Night Watch On Al-Sorah

Night Watch on Al-Sorah
Tabac Iberez
September 22, 2022
Night Watch on Al-Sorah & Mission Pack is not an official Lancer product; it is a third party work, and is not affiliated
with Massif Press. Night Watch on Al-Sorah & Mission Pack is published via the Lancer Third Party License.
Lancer is copyright Massif Press
Copyright © 2022 by Tabac Iberez
Credit to the following staff for their work:
Story Writer- Tabac Iberez
Mission Writer & Extras- Tabac Iberez & Matt Williamson
Editing- Darrian Richey & Matt Williamson
Typesetting- Tetragramm
Art Credits
• HA Loza (48), Rosehip’s Sherman (32), Lukaz’s Everest (42), Tivi’s Monarch (28), Malachite’s Kidd (36) : Alice
Danielle Braund “Shade Fish”
• Tivi & Rosehip (1), Tarasunah Bar (37): Ishi Bocabel
• Cover Art (i): Tom Carroll
• Landscape Art (25 & 45): KucingKecil
ii
SECTION 1:
SHORT STORY 1
NIGHT WATCH ON AL-SORAH 3
SECTION 2:
MISSION: RED RIVER

RUN
MISSION BRIEF
25
27
GOAL 27
STAKES 27
REWARD 27
RESERVES 27
NPCS 29
BEAT 1: WANDERING FEET FIRST INTO
SOMETHING 31
COMBAT 1: AMIDST THE PILLARS OF
WISDOM 33
SITREP 33
OBJECTIVE 33
OPFOR 33
BATTLEFIELD 33
TACTICS 33
OUTCOME 34
BEAT 2: JAMMING IN TARASUNAH 35
COMBAT 2: HERE’S TO YOU 39
SITREP 39
OBJECTIVE 39
OPFOR 39
REINFORCEMENTS 39
BATTLEFIELD 39
TACTICS 39
OUTCOME 40
BEAT 3: HELLO FAX MACHINE BROKE
WHO THIS 43
SECTION 3:
MECHS 45
LOZA 47
[iii] SECTION //
SECTION // [iv]
SECTION 1
SHORT STORY
NIGHT WATCH ON AL-SORAH 3
NIGHT WATCH ON
AL-SORAH
“Alright, everyone,” The subaltern dealing this round of poker said, shuffling the cards. “Arcana trump, Fool
low, and place your bets.”
Sitting to my right, Tivi grinned. Most people would offer pithy remarks about the wisdom of gambling with your
boss, but we were only playing for vending machine tokens and extra chores. Besides, he was a good sport about
it- and if he wasn’t going to be, he’d be dealing. It was hard to cheat a hand of pogue, but I’ve seen Tivi play card
games; he’d cheat seven ways from Sunday.
It was a good habit for Cosmopolitan mercenaries like us to be in, though. Lancers through and through, drifting
from trouble to trouble like the tumbleweeds of war since a time long-since lost. In Union, where millions sailed the
stars and billions more tended their planets, we were the proud independents who gave it all up for a chance at
immortal glory.
“Seven tricks in hearts,” My partner at the card table said, voice proud. My forehead hit my hand with a metallic
’clank’, the mechanical fingers hitting the strike plate next to my eye with a vengeance.
“Lukaz, we’ve been over this,” Malachite said from my left. “Hearts aren’t a suit with these cards.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Lukaz said, trying to smile at me and failing. “You know I’m more used to games with the Tejas
deck pattern, not this.”
“We’ll finish getting the mud off you yet.” I said, smiling lightly and checking my cards, before hiding a grimace.
I had the Tower, the Empress, the Fool, and not a single Courtier between the other fifteen cards in my hand.
Practically a Yarborough. Absolutely disgusting. “Four tricks, no favors.”
“Six tricks in lances,” Malachite said, tapping the table.
“Now look at your cards this time,” I reminded Lukaz.
“Seven tricks in manna?” he said, hesitant.
“Much better,” Tivi said, smiling while his ear flicked.
Rolling my eyes a little, I just flicked a shelled peanut at the offending cat-ear. While Tivis poker face might
be tight as a drum, his ears told the real story, all nine centimeters of them. See, Tivi was from a Constellar World,
which means before he was born, the Smith-Shiano Corporation had done some mild genetic modifications. They
specialized in tailor-made humans, and when someone wanted a world of catboys and catgirls, they provided. Hed
left, though, even if his story was a little hard to believe. Fleeing a Constellar World with your ex-wife organizing a
lynch mob? Sure. Fleeing a Constellar World in the Monarch you just finished building with a full suite of licenses
to run the thing? Much more doubtful. “Eight tricks in remass.”
I just rolled my eyes at Tivis boastful bid. We were playing with an Interplanetary Shipping-Northstar deck,
so of course the fourth suit was reaction mass. Every company had their own fourth suit- which made playing with
decks you fished together out of spare cards very fun and enraging.
“Yeah I ain’t beating out eight tricks,” I said, tapping the table. “Malin, look at this mess. It’s a dog’s breakfast.”
From behind my shoulder, a hologram flickered to life. The ship’s NHP- and wasn’t that a mess to explain
to Lukaz, what an NHP really was, how we’d managed to fish a person out of starstuff and package them into an
electronic box so they could speak through computers- looked over my hand and grimaced.
“I’ve seen worse,” Malin said, “but only when Wasazi was trying to get laid.”
[3] SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah

Tivi winced theatrically at his real name being used, before shaking his head in denial. “Malin, you’re kidding
me. Would I cheat at cards?”
1
“Yes.” Said everyone in the room.
“Okay, well, maybe a little, but still: fuck all y’all.”
“Speaking of worse, I found a job,” Malin said idly. “Bidding is going strong, and I can adjust our flight plans
shortly.”
Everyone set their cards down, turning to Malin’s holographic self. We could pick this up later: work called
now. “So what’s the gig, then?”
“The planet of Al-Sorah has suffered a devastating volcanic eruption, pushing the planet into a Long Night
period. Crop yields are expected to fall through the floor, and Union has preemptively started the evacuation of
noncritical personnel to orbital stations. However, conditions on the ground are deteriorating fast, and mercenary
units like ours are getting called in to provide engineering support and protection.”
Shooting a look over at Malachite, I grinned. “Looks like it’ll be your time to shine, Lanc ’O Plenty.”
Malachite just harrumphed loudly, crossing his arms over his pink cooling vest. “Why must you mock my
wonderful happy little quadruped?”
“Because it’s girly and you really should just buy in on some actual mechanized trucks to do the same job,” I
said, sighing. “Hell, just splash for a Comet or something, those will finally let you focus on being the tech-man you
know you want to be.”
“No!” Malachite said, before looking pitifully at Tivi. “Tivi, help!”
“On one hand, Rosehip is giving you shit for being girly,” Our felinid boss said, stroking his chin. “On the other
hand, I know Rosehip has more BL and yuri on her hard drives than the rest of us have porn put together. Does the
devil know her own, or is the source biased against?”
I gasped, striking my heart. “You wound me, Tivi!”
“I aim to maim.”
I just rolled my eyes. “Malin, how long until we get there.”
“Standard flight paths put us at one-point-two years, but the standard flight paths are terrible,” Malin said, rolling
her digital eyes. “I can cut a third off the relative time with some creative detours.”
“How creative?” Lukaz asked. “Are we gonna slingshot a black hole?”
Everyone looked at him like he was nuts, which, well, he was.
“No,” Malin said, sighing. “We’re going to take advantage of the fact we’re not going to detour through the
Crystal Nebula traffic control zone, which everyone does because it’s got better routing.”
“The IPS-N charts you’re plotting off of are still in-date, right?” Tivi asked, drumming his fingers on the table.
“Absolutely. Just because they decommissioned the ship doesn’t mean they decommissioned me,” Malin said,
with a slightly evil smirk.
“Then set course and start burning for Al-Sorah.” Tivi said.
///
SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah [4]

I won’t detail the next year too much. Most of it was spent training in the sims, reading BL manga SSC
informationals in case I wanted to pick up licensing in the Metalmark like Tivi wanted me to, training up Lukaz, and
most importantly not going absolutely crackers when my only companions were a catboy, a rookie, and an egg
that was gonna crack any day now. Needless to say, I got a lot of mileage out of the Omininet connection and my
computer terminal, and Tivi nearly talked me into getting a subjectivity enhancement suite to save on printer time for
my toys.
Malin agreed with me, though: my collection of tank figurines was much cuter in person. The cool thing about
relativity is time flowed ten times faster on the ship: one year took about a month and a week, so I could get yearly
releases so much sooner! Plus, weekly releases were now daily! It was great!
Just excuse the fact I’d never see my family again unless I wanted to risk going before a Company Tribunal,
before getting sent to debtor’s prison! That is, if they were still alive from the time dilation throwing me face first into
the future!
No, positive thoughts, Rosehip. Positive thoughts. Only three more months to go-
A bang on my door interrupted my soliloquy. It was Tivi, and that pinched face of his was not a good sign.
“Rosehip. Can you come with me to the printer bay?”
“Yeah, sure. What’s up?” I asked casually, pulling on a shirt and some pants. Then I grabbed a hoodie,
because for some reason the printer bay was always cold as hell and twice as windy. Pulling it on, I was set by the
time I got over to the spinal paternoster, and jumped into a compartment next to Tivi. As the chains rolled us deeper
and deeper into the ship, I breathed deeply. There was always something unnerving about these.
“So, Lukaz was screwing around with the printer, and managed to kludge together some Omninet blueprints
into a license,” Tivi explained with a sigh. “It took four tries, but he’s actually managed to get it to spit out a working
gun.”
“So why do you need me?”
“Because I gave him to you so I could work on getting Malachite to stop living out of his Kidd again.”
I looked at Tivi in disbelief. Tivi looked at me in pain. I understood that he was serious. “How many months
has he been saddled up?”
“I caught him after the first week this time.”
Wonderful. Well, there had to be worse coping mechanisms than just “I will hide in my mech now” for pilots,
but damn it all, if he was parked up in there then I couldn’t use the simulators- since we couldn’t risk running our full
reactors on the ship while underway, and had to use offboard power generation. We only had one plug-in for ships
power in the bay, and it sucked rocks.
Once we hit the frigid air of the printer bay, I immediately felt the chaotic energy coming from Lukaz’s Everest.
His new gun in crimson and ivory didn’t match his sand-and-dun painted mech at all, and more importantly, smelled
like it was constantly emitting radio waves. Yes, I had some RF implants built into my facial plates, and they mapped
to smell for some reason. They were Legion standard back from when I was in- if you got hurt in the line of duty,
they’d replace everything and make it better in the process.
“Lukaz, what in the name of dirt?” I asked, pointing to the gun.
“Oh hey, Rosehip, Tivi!” Lukaz said, grinning. “I finally got my gun to work!”
“And what, exactly, is your gun?” I asked, feeling a headache coming on.
“It’s a smartgun.”
“And where did you download your smartgun from? Some shady house-torrenting site?”
“No, I got it off Yarrharo.”

