BattleTech: Run Faster

[Part of the BattleTech Story.]

Gabriel awakes just in time to see the Argo on fire. Luckily, Judge and Medusa react quickly to put it out. Apparently the new cabling for the training pod was somewhat faulty. "Don't worry Master, you just continue to rest up. I got this," assured Medusa before departing for another deployment. This time it was an escort mission to get four APCs filled with weaponry to an extraction point. The pirates are interested in said weaponry too and field two lances of mechs to stop them.

It is a mad dash to the waypoint, and when Judge is tripped up by heavy autocannon fire her sister Tranquility turns around to martial arts the pursuers. This buys Judge sometime to recover and limp onward but is knocked down again. Before she can stand a second time a rain of missiles falls upon her, one breaching the cockpit glass and penetrating through her right shoulder before exploding.

Tranquility yells in despair as her sister dies, leaving her open for an enemy Shadowhawk to punch through her rear armor. She is completely surprised to find herself right in the palm of the enemy mech, who then promptly crushes her in a shower of blood. During this time one of the APCs is also disabled, but the rest of the team extract successfully. The 1 million+ credits Medusa negotiated for payment barely covers their losses.

Get us out of here!

BattleTech: Rookie Trials

[Part of the BattleTech Story.]

With Gabriel unconscious in the medbay and a few pilots down, Medusa and Glitch decide to hire more help - specifically a team of rookies each for trials.

There's no shortage of them apparently!

Medusa recruits the Blaugustian Discord, sly guy Rattlesnake and prim and proper gal Broadway whom he takes to ambush a convoy. Broadway, riding a Jenner, doesn't even survive the first exchange of bullets leaving the others a harder time to complete the mission. They still do, but right afterwards Rattlesnake makes the mistake of dismounting from his mech to claim some "personal" salvage and is ambushed by humanoid insect like natives. He fights them off but is wounded in the exchange.

Meanwhile Glitch assembles a team composed of the sisters Judge and Tranquility as well as a man with piercing eyes with the callsign Shiver. They deploy on a what's meant to be an easy mission of destroying a pirate lance acting as forward observers, but everything goes to hell when a second lance arrives in a flanking position. Glitch manages to get her team up to a lake in the mountains which helps the mechs keep cool while firing but it isn't enough for Shiver who overheats his mech, making him an easy target for an enemy Blackjack. Shiver dies burning in agony.

Glitch manages to keep the others at bay for the most part, with Judge showing off her evasive piloting skills while Tranquility messes up some of the enemies with her robot jujitsu. Unfortunately an enemy manages to flank Glitch and kill her from the back, moments before Tranquility destroys it with a fist through the chest and earning a mission victory. Seeing something must be done with all the novices, Medusa orders the tech team to start building training pods so they can practice and gain skills before hitting the battlefield for real.