Following the loss of his supply convoy, the Jade Falcon commander Star Captain Conrad Sender sent a communication in clear. He was willing to meet and to negotiate. In his own words, the Full Throttle Lemmings had made themselves "unignorable".
The local merchants showed themselves to be brave as they strapped into the APCs to head for the meet. The Lemmings respected that and were determined to see that the merchants returned home safely at the end of the negotiations.
Tom was listening to some cheerful music in his Devastator, as he and the rest of the Lemmings stood guard over the merchants of Apolakkia. He and the rest of the Lemmings had developed a lot of respect for the citizens they had met and a lot of sympathy for their plight. They had been mercilessly abused by the Jade Falcon commander. Agapito, the mayor they had met on their first day on planet, had lost his grandfather and his surname to the Jade Falcon occupiers. His father had suffered losses that had broken him. Other citizens had similar stories to tell. Their contact with the locals had made this personal for Tom. Like all of the Full Throttle Lemmings, all the way back to their founders Jennifer Raytor and Anna Daptor, they hated injustice and supported the underdog. He mused on what an underdog actually looked like as he observed the proceedings and listened in to the negotiations. Presumably, it was some sort of old Terran creature that was low on the food chain, but he had never seen a picture of one.
Tom's attention returned sharply to the negotiations as voices were raised and the Falcon Star Captain started getting angrier. This did not bode well. It was with both horror and a sense of the inevitable that he watched explosives detonate under the APCs as the merchants sought to broker a deal.
"Bastards!" yelled Tom, "Lemmings, take that shithead out, and help our clients get out of the combat zone."
He slammed the power on in his Devastator.
"You dezgra surat," Tom broadcast to Conrad Sender's Thunderbolt IIC as he sighted and fired, "I'll fry you and eat your wings!"
"Lemmings, roast that freebirth scum!"
Red and green beams of light blasted out and washed over Sender's Thunderbolt. Autocannon and missile fire exploded against it. Its armour melted like slag as the APCs with the Apolakkians in raced for shelter behind a nearby bluff, where the Lemmings' medium mechas had gathered to protect them.
Shrapnel showered down on Tom's Devastator as a full volley from the Bane crashed into the canopy over his head. Only a few missiles actually struck the massive mecha to damage the armour plating.
The new guy, Dendros "Cherry" Tree, took his Spider and jumped in behind the Bane, landing a crashing volley into its rear.
Sender ran for home, pausing only briefly in the tree line to fire a wild volley at the Lemmings. His mech was limping badly and trailing smoke as he fled.
A Baboon pilot briefly joined the fray, but quickly decided to demonstrate the better part of valour after seeing the Lemmings fire take down the Thunderbolt in a single volley. He took his mech in behind a cliff and did not come out again. A Locust did join the battle but soon regretted it as "Ironwood" Skogen's Archer focused fire on it and Cherry quickly brought his Spider in behind the Locust. The Summoner stepped out from behind the cliffs and got a warm welcome, while the Bane found itself outmanoeuvred by the lighter Lemmings mechs and the J. Edgar hovertank. Their efforts were not enough.
"That cowardly shitweasel Sender has run off," Tom was irked, "and we have these others here guarding his tail for him. I'm ordering a fighting withdrawal. Let's get the Apolakkians home safely and then we can take the fight to the psycho chickens."
That went a lot more quickly than expected. Sender's Thunderbolt went from whole to zero in a single turn as almost every single Lemming fired at and hit it. Shame he could not be killed right there, but there was plot armour to let him get away for a final showdown later.
The Bane was a nasty shock too; 7 points of indirect fire is a lot! As it turned out, Tom's Devastator was the main target for all the Falcon attacks, so I got lucky because it can take a lot of hurt before it starts breaking and they simply did not have enough time to do any real damage.
No comments:
Post a Comment