The headache intensified as I walked up to the screaming radar emitters, before glaring at it. “Can you at least
power it down?”
1
“Not without breaking it?” Lukaz said, questioning. “It’s not active right now, but if I power it down all the way,
it doesn’t, uh, power up. I’m still working on that bit.”
Glaring at the gun again, I walked over to where Malachite’s cubicle was, before climbing the stairs to reach it.
Banging on his Kidd’s hatch, I glared at the manipulator poking out the top. “Malachite!”
“No!”
“Malachite you twat get your ass out of there and help me!”
“Can’t I send a subaltern to do it?”
“If they walk in front of this damn smartgun thingy their receptors will blow out, now get in here and fix it!”
“I will PEBCAC your ass into next year!” Malachite yelled back.
I rolled my eyes. Forcing a mech reset on me wasn’t much of a threat, but I was still gonna escalate since it
could crash out my mech. Glaring at the Kidd beneath me, I just whipped out my multitool and snapped open the
portable oxygen torch. “Not after I burn you out!”
“Ladies, ladies, can you fucking not in my mech bay?” Tivi yelled at us. “Rosehip, don’t you dare light that thing
up. Malachite, come out of your mech or you’re on ration packs until we hit the planet. Do you both understand?”
“Fine, fine,” I bitched, putting away the portable torch. “Jesus.”
Slowly, Malachite came out of the hatch, hands up. “Fine, I’ll take a look at that- holy crap!”
“Now you see what I was talking about!” I said, waving my hands.
“I feel like my hair’s gonna fall out from cancer,” Malachite said, pulling an antiphoton visor out and slapping it
on. “Fucking hell, Lukaz! That thing’s throwing out enough rads to downcheck this entire hanger in a week!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, geeze,” He muttered. “Can you help?”
“Yeah, start by throwing that out an airlock and then we’ll talk!”
I looked at Tivi, and he looked back with a small grin. Clever bastard had gotten me out of a funk, got Lukaz’s
gun fixed, and gotten Malachite to stop obsessing over whatever the heck he got up to in there. There was probably
a decent commander under the fuzz-for-brains Tivi liked to show off, I admitted.
Well. It was only three more months to go, and cabin fever was something I could keep at bay as long as I was
willing to knock on Tivi’s door every so often. He’d been smart enough to get me out of this little spiral, so I could
probably trust him to keep me from going over again. Hell, worst comes to worst, I could probably just screw him to
his bunk. That’d fix a few things, at least.
///
When we got into Al-Sorah, the system was a mess. I was on the bridge with Tivi and Malin, watching the
scope with a steady eye and increasing horror. Emergency Navy space stations dotted the orbitals of the fourth
planet of this system, and I could see piles of tugs and ships hauling packages away from the second planet.
“Fairly boring system, really,” Malin muttered from her digital podium. “Three rocky planets, two gas giants,
two asteroid belts. Traffic control is hailing us, and the Navy is in charge.”
“Bring us in,” Tivi ordered gently, hands clutching his seat-arms imperceptibly. “How’s the local Legion-space
looking?”

“Looks like it’s on fire. Messages everywhere, batch jobs are getting handed out like mad. I’ve never seen
this much shipping in one system: they’ve even got permanent fueling depots being set up in those gas giants for
reaction mass.”
“The planet, though?”
“Union administration’s working overtime. I’m not even getting past the gatekeeper comp/con.”
Tivi nodded. “Don’t rush, just keep us heading in on a nice, steady burn. Fish up a job once our flight path is
locked in if you can.”
“Flight path is already filed. I’ll ping the cafeteria when I get a job.”
“Thank you, Malin.”
Following the boss out of the bridge, I just sighed. “Have you ever had to deal with something this big before?”
I had to ask.
“No. Last time I was on a Union job, it was part of working with a team of Department of Justice peacekeepers.
It was just after I got my Monarch,” Tivi reminisced. “This is a lot bigger: must have been a hundred ships on that
screen.”
“So what’s so interesting about Al-Sorah, then?” I wondered out loud.
“I suspect we’ll find out when we make planetfall.”
With those last, cryptic words, Tivi was off to the cafeteria. I considered joining him, but held off against it,
instead choosing to go down the paternoster to get Lukaz. Le Malin- the full name of our ship, versus Malin the
NHP- was an old destroyer, and that meant she was meant to berth a hell of a lot of crew. These days though,
everyone lived out of the officer’s quarters, with the old crew berths having mostly been sacrificed to make our mech
bays and the printer shop. Slipping into the officer’s wardroom, it wasn’t hard to make my way down to where Lukaz
slept.
With one ungloved hand, I rapped my prosthetic fingers on the bulkhead. “Lukaz?”
No response. Rapping again, harder, I called out again. “Lukaz?”
“Go ’way, Mom. I’m sleeping.”
Did I hear that right? Did this idiot seriously think I was his mother? If I had any maternal bones in my body,
I’d lost the attendant digits years ago! “Lukaz MacIntyre if you don’t get your ass out of bed right the fuck now I will
use your guts as garters and you’ll taste shoe polish for a week!”
“Love you too, mom.”
I had no response to that. I really didn’t.
Well no, I did, but merciless pranks weren’t a good idea when we were en route to an area of operations.
Instead, I just went back to the wardroom, grabbed the bottle of dry incense, and cracked it before throwing some
in Lukaz’s room. He’d get the scent of cardamom out of his clothes about the same time I got some SSC puke to
regrow my foot. Revenge complete, I went down to the cafeteria.
Inside, Tivi had the oven going, and was cooking the last of our aubergine and onions, along with a giant pot
of fasolia. It had been weird getting used to the mix of what we’d have to make for ourselves versus what we’d had
to eat out of long-store packages, back when I’d first signed up as Tivi’s wingman. Giving up pork had been rough,
but I’d managed to talk him around on keeping a ship’s liquor cabinet. Bacon was a worthy sacrifice not to have to
do all the accounting.

In the front of the mess, meanwhile, Malachite was just mixing up a batch of agua de dia, and I came up next
to him to pass another can of the fruit mix. “Think we’ve finally gotten to a safe port where we can stock up?” he
asked, shaking his head lightly.
1
“Probably,” Tivi replied.
“Man, just think: we’ll be on a planet again!” I said wistfully. “Think we could pick up some more mechs? This
old boat gets lonely sometimes, when you’re all asleep.”
“Most I can see us running is a company,” Malachite of all people said. “Three lances of four would leave you,
me, and Tivi each in charge of a unit. Four lances if we can pick up enough Lancasters, Kidds, and maybe a Perry
if that IPS-N guy I know actually shakes one of the prototype Licenses out my way.”
“A Perry?” I asked. “Never heard of that one before.”
“Experimental new Frame they’re working on- or as close to experimental as IPS-N will license out. It’s a
Raleigh rebuild, same ports, but they’re giving it enhanced packaging for deployables and system projects. I keep
hearing rumors of an All Theatre Scanning System and a Mindao-class probe, but that’s all I’ve got.”
I just nodded along as Malachite really got into the nuts and bolts of it, and the stew just kept cooking. About
the time it was ready to serve, Lukaz showed up, and soon enough the four of us were crowded around the best
table in the mess. Naturally, it was also closest to the serving window, and it didn’t take long to dig in. Even the
crunchiest ration crackers didn’t stand up to the lamb stew’s heavy broth, and we were laughing over a terrible joke
from Lukaz about the right way to skin a chicken when the intercom kicked on.
“Found a job,” Malin said breathlessly. “Two hours out, and I even got us a parking orbit.”
“Awesome!” I said, grinning. “What’s it look like?”
“We got picked up by a homesteader community named Tarasunah,” Malin explained. “They’ve been having
a bandit issue: a lot of claim-jumpers moved in, and the planetary courts have been having a hell of a time sorting
everything out. The jumpers are backed by some nobody company out of the Costa Maldives cluster and it’s a
right mess. Things are escalating to violence, though, so we’re being called in to guard convoys and suppress local
hostilities.”
“People are still homesteading in this?” Malachite asked, blinking surprise.
“They’re only evacuating non-essentials,” Lukaz, of all people, said. “People who aren’t willing or able to tough
it out on the ground or are inessential to keeping the colony running. It’s going to be bare-knuckle down there for
a while, and while that’s happening, all the displaced can help build up orbital infrastructure or disperse and bring
people into the colonial charter.”
Turning, Tivi looked at him. “How’d a farm-boy learn so much about this, anyway?”
“I was only the third generation born on Wilsonovo,” Lukaz said, shrugging. “There was a real risk growing up
we’d get hit with a stray planet-cracker, or dig up a SecCom war cache, or eat a comet, or something.”
“Fair enough.” Tivi said lightly. ”Everyone, get down to the mech cradles and make sure your loadout’s good.
Check that your munchy bags are stocked up, everyone’s got their sidearm, and that your hardsuit NBC filters are
fresh. Malin, what’s your orbital period going to look like?”
“They’ve got me in a high supporting orbit, serving as an Omninet booster. I’ll be overhead for three hours a
day, near local dawn-time, and should have permanent downlink to you even if my bandwidth will be poor. There’s
not a lot of enemy mechs according to Legion scuttlebutt, mostly infantry on technicals with some supporting arms.”
“So pack cluster munitions and bombardment weapons, got it,” I chuckled. “Infantry are squishy and weak to
fire.”
“Don’t knock them just because they’re not in mechs,” Lukaz said, serious. “A Furrer rifle or an Isengard laser
will still carve a chunk out of us.”

