoke and fluids.
The Lemmings had the supplies and had destroyed the supply garrison. They left nothing standing within the caves. Back at base, they reviewed their BattleROMs.
"So, it looks like there is another exit to these caves." Mari Nert was the company's intelligence officer on this mission. "It's not big enough to get mechs through, but you'd easily get trucks in and out as needed. We've checked the supplies and intel you recovered and everything points to another supply convoy incoming. We've also been able to identify a chicken recon post."
"Great job, Mari. We'll aim for the supply convoy first. They won't fight as hard with empty bellies and running out of ammo. How's the salvage gone, Vegard?"
Vegard Beider was the unit's head tech, "We got the Spider up and running again, and managed to sluice Random out of the cockpit before giving him a decent burial. The company is going to raise a glass to him later. We all intend to be there. He may not have been with us long, but he was still one of our own."
With that, Tom closed the meeting and went to toast his fallen company member.
Conclusion
Scouring Sands is set up as a branching campaign. At the end of a sortie, you get given options for the next sortie. It is in the Lemmings' nature to seek the fight rather than to wait for it to come to them, so I chose the raid mission over the defensive mission option. It just seemed natural.
Unfortunately, I made a mistake in not including more mechs with hands, although the higher firepower mechs did come in handy (pun intended). I should have included the Wolfhound, but I wanted to have all my Named Pilots along, and Dodger is a combat vehicle pilot, so there is that.
In the end, it turned out to be an expensive mission. The Lemmings earned a lot, but they also had to spend a lot on rearming and repairing their mechs. Finn "Random" Feil turned out to be dead after the explosion of his mech, so he also needed to be replaced. That said, my Named Pilots are growing in experience and we have a full roster for the next mission too. We're going chicken hunting.
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