“I’ve dealt with them, they’re not that bad,” Malachite muttered. ”My subalterns can handle patching you all up,
and we’ll be in position to launch the Jolly Roger soon.”
“No, we’re not- local aerospace controller has threatened to skin anyone alive who clogs his flight paths,” Tivi
said, grumbling. “I’ve got you a link to the standard IPS-N birds, and if you’re fast about it you can dump the software
suites into them.”
“They’ll raise hell if I pirate their satellites.”
“Then let them- local aerospace hasn’t been passed over to the Navy yet, and they’re choking on us putting
birds up when this rock doesn’t even have full GPS net. Something’s up.”
“Something’s up that’s not in our contract,” Malin interjected. “There’s two hours until we hit the edge of the
well, and I only have an hour on the strip before I need to boost out, tank up, and get to my station orbit.”
I considered my options, before nodding. ”I’ll get my stuff ready, and should be in my mech before we start
heading downwell. Lukaz, if you’re not in the cockpit by thirty to downwell, stow whatever you’re working on and get
your hardsuit on and mount up.
With that, I walked out, a dull thundering in my ears. Triplet, beat beat, beat-beat beat. Triplet, beat beat,
beat-beat beat. At least five thousand years of history behind that rhythm, from the halls of Tharsis where it was
once found to here and now.
Once I was in my quarters I stripped down before taking the last shower I expected to get in quite a while. With
that done, I pulled my prosthetics off to put on a new set of protective socks, I sighed dramatically. I’d gone from
one prosthetic toe to four because of forgetting that step once, and the interfacing socket growing a hellacious case
of trench foot that cost a good chunk of my foot. Since I liked the rest of my foot, I wasn’t going to forget that again.
Once that was done, I started pulling on the thin underlayer bodysuit. This was where the thermal regulation
was as well as a host of other features that Harrison had never let me see back when I was just a pioneer in the
demolition corps. Fortunately now that I was a private contractor I got the whole shebang: active cooling, sweat
mitigation, and as a bonus it tended to also take body hair off without asking. Presumably that last bit was something
SSC made on purpose and whoever made this hardsuit did by accident.
Speaking of which, I reached for the actual hardsuit. Once I had the load-belts on the rest of it took shape
around me, from the cuirass, to the vambraces and greaves, and then the pauldrons and shrapnel skirt. Finally, I
clacked on the neck brace and helmet, feeling my brow-ridge implant start synching up with the system. My left eye
flashed through several tones, while my right overviewed the systems.
Then I did the smart thing and ejected every single consumables package on this thing, because I hadn’t
used it for more than just maintenance in a year! Chemical filters punched out, stale air cans ejected, and most
importantly dried out packs of sealant gel fell from their compartments. Once they were cleaned up and put in a
crate to get recycled I started keying in new ones in that methodical fashion every Legionnaire got used to on their
first deployment.
Spare air first in case the mech’s cabin got penetrated by shrapnel or otherwise compromised. NBC filters
second since not every planet like to play nice. Nuclear for in case of heavy metals processing like a forge world or
someplace we’d had to break out the nuclear firecrackers for. Biological for the chance we weren’t adapted to a local
biosphere or someone started breaking out the spicy viruses. Chemical for when we were handling the energetic
rocket fuels or techno-cultists were in the AO and were willing to try scrubbing the flesh out of something. A holy
trinity in ’fuck your sneaky shit’, that was the NBC filter. Keep them fresh, and they’ll save your life.
Finally, sealant gel packs needed to get reloaded. The hardsuit might be a good last line of defense, but it
would get holed by the debris of mech battle as easily as anything. Temporary patches were critical, fixing holes in
the suit and the person under it. As that finished, I sighed lightly. It was like wearing a second skin, really. Grabbing
my engineer’s ax and backup pistol, they were slotted into their loops on the cuirass with hardly a moment’s notice.
With that completed, I walked out the door, and right into Lukaz. He was about to knock on my door, helmet
off and a pained look on his face.

“Can you, uh, help?” he asked. “My helmet isn’t linking up with my neck brace.”
Rolling my eyes, I looked the neck brace over before sighing. I could smell the printer fumes coming off it-
1
odds were he never unpackaged it before today. I should have worked with him on this, damn it. Oh well- not like I
didn’t know how to fix this. Flicking open the back-pins, it wasn’t a minute to get the neck brace off.
“They always Print compressed with the shipping clips on,” I said, working the plastic c-clips off, before pulling
a layer of clingfilm off the rubber of the seal. A quick dip into my own sealant supply let me wet it down on both
helmet- and torso-sides, and then I handed it back. “Snap it on, then see if your helmet synchs now.”
A clink, a clatter, and a thunk occurred, before Lukaz shot me a thumbs-up. “All systems green. Thanks,
Rosehip!”
“Good. I’m going down to mount up.”
With that I turned and headed for the paternoster. Jumping into one of the compartments I breathed deeply,
letting the peace of my hardsuit let me remember things I’d almost forgotten.
I met Tivi when I was going to officer’s preliminary school on Saldis, just after Harrison had taken over and
started flying the Bruise over her stark cliffs and crags. We’d initially fought over, of all things, a mis-identified convoy.
Facing off his Monarch was terrifying in one of Saldis’ many, many storms; where light died as the water tried to cut
layers of armor off my old Loza almost as much as Tivi’s missiles. He’d won the duel, forcing me to punch out, but
I’d gotten that convoy to the handoff point-a mutual loss, to each of our superiors’ shame.
Rubbing the empty left shoulder of my hardsuit where the Bruise used to fly, I stepped off the paternoster in
the mech cradles. My Loza had been a good mech, but it was old news: a sidegrade of early marks of what would
become the Saladin. The Sherman, though common, was a solid upgrade to my eyes, even if I didn’t have access
to the Asura Protocol or a Tachyon Lance. Some parts cribbed off a Tokugawa license made her lasers stronger,
and a little sparkle of good old GMS secret sauce made damn sure her Andromeda-pattern laser rifle would hit with
the force of a god.
“Hey, girl.” I whispered, moving up the gantries towards her cockpit. The side hatch was open, and it didn’t
take me a minute to slide into the familiar cyan-tinted glasshouse. “Doing good?”
One day, the mech would speak back to me- just not today. “Thought so.” I said, taking a minute to run one of
Tivi’s ojuzu through the fingers of my hardsuit. He’d given it to me as cockpit decoration to make up for everything
in my Loza being, well, scorched to shit from the ejection flare. I’d almost been dumb enough to kiss him for it back
then.
Outside, Malin’s hull started shaking. “All hands, we are entering de-orbit burn profiles in five minutes. Stand
by to de-orbit stations. Lancers, mount your vehicles. Gunnery crews, deck division, engineering: maintain ready
five stations. Prepare for planetfall. Prepare for planetfall.”
“This is Copycat lead, all Lancers, come in,” Tivi’s voice came in on the radio. “Let’s see how we’re doing.”
“This is Copycat-two, Malachite, reporting. All systems green, software is aboard satellites. Not as good as
one of mine, but the Jolly Roger is standing by.”
Breathing in, I focused. “This is Copycat-three, reporting. All systems blue, weapons ice cold, ready to rumble.”
“This is Copycat-four, MacIntyre, reporting. All systems green, emitters cold, programs ready.”
At that point, a cold, hard, screaming siren began coming through the ship. “All hands, entering the well,” Malin
said as the turbulence increased. “Standby for high-gravity maneuvers. Standby.”
As the words left the NHP’s mouth, I felt my gut get slammed into my spine as we started de-orbiting. When
we were in space, the direction of acceleration was always decided by the ship’s drive. Now that we were leaving
space and entering a planet’s atmo, though, gravity hauled me into my seat-back and laughed at me with the G-load,
and the shudder of the ship sang the song of wars. Rap-a-tap tap tap, tap tap tap.

“Is it always this bad?” Lukaz asked, struggling to breathe through the radio-link.
“This one’s actually pretty nice,” Malachite responded. “Remember Fukuoka? That was a hell of a drop!”
“Please don’t remind me of Fukuoka,” I moaned. That had been an embarrassing drop: we’d just picked up
Malachite on the Blink Gate station, and I’d talked a proud talk before puking my guts out in my brand new Sherman
during the drop.
“Comms clear, please,” Tivi said, the reprimand gentle. “Malin, time until landing?”
“Five minutes,” The ship said back.
We continued riding a pillar of fire on down, before I felt the ship pitch wildly. Le Malin wasn’t a tailsitter: she
had been built with enough aerodynamic shaping to allow her to do a lateral landing: very important for providing in-
atmosphere fire support missions. As near-vestigial landing gear screamed out of her holds, we all felt the shuddering
shock that was her slamming into the ground, screaming down the runway as her torch drives cut out.
Once Le Malin came to a stop, we could all hear giant wreathes of thermal shielding and armored plate fall
away, unhinging to reveal the mech bay doors. Slowly, a pivoting arm latched to the back of my mech, holding it
steady as I was gently slid out the hatch. As feet hit the ground, I made sure the reactor was running, the stops were
closed, and then the arm tilted me upright.
I was walking, and taking my first steps on Al-Sorah.
The first thing I saw when the dust-storm of Le Malin’s landing died down was the mountains. We were in a
beautiful valley, the stark cliffs above removing any sense of horizon to the place. At the bottom of the ramp, a pair of
light colonial tanks sat, with a beat-to-hell maybe-Raleigh between them. Whatever it was, it had seen better years,
with a large part of the distinctive ’hat flash protector shot off, and a cobbled-together mass driver in it’s arms.
“Good morning!” the Raleigh said over the radio, automatically getting tagged as Sheriff Creek. “Are y’all
Copycat Company?”
“Yep,” Tivi said. “We rolling hot?”
“Nah, just that most of this area is a bit too radioactive for long-term inhabitation, and the convoy’s ready to roll
now. We might as well make some distance on the pad while there’s still time.”
As we started moving, I just kept my hands on the yokes easily, letting the mech’s autogyro do the work of
keeping her under control as I moved up. It was an easy pace to keep to, the shambling Raleigh deceptively fast.
“Got any information on these claim-jumpers?” Tivi asked the sheriff, voice light over the datalink. “All the brief
said was they were hitting convoys.”
“To tell you the truth, that’s the least of it. The charter changed hands recently, and a lot of the old blood here
are mad as hell about it,” Sheriff Creek said. “Since we’re incorporated under Union first, they can’t do jack about
how things were divided before they showed up, but that doesn’t mean much. It’s just been a wave of bullyboys
trying to get us out of our homes.”
“Then the evacuation is a stunt?”
“Nah. That volcano’s shutting down spaceports all over this place. If they knew what they were getting into,
they’d have been putting time into building infrastructure for the next time this happened. I remember the last time
Popocatépetl blew her stack, we didn’t even have a half a million people here. Now that the cities aren’t built for it
and them forgetting to expand the hydrofarms? Hah.”
I pursed my lips. I didn’t want this sheriff’s perverse joy- there were people suffering, getting crammed into
barely-stable temporary space habs up there. I’d been barracked in one once, back in the Legion, and it had been
terrible. Just enough gravity to keep you healthy, just enough food to keep you from wasting away.

“Politics aside, we’re here for escort, close protection, and possibly hunter-killer operations,” Tivi said after a
moment of radio silence as a reinforced hanger came up on radar. “Do we have a barracks yet?”
1
”Your NHP, Malin, got you booked in at the main hotel in Tarasunah. There’s mech storage on-site, but no
printers. We’ve got a decent stockpile of IPS-N parts, though I don’t know if y’all can use ’em.”
Malachite let a throaty chuckle through his comms. “Relax, I’ve got enough tools here to make sure everyone’s
still running.”
As we passed the barn, a series of titanic trucks started rolling out. Dozens of tractor engine units were hitched
together, subalterns and hardsuited individuals hanging on to the outsides, laughing and waving.
“Escort’s here!” Sheriff Creek said. “Get these puppies rolling!”
///
Much like my unwillingness to describe a year of sitting around waiting on a spaceship, I am equally unwilling
to describe a mech march in anything except the most generic of terms. Any pilot or Lancer worth their salt knows
them: they are the dull, boring, and frustrating part of being in any sort of military unit. Hurry up to get the convoy
rolling, wait for outside factors.
In this case, the outside factor was me. There was no use apologizing for it: the Sherman was a great mech in
so many respects, but it was slow. Most Harrison Armories mechs were: the Genghis had been the great granddaddy
of the Armories, and if 60kph at a dead sprint was fine for Harrison The First, then it would be fine for everyone else
too. When the convoy was cruising along the dirt roads at about forty klicks an hour, I was fine.
When we hit concrete roads, though, it was a little painful. Lukaz was visibly pitying me, and as usual Tivi
was just running literal laps around the convoy with Malachite. I didn’t feel like a fireteam leader, I felt like a joke.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, it was a pretty familiar one. As the sun sat high in the sky, the convoy leader called a
halt for the night, leading us off into a section of dun hills with a dry canal running through it. Cracking my neck, I
pinged Malachite on my laser coms.
First person to make a joke about a Sherman with laser coms gets me to put on the Andromeda Blues down
my rifle, by the way. That joke had expired years ago.
“Yo, we got the Jolly Roger overhead yet?” I asked, debating whether I was gonna sleep in the cockpit tonight.
“Yep,” Malachite said, yawning. “I’m alternating which satellite’s got the package on it, but we’ve got orbital
overwatch.”
“Right, I’m dismounting then,” I said, parking my mech with the back to the caravan and dialing it back to
standby. Flicking off the mag-locks holding the cockpit shut, I opened it by pushing it up and sliding it back with a
slight sigh.
There’s an old stereotypical recruiting poster that shows a hot chick getting out of a Saladin cockpit in a plume
of steam as the cool wind of Ras Shamra blows it away, leaving her in a suggestive cooling vest and a sultry smile
as heat shimmers hide her torso.
Naturally, when I did it, the desert heat punched me in the faceplate like a wrathful god. As my hardsuit’s
climate control kicked in frantically, I just sighed. Welcome to being a Lancer! Here’s your shovel, there’s your shit.
Walking over to Tivi’s Monarch, I watched idly as he spun the turbines down, before cracking his way out of the
center torso. As his mech took him gently in a hand to lower him to the ground, I smiled slightly. When he wasn’t
being an idiot, Tivi was pretty good looking in his hardsuit.
“Hey,” I said, grinning like an idiot. “You care if we split a tent again?”
“Yeah, we can split my shelter,” Tivi said, shrugging. “You do remember I sleep in my hardsuit, right?”
“You and your company toys,” I huffed. “You’re lucky I can do the same until we get to where we’re going.”

“Not happy I’m abstaining from scratching your deployment itch?”
My glare was about as dangerous as the laser rifles on my mech. “That is a myth, Tivi.”
“You didn’t say that last month, nya,” he lilted, with a cat-like noise at the end. I just rolled my eyes. When
you’re stuck on a ship for a year with five people and an Omninet connection, sometimes you get bad ideas. Okay?
It’s a thing. It happens. Sometimes you print out little tank models, sometimes you screw your teammates.
“I will trade you wingmen,” I threatened. “Leave you stuck with Greenhorn the Goofball, who can’t keep radiation
discipline or his muzzle pointed correctly!”
Tivi’s laughter could probably be heard for at least a klick as he set out his little portable camping shelter. As
he was about to crawl into it, I got to see something magical.
Lukaz was, to be blunt, a mech pilot of moderate competence at best. All the sim time in the world wasn’t going
to teach him how to do some things, though, like get out of an Everest. Opening the top butterfly hatch went well
enough, until I realized the idiot had taken off his helmet. While the atmosphere here was breathable, it was also
fifty-five centigrade ish out here. As the hatch shut with a slam, I could practically smell him trying to get his cockpit
temp back under control. The second time he came out, now with helmet and seals firmly locked, he then had to
handle getting off the top of the mech. The ’correct’ way to do this was to take the series of handholds on the back,
then come down behind it.
Naturally, Lukaz tried to slide down an arm, fucked it up, and faceplanted into the dirt. To add insult to injury,
he also knocked loose a pile of cargo rigging carrying a couple of smoke mines, one of which fell right on his chest.
“Rosehip, you should give him a hand,” Tivi said, holding his sides.
“Do I have to?”
After rolling the smoke grenade off his chest, Lukaz just groaned and got his camo cloth out, before stringing
a line off the back of his mech to a rock and draping it over top into a sad, sad little tent.
“Okay,” I grumbled. “I might have to.”
“Yes you should.”
Sighing, I walked over to my Sherman again, before climbing up to get some field rations out of the cockpit.
Hardtack, water, some of my old Armory rations (Vegetarian Taco Casserole, a perennial favorite) and finally a can
of Soup. Soup was a proper noun, and the nickname for a homogeneous blend of calories, nutrition, and flavorings
designed to let you put a clean straw in it and seal it to your hardsuit for environmentally compromised areas. Since
there was no way in hell we were taking off helmets, it would work well. I got a can of Prussian Blue for Tivi, a can
of Mennen Black for me, and finally a can of Betty White for Lukaz. Why did I have a can of that crap in my mech in
the first place?
Tossing the can of terrible Soup at Lukaz, which would constitute all the help I was willing to give him right now,
I just went back into Tivi’s little proper flash-tent, which had by now finished setting. Whichever genius came up with
the concept of a flexible membrane that locked solid and impermeable when electricity got applied was a genius. It
didn’t take long to get in, and then I had to groan.
The cheesy bastard was holding a flash-printed rose on his helmet with a piece of tape. Clonking his helmet
with mine, I just passed over his can of Soup, before leaning back and putting a straw into mine. It tasted like Mennen
Black always did: tomatoes, peppercorn, and a faint hint of cilantro mixed with lime.
“Think we’ll get a quiet night tonight?” I asked, scooping out some of the sandy loam we were set up on with
my hands to create a good place for my butt and dorsal heat vents.
“Hell no,” Tivi said, as he did the same thing. As he and I settled in, I heard him sigh one last time.
“Remember that first mission we were on?” he asked. “Over Gawr Yreli?”

“Not like I can forget,” I said, reaching one hand up into the air wistfully. “You’d just gotten Le Malin, and I was
pushing my Loza as far as I could take her. It was a rough few months, there.”
1
“I was scared out of my mind,” He admitted lightly. “Listen. I know I saddled you with the new useless kid, but
there’s not a lot we can do if we’re not growing as a company. Not a lot of lance-sized gigs, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said softly, turning my wrist over to look at the combat spike on the inside. “It’s just I don’t
want to have to do this again. Lukaz is just taxing to deal with. I’m afraid he’ll go out there and get himself killed,
you know?”
Tivi hemmed and hawed, before coming to a decision. “Listen. I owe you one for taking care of him,” he said.
“and after this, I’m gonna finally go out and get you an Asura casket.”
I blinked. “You’re nuts.”
I wasn’t wrong. NHP caskets were expensive as hell- probably the worst part of any license to get hands on,
and that was before someone had to square the circle of putting an NHP inside. That took a fair bit of money, too,
unless you got an inhabited, specialized casket right off the bat.
“I owe you for it,” Tivi admitted, turning his head to smile at me. “Probably would have spaced myself trying to
keep things afloat without your help.”
I grinned, clonking our helmets together again. Then I yawned, because a Sherman wasn’t designed to run at
sixty kph all damn day. If we were gonna get ambushed, I wanted my ruck time in now even if it was nice to talk to
Tivi like this.
“Hey,” I muttered. ”Go to sleep, Wasazi. We can handle it in the morning.
My friend chuffed lightly. “Good night, Amelia.”
///
It was a good night’s sleep until my helmet’s speaker’s started ringing. Jawing it open, I groaned. “I’m up, I’m
up.”
“Good,” Malachite said, tense. “Jolly Roger picked up two coldcore reactor signatures coming in on our position,
and another three petrochem-engine vehicles. Looks like raiders.”
“I knew we paid you for a reason.” I said, shouldering Tivi into wakefulness. “Get up, we’ve got inbound.”
Rousing soundlessly, Tivi just nodded at me as we got out of separate ends of it. I was off and running for
Lukaz, before I heard the whine of his Everest’s coldcore starting up. Good- he’d gotten up. It was three leaps to
get up the side of my Sherman, and then I was in the glasshouse again and plugging my hardsuit umbilical to the
mech.
Then it was startup time. Three tabs to open and start the APU, a small hydrazine turbine kicking on to provide
the critical three minutes of power to start the coldcore reactor. Wait a minute for the glow plugs in the reactor to get
up to temperature, then rub the ozujou beads for luck so I didn’t make the reactor choke. I always tried to start it
early, before the reactor vessel was charged.
Reactor vessel charged, glow plugs hot, prayer beads counted, APU on two minutes of run for this tank:
everything’s good. Reaching down, I pulled the cover off solemnly, and then hit the Big Red Button. With a roar, the
coldcore reactor started, and the mech was live.
“Copycat-two is up,” I said, grinning. “Malachite, get me a vector to incoming please.”
“Just head towards the emplacement, I’m running my subalterns for this.” Malachite said, his Kidd rumbling
towards me.
“Where’s Tivi?” I asked, jumping into the emplacement and getting to the top quickly.

“Copycat-lead up,” I heard Tivi growl into his mic, before his Monarch crashed down next to me. “Had an issue
cold-starting.”
“Slow your roll there, Rosehip!” Malachite joked. “Why are you in Tivi’s mech?”
“Fuck off!” I said, laughing, before I saw a dust plume. “Think I see them now.”
“Fire as you bear; I’m starting a barrage.” Tivi said. “Otkarina, let’s do this.”
A sour note came across my nose; the smell of a Tlaloc Protocol’s targeting pulse. If getting me an Asura was
the promise of this mission, then what Tivi was doing now would be a promise of my future power. Otkarina was his
Tlaloc-class NHP, and with her aide every missile he fired now would fly true and lethal. That was her power- no.
This was the power of a human and an NHP working in concert.
“Where the fuck is Lukaz?” I asked, before zeroing in on one of the APCs. A test shot from my Andromeda
missed by a fair bit, and I groaned. Smoke charges. Of course they were throwing smoke charges. Fortunately,
smoke charges weren’t going to stop a Gandiva from crashing into them.
Then a laser whizzed below me and into the tower, and I grinned. “Malachite, get me a smokestack, you’re
going to need it in a minute!”
“I’m going to need it?” he asked as he rode up, throwing down the rapidly-unfolding mass of nanites and
panels.
“Oh yeah,” I said, checking my line of sight to the laser’s source. “You’re gonna need it.”
“Tivi, back me up here, this is a bad plan-” Malachite began, before the emplacement rocked from Lukaz
slamming into it.
“Sorry I’m late, guys. Sensors kept trying to get me to shoot the caravan,” He said, poking his rifle out of cover
to let rip with a burst of darts. Somehow, to my shock, he managed to hit with all of them, finishing off one of the
APCs. “Scratch one?”
I just tuned him out for a moment, waiting for my infrared scanners to pick up where that knockoff was. As a
warning emitter sang, I grinned- There he was. I lined up my shot, just in time for another laser round to slam into
the structure, sending it toppling. Flash-forged nanoprint wasn’t terribly durable, and I’d used it for too long. Still, I
was tougher than that, even if my frame was sending up damage flags in the logs.
Getting one leg under me, I chuckled- the collapsing tower had put me damn near on top of the Smokestack
Pylon. Grabbing a heat transfer line, I plugged it in, before standing up. The enemy’s Sherman, covered in sand
and grime, looked at me with a shark-like smile painted on to the torso.
“Knock knock, motherfucker.” I grinned. As my Andromeda and Sol laser rifles went off, I laughed as the heat-
normally the bane of a Sherman- got sucked up by the Smokestack Pylon. It fell back, screaming scrapcode out
across the airwaves as my lasers blew holes in its torso. It wasn’t done yet, though, as it struggled to dump return
fire in me. To its credit, it even hit me- a glancing hit that didn’t even punch through my armor.
Striding forward, I considered my options- laser rifles, my inbuilt ZF-4 beam cannon, or-
-or he was close enough for the fun weapons. Letting my Sol rifle go limp in my hands, I could smell the smug
on him- right until I held up my wrist and a targeting spike shot out. There were a lot of Annihilator variants out there,
but I still loved the ’break probe to activate’ plasma dump version. It was nice, it was simple, and most importantly,
there was a laser rangefinder next to it that would trip if the enemy wasn’t quite in ’break pole and die’ range.
A lazy swing, and the enemy Sherman’s attempt to dodge failed miserably- just in time for a blast of reactor
plasma to shoot out my wrist and across his hull. As the plasma screamed through his armor to go through into his
reactor, I smirked. Coldcore mech reactors were heat sensitive bastards: they weren’t cold-cores because they ran
cold, they were cold-cores because they relied on creating an incredibly low-temperature environment to operate
parts of the fusion process in. Heat those parts up- say, with a blast of semi-contained plasma- and then the fuel
system would detonate, plus any other munitions or volatile bits.

In short? Scrap one mecha.
“Y’all doing good?” I called out, shutting down the Annihilator. The response was Lukaz screaming, running
1
away from some lunatic in a melee frame with a lance and a shield.
“Rosehip help I thought I could take him I was wrong!” Lukaz babbled, frantically going into a skid next to an
Armor Pack drone while pulling out his Shock Blade.
“God damnit.” I muttered. Then I checked my heat habitually, noted it was nowhere near the fun zone, then
slammed the firing studs on my rifles.
The Sherman was, in some derogative circles, referred to as a “laser boat” because it tended to mount more
lasers than a sensible person would. Between the Mathur Stop system, the Reactor Discharge Vents to straight-
pipe your heat to the world, and the best Harrison reactor in the Size One volume class, it tended to encourage bad
ideas. Many, many, many baby Sherman pilots read the above, slapped on two Sols and an Andromeda, and said
Ill be fine, before not being fine. Heat generation curves in a Sherman got very nasty, very quickly: unless you were
willing to stop shooting and lose a lot of potential damage downrange, you’d end up melting down and shitting your
own reactor out before killing your target. Driving a Sherman was like dancing on a griddle- the hotter the fire, the
sweeter the show.
Of course, those were baby Sherman pilots. I was a full grown adult Sherman pilot, who knew her temperature
management like the back of her hand. I spoke the bracket fighting doctrine, I optimized my heat curves, I understood
the magic of heat sinking and dumping. So when I fired, the only thing that happened was a cloud of warmth sneaking
up into the cockpit past the asbestos floorboards, a puff of warm air out the climate control unit, and a clacking noise
as the rivets in my seat started shifting from the heat.
The fact the cooling vents started visibly glowing and you couldn’t see the tops of my guns anymore from the
heat haze was completely secondary.
As the lasers flew in, I smirked. Then the thing- well, I presumed it parried, basically. Whatever it did made
sure it did not in fact fall into a pile of slag. Walking in, I grumbled audibly, blasting it again with both guns. The Sol
missed, but it didn’t matter as long as the Andromeda struck true- and it did, thank heavens. As fun as it was to joke
about roasting yourself in these things, I only had so many shots before I risked the same fate as any other rookie.
“Hold on, Lukaz!” I yelled, slamming heat pipes and grounding myself as I opened the dumps. Frothing, near-
molten liquid dumped out the heat vents as I pushed salt licks out of the reserve heat sinks and into the main reactor
exchanger. The Sherman’s core was tough enough to take it, but the salt wasn’t: it melted as fast as it touched the
heat exchanger. I couldn’t get another shot off- but I could snap my Annihilator up to swipe at that idiot. It worked,
for a moment, as the blast of plasma got him to back up. It was just long enough that Lukaz could sneak in behind
me, his smartgun blasting again.
“Get in close, he can’t block it with that shield,” He said, before the enemy charged again. I didn’t respond- I
was too busy parrying that lance with my rifle, and then he was close enough to crack the probe on my Annihilator
as I took another swing at him. The plasma made him back up, and I kept pressing him as he clubbed at me with
his lance. Each dump brought my temperature up, and I frantically took potshots with the Sol even as I felt the gun
dissolving on me. I was getting killed by degrees here, but that was fine. As I trapped that damn lance in with my
Sol, it exploded, freeing that hand up. Fine.
Don’t mind the heat warnings. Don’t mind the traumatic damage. Don’t mind your battery pack exploding like
a bomb, nearly cutting off your left leg. Just smile and laugh.
“Rosehip?” Lukaz asked, frantically throwing a grenade at a group of infantry that were trying to climb over a
hill. “Rosehip?”
“Gotcha, you son of a bitch,” I said, grinning. As another block of salt hit the main heat exchanger, pools of
molten salt formed around my mech. I was back down on heat, and that meant it was time to start firing again. With
the muzzle of my Andromeda damn near pressed into the chest of the enemy skirmisher, I pulled the trigger.

The force of the laser was nearly enough to blast the enemy mech off my chest, until the reactor on it blew
out in a scream of venting hydrogen and the sound of a star dying. Rolling it off my chest, I got to my feet, before
stumbling. The hit that had blown out my auxiliary weapon battery pack had screwed my left hip to hell, and it was
tricky to walk.
“This is Copycat three, come in, anyone,” I said, using my blown-out rifle as a cane. “Do we have anyone still
up?”
“Copycat four, I’m up.”
A crackle came in, Malachite’s voice decently strong. “Copycat two up. Might want to hurry over, though- one
of the infantry teams had a few power-assist units on them, and got a hit through Copycat Lead’s cockpit.”
I was off in as close to a run as my mech could make. Getting there, I was horrified- someone had used what
looked like claws to gouge their way in through the top hatch, and the Monarch was barely on its feet.
“Hey, everyone,” Tivi said, punch-drunk enough to forget radio protocol- and I could see why, since this call
was on a tightbeam. “So guess who got tarpitted to shit?”
“Tivi you asshole,” I said, glaring. “What happened to us working together?”
”Tried to skirmish, but that bastard with a lance shut me down. Did we get him?”
“Yeah, I got him,” I growled. Heat was dripping out of my mech, molten salt making blue stains off the armor,
and it was obvious I’d been in a hell of a fight. ”Did the infantry do this to you?”
“Yeah, some of ’em were clever. That, or suicidal.”
“Let’s get you back to the caravan, then,” I muttered, slowly walking back over to the parked road trains. Despite
the nearness of the battle, they hadn’t been scratched- as well as a certain Raleigh.
“Medical!” I yelled on broadband. “Get me a medic, we’ve got an injured Lancer here!”
As a few medics with red crescents got out of the caravan, I helped lower the Monarch down to its knees,
before getting out to pull Tivi free. This time, desert cold slammed into me like a punch, but it didn’t stop me from
running up and making my way to the smashed-open entry door to his mech. Written around the side of the door,
I could still make out the dual script describing it as Whistlewind, before getting in close enough to stick my head
inside.
“Hey, Rosehip,” Tivi slurred over his loudspeaker. I could see where a hit had caved in the side of his helmet,
the ceramic cracked and sparkling where the moon’s light hit it. “Not at my best, but come in.”
“Tivi you dumbass, you have a concussion,” I said, helping him out of the mech by giving him a hand. It took
three tries to grab ahold, but once he did his grip was still strong. They might have wrung my boy’s bell, but he
wasn’t out yet.
Prying him out of the mech was awkward as hell, since Otkarina wasnt in the mood to let Whistlewind give up
her rider. Not that I blamed her reluctance, even as I could feel the stare of the thermal spotlights and fire control
radars in the head from the Tlacloc riding shotgun as I got Tivi to the ground.
“Are you pulling him out of his hardsuit?” I asked, glaring at the medics.
“No,” the lead medic said, cocking his head at me. “Why would we do that?”
“I’m checking,” I groused. “He won’t be pilot-ready tomorrow, and combat-ready for at least three days.”
Tivi, on the ground, just picked something off his hardsuit and tossed it to me. “Here,” He groused. “Tell
Otkarina to standby off your six. She can walk the mech, even if she can’t fight it.”

Picking up the large access card, I just shrugged, before going back to Whistlewind. “Otkarina?” I asked
cautiously. Tlalocs could be a little temperamental, and I certainly couldn’t survive a brush with any of the weapons
on this mech.
1
“No,” the NHP said, my RF-implant smelling of sulfur and high-frequency targeting radars. “Who are you, and
what are you doing in me?”
“I’m Tivi’s wingman.” I explained, holding up the keycard. “He told me to make sure you knew to follow me to
the barracks.”
“Did those bastards hurt him?”
“Mild concussion,” I said quite honestly. “We’re treating him now.”
“See that you do,” She sniffed. ”You reek of salt. I presume you’re the Sherman pilot?”
“Yes. I’m Rosehip.”
“Hmph,” Otkarina muttered. “Very well. I’ll follow you for now.”
“Thanks.”
After that, I sort of remember getting back down to the ground, re-parking my mech, and then just getting back
to the tent and crashing. Post-battle crashes were a bitch- and mine usually came in the flavor of “fall over and sleep
for a few hours” so I did.
The morning was the same as yesterday- eat a can of Soup (Tangerine today, which had exactly zero tangerines
in it because that was what Karkarin Sand had in it) and saddle up as we moved out. Malachite had managed to
beat my mech’s hip joint back into shape by stealing parts off the one I’d killed, but my top speed was still in the
trash. Fortunately- or unfortunately- Otkarina was just as terrible at handling Tivi’s Monarch as I would be, and we
ended up rolling into town at about twenty-two hundred the next day, as the sun was kissing the horizon.
As I dropped my mech off behind the hotel we were barracked in, Sheriff Creek came up to me, hat in his
hands. “Listen, ah, Rosehip, I’m terribly sorry about that thing with the convoy.”
“Yeah, I was wondering,” I said, hardsuit helmet unsealed in the climate-controlled garage. “Did you mess up
your cold start or something?”
“Yeah, let’s go with that,” He muttered. “My Raleigh is old enough she’s got a lot of busted parts, and we don’t
have a printer out here to build a new APU, so she chokes. A lot.”
“As long as you don’t expect us to save your bacon, we’ll get along fine,” I promised, before sighing. “Now
what did you really come here for?”
“We finally got the planetary governor to authorize a hit on those bastards,” Creek said, grinning. “We know
where they are: you guys need to hit them soon.”
“We’ve still got to finish repairing our mechs,” I said calmly. “Once Tivi is back up, we’ll be on it.”
“Thank you kindly,” The sheriff said, smirking, before vanishing behind a door I had no interest in following him
through.
Sighing, I just went back over to my poor Sherman. We’d rebuilt the hip assembly, but the Sol-pattern laser rifle
was trashed, and so were my external reserve batteries. Without those, I’d be a lot more limited in my engagement
ranges, as well as running tighter on my coolant budget from using all my coolant recharges. A few new panels of
BAR-5 armor managed to repair the damage to everything else, though, and a slagged out hip assembly wasn’t the
worst thing to repair when someone brought a Kidd along. It might not have been as good as its bigger brother,
the Lancaster, but there was still a walking tool shop under its hood, and enough robotic subalterns to make sure
problems got fixed.

Waving to one of the subalterns, I just hopped in for a minute to check how things were doing. I hadn’t stressed
the reactor, thank heavens, but it had been a near thing- when we next had printer access, I’d need to replace a
good chunk of the main heat exchanger and probably a bit of reactor shielding. Nothing unusual then. As I hopped
out, I saw Malachite futzing with a subaltern, grinning.
“Hey,” I said, smiling. “Thanks for fixing my mech up.”
”Better yours than Lukaz’s. Poor kid is learning how to replace the forearm right now.”
“Those aren’t that hard, though?” I asked. “I mean, I can do an arm swap in like thirty minutes, tops.”
“He fucked up the actuator assembly, and wanted to muck around inside the bicep. I just gave him a subaltern
team and told him to go nuts.”
“Glad to hear he’s having fun,” I yawned. “Think we’ll have to go soon?”
“Not until tonight. I want to lock those bastards in their own den and cook them alive for this.”
Any thoughts of sleep I had vanished. “Hold up, hold up. You, Malachite, the nearly-neet that lives in his mech,
want to burn a cave of bandits alive? Who are you and what did you do to my friend?”
Malachite smirked a little, before sighing. “I was... listen. You know how sometimes you question yourself and
do the stupidest fucking shit?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “It was how I joined the Legion.”
“Well, I joined up with Trunk Security for a hitch, and ended up driving a Caliban. It’s that little doom machine
we used in boarding action, built to kill people fast.Then I realized that was fucking terrible,” Malachite said. “But I
was good at it. Got in a few fights, got out after I transferred my licenses to a Lancaster. Then I decided I didn’t like
fighting, so I put them over to Kidd for engineering. Nearly got suckered into Mirrorsmoke, until Tivi bailed me out.”
“I’m not seeing it.” I said idly. Calibans were, well, doom-guy mechs. Massive shotguns and grenade launchers,
the ability to body check mechs five times their size, able to slip through the same holes infantry did, and built from
the outset to make the maximum number of bodies on the floor in the minimum amount of time.
Sighing, Malachite gave me a sardonic smirk.
“Nobody believes it,” he said, before he went over to his Kidd and started rooting around in the cockpit. “To be
fair, it was like six years ago, so I forget sometimes.”
Then Malachite emerged, holding the biggest damn combat shotgun I’d ever seen. There was a menacing
energy about it, the upper barrel long and ominous while the drum below was straight and angry. All the scrolling on
the barrel and elegance in the aftermarket carbon-fiber didn’t change the sweep on the free-floating or the massive
heat shields and bayonet lug. Walking outside with me following along like a puppy, he just started setting up old
cans and ration packs out along a series of rocks that backed up to the wall of the little canyon this town was built
into.
“They trained us generally at about twenty meters,” Malachite said softly as he pulled out a bolt-blocker and
rocked the drum all the way in. “the idea being we’d never be firing at closer. It was a good assumption.”
Then he started blasting. Thunderous booms echoed out, one after another, barely seconds apart. I could see
the recoil throwing him around, but more importantly I could see the hits it was delivering. Finally, he took one step
back, bringing the muzzle down until another flash threw it up again. Sixteen rounds, their effects ringing in my ears
even through hardsuit hearing protection.
With a ’clunk’, the drum fell to the ground, and Malachite grinned at the vaporized remains of the scrap target’s
he’d made, as well as the patterns of slug, buck, and flechette on the stone backstops. “Still got it,” he muttered.
As my hearing wandered back, I sighed a little. “Okay, yeah,” I muttered. “I’m starting to see you in a Caliban.”

“Good, because fuck this gun,” Malachite moaned, rolling his shoulder out while picking up the empty drum.
“They made it to simulate running a Hammer UPL, and giving us an option if we got caught outside a mech, so it
hurts like hell to shoot.”
1
“I can tell,” Just then, both of us heard our comms buzz.
“What the fuck was that?” Tivi asked, his voice an insensate growl that reminded me nothing more of a Black-
beard’s howl.
“Shotgun demonstration,” Malachite replied.
“The only thing you should be shotgunning right now is drinks on the local’s tab. Cut that shit out, and get up
here- I’ve been getting briefed by the Sheriff.”
Looking over at Malachite, I nodded at him.
Exactly two minutes later and conspicuously cleaned of gunshot residue, we were both standing around Tivi’s
room, where he was groggily looking over a pair of tablets and a paper notebook. Lukaz was in the room’s only chair,
looking over another dataslate and popping a pair of yellow pills. I frowned slightly- taking a combat neurological for
a concussion? We must be in a hurry: those things were not a cheap print, and the cancer risks weren’t great for
you either.
“Malin’s been bored, and she’s got an omninet protocol to go over footage from the Jolly Roger Network right
now,” Tivi explained without preamble. “As such, we now know where the enemy base is, and will be conducting a
reprisal action.”
I looked at Tivi carefully. Le Malin was a lot of firepower we had tied up in orbit, and while we didn’t have many,
there were still a few subcapital-class torpedoes in her tubes. “How much reprisal?”
“If we had a Tortuga handy, or we could get a solid link to IPS-N, I’d have Malachite start dumping Daisy Cutters
down the mouth of that dump, or I’d throw a Pinanka into it myself.”
“Alright. Thought you might want to dump a torpedo into it.” I said, taking a minute to pull my helmet off and
putting it on my shoulder.
“Can’t. They’re too close to the one good watershed that this damn volcano hasn’t fucked with.” Tivi grumbled.
“Even then, I’m still talking with people to create a Pinaka mod we can actually launch out of an IPS-N torpedo tube.
Stupid SSC proprietary ports...”
Piping in from his chair, Lukaz grinned a little. “Alright, then. When are we shipping out?”
“Six hours. We’re hitting these idiots at night, when we have a vision advantage and I’m back to fighting fit.”
“Roger that.”
///
The rest of the day passed in a nervous haze of sleeping, ammunition loading, and final checks. We were all
bruised and battered, but none of us were out of the fight yet, and they’d find that out the hard way. When we were
finally ready, there was no fanfare- just four mechs vanishing out the side of the motel and mech stable. We didn’t
go hot on our emitters until we were about an hour out of town, and the moonlight wasn’t strong enough for our IR
trackers- a problem quickly solved by popping IR floods for some of us, or by pumping two laser shots into the sky
and letting the cooling lens throw illumination for me.
It took about three hours to get into position, not helped by the fact we had to stop a few times to allow the Jolly
Roger to change platforms. Once we were in position, though, I grimaced. They’d built up fortifications around the
mouth of the cave, and it was ugly.

“We have a plan?” I asked, rolling my shoulders and bringing my Andromeda down to combat position. I could
have moved it into my arms, but I wanted to keep the left arm’s emitters clear for firing off the Annihilator. Instead,
my right hand was just bare, an uncomfortable feeling as I flexed old actuator fingers.
“I’ll handle it,” Malachite said. “Malin, is the weapons satellite in position?”
“Afirm,” Malin said over the omninet line. “Triangulate the shot target and stop broadcasting, they probably
have omninet sniffers.”
A moment later, the Blackspot targeter on Malachite’s Kidd flashed, and a datapacket squirt came out on the
omninet. “Targets sent.”
“Shot out.”
Then it was day, as if Christ the Buddha had dragged the sun over the horizon for a brief moment to illuminate
the area. I knew what it was: a subcapital laser cannon, or more accurately known as ten Andromeda-pattern
rifles tied together into a single emission lens. Knowing what it was didn’t make it any less impressive, though, as
the beams of light scoured the fortifications from Al-Sorah like an eraser’s harsh scrub. The bandits were running,
screaming, with old man Harrison’s personal hell having been unleashed over the masses.
“Shot connected, good effect,” Malachite responded as his Blackspot flashed again. “Light ’em up, Tivi.”
“Delivering hell,” Tivi responded, and then the missiles started up.
I just started advancing at that steady thirty-kilometer lope that made the Sherman so damn terrifying. It was
slow, sure, but I was tapping beams off precisely as I took the time to lock on and fire. Behind me, Lukaz spat shots
without pause, bursts of saboted darts ripping into the half-dozen mechs that came out the mouth of that den of
banditry. Then the beast showed up.
It was a Blackbeard, chain-ax howling madly as it stared me down. I checked my reserves- not much left. No
reactor coolant, no laser weapon boosters, no secret sauce.
“Come and fucking get me, you coward,” I yelled, lighting the ready chamber on my Annihilator and extending
the collapsible probe. “I’m the queen of this mountain, and your corpses will venerate it forever!”
Naturally, it started a screaming charge, and I threw a hell of a lot of light at it to keep it off me. Lukaz was
tearing chunks out of it with his rifle, in all fairness, but ’chunks’ wasn’t helping as I saw a whipcord-thin line sailing
towards me. Snapping my Annihilator up, I watched the plasma vent open with a snap-his, a brief plume of reactor
fume cutting the grappling cable. I’d fought Blackbeards before, and their favorite place to be was using a chainaxe
to pin you to the ground while their nanoswords ripped and tore you to shreds. The first step to winning this fight
was not to let him close up on me.
The second step to winning this was to keep pouring fire in. Armory frames like mine were all designed around
weight of incoming fire- excepting the madlads who designed the Tokugawa- so that you could either shrug off
the enemy’s, or deliver your own endlessly. The Sherman fell into the second category, and even down a gun I
could still keep hammering. Atomic Annie on my left wrist, Andromeda on my right shoulder, and deep in my chest,
the Solidcore rumbling up to speed. Lukaz was doing the smart thing, strafing out and still pouring in shells, and
everything was going well until disaster struck.
Whatever was at the helm of that Blackbeard wasn’t a Sekhmet: their target fixation was infamous. Instead,
a lariat of nanofiber rope shot out at my wingman, and it was that exact moment I saw Lukaz cock it up. Trying
to mirror my feat, he snapped out his charge blade, and tried to parry the lash in a very rookie mistake. Mech
piloting taught you about previously-indistinguishable varieties of heat. If I stood next to my charged Annihilator and
a Charge Blade, I’d probably go “ah yeah they’re both stupid fucking hot, they’re both good”, and I would be wrong.
A Charge Blade, when live, was about fifteen-hundred centigrade on the edge. A blast from my Annihilator, however,
was closer to five thousand centigrade.

Why was this important? Because, as Lukaz discovered when the Blackbeard started screaming in on him
like a bat to drag him back to Hell, nanofiber line is rated to two thousand centigrade for ten minutes- and he wasn’t
running near hot enough to cut it. Instead, his sword was tangled up, and then the Blackbeard was on top of him,
1
claws ripping and tearing at the top of his cockpit.
“Not today, fucko.”
That was, until a Gandiva cracked into it’s side. Tivi was taking some time out of his day to do us all a favor,
and I promptly followed up with more laser-fire and a desperate closing of the engagement to bring my Annihaltor
into play.
As much mileage as I was getting out of this thing, I’d probably have to consider getting a full-up Tokugawa
liscence soon- and then a nanocarbon sword flashed past my face, and I stopped thinking and started fighting again.
Lukaz had been pinned to the ground like a fly from a harpoon, and now the Blackbeard was after me. Steam and
fire flew off its chassis in great bursts, a toothy maw on the helm trying to make me fear it.
The joke was on him, as I dumped more reactor plasma at it. If we both cooked, that meant I was winning.
Dodging swipe after swipe and moving back away from the blitz of sword- and axe-work, I watched the heat gauge
tick higher and higher. Then I stopped, panting, and looked over at Lukaz.
“Hope you’re ready to duck.” I said, and stopped my mech, throwing open the heat vents.
It took fifteen seconds of concentrated airflow to get my mech down to safe levels where the Malthur Stop
would kick in. My hail of fire had managed to buy me five, before that nanocarbon sword bit me, shearing into my
shoulder mount. Credit where credit was due: they knew where the real damage on my mech was coming from.
That didn’t mean that I was out of the fight yet, though. That axe tried to tear off my other arm, but a reconditioned
lumber tool wouldn’t beat BAR-15 armor instantly.
A panel on my chassis opened, and under my feet and over my head I could feel my mech’s systems preparing
to dump.
“Go now!” I roared. “Fire, Pride in Thunder!”
Then my ZF-Solidcore fired, and there was no more Blackbeard.
The Solidcore was a great little gadget, an Armories special from a bygone era. An integral, high-power fiber
laser, it used the titular ’solid core’ batteries to scavenge waste heat into chemical power, and when you needed it
you had an abomination of fire on tap in your center torso- or, if you were clever, routed through any other weapon
on the mech.
With three of her four cores charged, though? That Blackbeard was charred, large chunks evaporated entirely
by my atomizing beam. Not even IPS-N reliability could take that sort of hit and stay standing. Of course, I wasn’t
doing much better: my mech had only barely stopped overheating, but that head-mount Solidcore meant there were
only about four centimeters of asbestos between me and a very, very hot laser emitter. I’m pretty sure it had to be
nearly sixty centigrade in my cockpit- only the cooling suit under my hardsuit and my climate-controlled air line were
what were keeping me from passing out right now.
“Comms check, this is Copycat-four to Copycat-three.” Lukaz’s voice came in. “I’m not seeing anymore hos-
tiles, what about you Rosehip?”
“The only hostile I see is the corpse of this Blackbeard.” I said, heat and battle fatigue making it hard to grab
the yokes to run my mech’s arms. “Shove him off me please?”
“Sure,” Lukaz said, before moving up to just push the blasted mech-corpse off me. I’m pretty sure I saw a bit of
suspicious cockpit-shaped void in the torso, but it really wasn’t that important. If there had been a person in there,
well, now there was a collection of free-floating carbon. “You okay?”
“I formally request our next deployment be to Sparr.”
“Yeah, you’re fine.”

Once I was on my own two feet, Tivi came over with a smile. “Threat’s handled, we’re heading back to base.”
Panting, I nodded. “Good. I’m cooked.”
“I’ll say, I can smell your reactor trying to fry a bracket from here.” Malachite chuckled. “Think they have ice
cream on this rock?”
“If they don’t, I’m sure Malin can send us some.” I chuckled, before grinning. “Come on- first pint’s on me.”

1

SECTION 2
MISSION: RED RIVER
RUN
NPCS 29
BEAT 1: WANDERING FEET FIRST INTO BEAT 2: JAMMING IN TARASUNAH 35
SOMETHING 31 COMBAT 2: HERE’S TO YOU 39
COMBAT 1: AMIDST THE PILLARS OF
BEAT 3: HELLO FAX MACHINE BROKE
WISDOM 33
WHO THIS 43
“So long as there are nobles and commoners, the wealthy
and the poor, those with power will be heard, and those
without ignored. That’s the world.”
- Keladry of Mindelan, Squire (1999)
MISSION BRIEF
Al-Sorah has bandits, pirates, claim-jumpers, and corpo
proxies running around causing havoc- and Mount Popo
blowing her lid has only got them even more rattled up.
The mission is to help ensure the stability of Tarasunah:
to do this, the supplies must flow, come sand or storm.
GOAL
Deliver supplies and ensure there are no groups to attack
Tarasunah.
STAKES
While this load of supplies won’t doom the town, it will
make it harder to recover from the endless mess of at-
tacks, and the situation will deteriorate rapidly.
REWARD
A base of operations for engaging in adventures on Al-
Sorah, materials to advance a License Level (if running
Long Rim Manna Advancement, then 1,000 Manna per
pilot), and the appreciation of the bar owner.
RESERVES
In a pinch, a bunch of dudes with assault rifles and one
nutter with a heavy laser.
[27] SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN

2
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN [28]

NPCS
Sheriff Creek Lieutenant Boreal Sangres
The cast’s main point of contact, Sheriff Creek is a plan- The head of the Union DoJ/HR commission, Boreal is a
etary marshal who exists to keep this area under control. very new, very shiny, second lieutenant here who’s work-
He’s got high hopes riding on the team, and is more than ing on actually earning his place in the vast Union bu-
willing to shell out the cash to get them to put this problem reaucracy. He’s never going to be the best of the best,
to bed for quite some time. A decisive win here will put but he wants to get at least up to Major before he gets
them ahead in the race against banditry here, and more out of the service. He’s being managed by his gunnery
importantly, will get him out and about again. sergeant, but the kid’s got promise, even if he’s still very
green around the edges.
For those curious, Creek drives an old, beat-to-hell Raleigh
that’s been repaired with so much duct tape it’s an open Gunnery Sergeant Soixant-doux Cheval
question whether or not it’ll start up when he pulls out The gunnery sergeant of the Union DOJ/HR commission,
the choke. If a GM wants to give it out as Reinforce- Cheval is a very old career DoJ soldier whom has seen
ments, deploy it as a Veteran Avenger (No Room For more shit than some planets. They’re being tapped to
A Wallflower pt. 1) or a Veteran Assault, with a 50% help train up Boreal, but secretly this is also a test to see if
chance to arrive on any given round. PCs that want to they can get pushed up to Master Gunnery Sergeant: the
earn a massive degree of favor with him may reprint his sort of august rank of NCO that is both rare, and tends to
mech for him, if they have the means- in this case remove make sure new real NCOs are good enough at their jobs
the reinforce chance and splash on two or three optional not to accidentally torpedo their missions in some cases,
features of the GM’s choice. literally.
Betsy Marone A Note to GMs

The bartender/mechtech for Tarasunah, and the owner A key concept underlying Red River run is a simple
of the bar/workshop that’ll be putting the PCs up. She axiom: Good people never let each other hang.
takes no guff, comes out plenty buff, and serves IPS-N Keep this in mind when running the module: only core
lagers by the pint until one of the locals asks for coffee. NPCs have been written, but everyone should
Try her goat curry-whatever doesn’t kill you will make you remember what the Players have done for them and
stronger. should seek to repay them if they’re putting in the
work they need to. The frontier can be a place of
If the convoy gets through, she’ll be a steadfast ally, able betrayal and hurt, but remember the reasons why are
to recoup losses in the Reinforcements Squad, or kick in almost never someplace the players can reach. One
her own addition to the Combat 2 raid: a modified APC day they’ll break the cycle, but today isn’t about that.
named Gaslighter, represented as a Operator Vehicle, Today is about saving the little guys one more time-
with the Transport and Tracked equipment tags. and maybe them saving the party in turn.
If the convoy doesn’t get through, she’ll be vaguely an-

noyed, and serve watered-down alcohol and pease soup
to the characters, surly and frustrated.
Nikolas Sarkovoy
The leader of the usual militia guard compliment, and
a well-seasoned foot soldier who’s not one to complain
overmuch at things. He’s not unwilling to help out, and
with a little talking around is willing to bring his Squad
in as reinforcements for the party: being well-armed and
equipped with Rapid Insertion for mobility, they’re a very
potent tool to bring out.
In his downtime, Sarkovoy is a genial fellow, with long

red hair he keeps dyed that way in immaculate fashion.
Expect to see him in the bar, even if he sticks to the halal
fare: after the Albatross came, some habits stuck for the
soldiers who worked with their maktebas. If asked, he’ll
elaborate: it was a good time.
[29] SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//NPCs

NPCs
2
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//NPCs [30]

BEAT 1: WANDERING
FEET FIRST INTO
SOMETHING
The town of Tarasunah needs supplies- most subsettle- Fortunately, or unfortunately, the players are here with
ments do. Spoke-and-wheel systems are set up, rather the blessings of Union: the DoJ can’t be everywhere at
cynically, to make sure that the subsettlements don’t get once, and the team sent here are a passel of greenhorns
frisky, trying to pull shenanigans under the table to get under decent leadership. This means, in practical terms,
things rolling to make a democratic play for leadership. there’s one person from the Doj here with three sets of
Union might not notice much, out here in the Hyades, spare hands. While the players never interact with Union,
but that doesn’t mean a clearly tyrannical government op- their help is possible to get: feel free to take the time
pressing its people won’t sneak out to the Omninet even- to flesh out the Response Team and their base. Play-
tually. When that happens, HR/DoJ teams tend to get ers especially interested in getting Creek a newer mech
called in at minimum-and at maximum, it’s not unusual should talk to them and see if they can squeeze it into
for the Navy to send a destroyer squadron or a cruiser their printer time- the planet only has three, and all are
to wave the flag from orbit. There’s already a Navy sta- booked for weeks in advance.
tion overhead and a small DOJ/HR contingent to orga-
nize noncritical evacuation and recolonization of other ar- The caravan the players need to protect is a series of
eas to relieve import dependencies in this system, but it’s large road trains: dozens of trailers with booster motors
a step-by-step process. tied to a prime mover, towing them over hill and dale to-
wards their settlement. Make sure players understand
On the ground, though, things aren’t looking good. Al- these are soft targets: they will fall apart under enemy
Sorah is a rocky, unpleasant world if you’re not careful fire, and quickly. Atop and along them, in true Mad Max
about where you put your foot. Most of the central roads style, are persons making the commute to Tarasunah: all
and trail systems were laid out with more dynamite than are dressed in hardsuits, and most carry arms of some
strictly necessary in the opening phases, leading to half- sort. These individuals will be the Squad that serves
finished terminal stretches where ’temporary’ capability as emergency reserves for the players, lead by Nikolas
slipped further and further into permanent status quo. It’s Sarkozy: a militia captain and a friend of Creek’s who
at the end of the line, between clean tarmac and sandy came after his previous home was saved by the Alba-
paths, that bandits lurk. tross.
If the colony wants to exercise tyranny in their spoke towns, The trip proceeds fairly well on the actual roads, the road
then bandits are what happens when there’s no legal re- train managers talking frequently to the mech pilots. There’s
course to the problem. Despite myth and rumor, most an air of quiet professionalism amidst the shit-talking truck-
aren’t claim-jumpers (although Al-Sorah, due to a large ers: they all understand the status of this mission, and
concentration of volatiles, has more than average) but need to get their loads into Tarasunah. Water, parts, food,
rather former citizens who lost their voice in government. technology: each one of the road train drivers under-
In any other situation, their grievances would be redressed stands what they need to deliver. Enemy raiding has
without force, but corpo stooges and Pinkertons are will- been light, but even light raiding can be enough to stop
ing and able to shoot first. Breaking the cycle of violence a truck before it can put the thunder down and run. Now
is a job for Union- and while they’ve put boots down here, that they’re with escort, though, they’re confident.
it’s not an overnight process.
Time will tell if that’s the right call.
[31] SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Beat 1: Wandering Feet First Into Something
Beat 1: Wandering Feet First Into Something
2
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Beat 1: Wandering Feet First Into Something [32]
COMBAT 1: AMIDST
THE PILLARS OF
WISDOM
SITREP TACTICS
Escort (Lancer, p.269) The PCs must escort the trucks out: over half delivered
is victory. Unlike most Escort missions, they may take
OBJECTIVE extra time here: for every turn over, though, they need to
# of PCs ROAD TRAIN (Size 2, 25hp, Vehicle) deliver an extra truck.
OPFOR If things look pressing and a vehicle has been destroyed,

OPFOR at LL2 you are allowed and encouraged for Nikolas to deploy his
squad off the vehicle at lowest health: they’re a Squad,
1x Veteran Assault w/ High Impact equipped with Rapid Insertion. Particularly well-meaning
Rounds but inexperienced parties may also require them to be
For 3 Players 1x Pirate Squad w/ Deadly given Armored or Disciplined as well, to increase their
1x Pirate Squad w/ Armored survivability or damage.
2x Vehicle Goliath w/ Transport
The enemies are bandits first and foremost: they’re not
For 4 Players Add 1x Scourer w/ Pulse Laser, trying to blow the trucks. This doesn’t mean, however,
Melt they’re not willing to shoot at them- Grunts and Vehi-
cles will fire at the lead vehicle in the convoy, and units
For 5 Players Add 1x Priest w/ Fractal Assault,
with splash damage are fine with catching a truck in the
Sanctuary
splash.
OPFOR at LL3
The Veteran units are the core of the combat force here:
1x Veteran Assault w/ High Impact
their increased Structure makes them dangerous, and
Rounds, Auto-Targeting
more importantly, tanky. Assaults will attempt to down
1x Veteran Scourer w/ Pulse
players, and if issued High Impact Rounds, will use them
For 3 Players Laser, Flash Lens
until structured. Veteran Scourers are meanwhile mobile
1x Pirate Squad w/ Deadly
roadblocks: cover them with the vehicles if they’re under
1x Pirate Squad w/ Armored
fire and you need them to stay up longer. All these units
2x Vehicle Goliath w/ Transport
are tough, but expect them to fall quickly once players
Add 1x Priest w/ Fractal Assault, understand the damage they can deal. Focus fire from
For 4 Players Sanctuary, Greater Investiture a party can and will kill any one unit: encourage them to
Add 2x Grunt Berserkers do this if they have trouble, but if they are doing too well,
Add 1x Veteran Archer w/ Covering return the favor. Good tactics win battles, and being a
Fire, Rapid Response, Blinding GM means understanding when to sandbag, and when
For 5 Players
Shells to play hardball.
Add 2x Grunt Ronin
The Vehicles and Squads, meanwhile, are pure block-
BATTLEFIELD ing force. Someone, preferably the party’s melee or CQB
The battlefield can be any shape the GM wants, but should specialist, will want to barrel into them like a ton of bricks:
be fairly constricted. Map design dictates encounters, so let them! The Vehicles are still Goliaths, which means
make sure the players have a sound way to clear the map they have Crush Targeting and Siege Armor: trying to
in multiple ways. The path from Ingress Zone to Egress distance fight them is a losing proposition. That being
Zone should be about 12-18 tiles, and no longer than 24 said, make sure they understand the Squads are a dan-
tiles: smart groups will have fast mechs to do the ferrying, gerous threat: three attacks a round when inside Range
but if a group leans tankier they’ll need the shorter route 5 is a lot of chances for critical hits. Remind players if
to make things work. If players are not used to Escort they’re carrying Explosives that Squads do not have re-
missions, remind them that one person can move multi- sistance to AoE attacks: a lot of them miss this, as well as
ple escorted units. Some groups will have trouble with the fact that Line weapons count as AoE. This is impor-
this; in emergency have Sheriff Creek enter to help pull tant for players carrying weapons like Railguns or Ther-
trucks to the end zone. mal Cannons.
[33] SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Combat 1: Amidst the Pillars of Wisdom
Combat 1: Amidst the Pillars of Wisdom
In groups large enough to pull Grunts, the Grunts are a
pure assault force: position them in inconvenient places
or have them come in as reinforcements, and blitz the
TOTAL LOSS
(All trucks lost)
2
party from weird angles. They only take a Quick Tech The town is violently unhappy- most stores refuse to serve
or a single hit to pop, but that’s a lot of time in a time-the Players, Betsy refuses to serve them in the bar or pro-
constrained mission like this. They’ll save your main unitsvides only the worst fare, and death threats follow them.
a turn, not much more. Reactions are ameliorated if the Squad of reinforcements
is still alive: Nikolas is a popular man in town, and gen-
OUTCOME erally the head of local security when Sheriff Creek is un-
TOTAL VICTORY available. Missing mechs also soften some of the rage:
(All Trucks Delivered) if the security detail is chewed out, that means some of
the blame is on Creek for not hiring enough guns to solve
The PCs are offered a round of drinks in Tarasunah, and the problem.
meet Betsy Marone: a tall, dusky bartender whom of-
fers the use of her personal- and possibly illegal- IFV to TOTAL DEFEAT
transport the PC’s backup Squad to the next encounter. (Party destroyed in Combat)
If this doesn’t seem to be attractive to the players, she
can also offer them additional supplies and ammunition: The players scramble distress beacons, and frantically
equivalent to one or two charges on all Limited systems, wait for rescue. Eventually, Sheriff Creek manages to get
depending on party size. Players might not be able to to them, with a full company of planetary militia behind
do a Full Repair, but consider this a good chance to do him. Allow players to rebuild mechs back at the Space-
everything else. port, and don’t mention the status of town unless they
ask: Tarasunah will survive, for now. Skip Beat 2: con-
STANDARD VICTORY tinue to the next combat.
(Over half of trucks delivered)
Things are a little more frosty in town, but that doesn’t

mean people aren’t still happy. Betty’s IFV is still on the
table, but she’ll need some talking to get the party ac-
cess. Make sure to tell the players it’s a deadly vehi-
cle: the Trace Drive and Step base features mean it’s a
very mobile system, and it’s accurate as hell to boot with
two Accuracy on the Raptor Plasma Rifle. Still, the lost
personnel from the destroyed caravans is a devastating
blow. If any of the players picked up survivors, make sure
they get something for it: even non-mechanical trinkets
make it worth it for players.
MARGINAL DEFEAT
(Less than half of trucks delivered)
The town is unhappy, but the players put in a demon-

strated effort. Sheriff Creek tries to be understanding,
and if any players lost their mechs he’s very willing to
try and organize an emergency resupply airdrop (allow-
ing the Dispossessed PC to join in the next combat in
an Everest with any licenses, weapons, and equipment
they have) for their next battle. If the party is down more
than one mech, offer to make this a Long Rest, and get
more mechs shipped in on the next convoy. Note this will
significantly extend the mission: consider building a third
encounter and running it after to allow a redemption of
the team, or at the very least some other tasks for the
Players to perform.
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Combat 1: Amidst the Pillars of Wisdom [34]
BEAT 2: JAMMING IN
TARASUNAH
The players have a little time to rest, repair, and rearm The plan laid out by Creek is simple. Broken Arrow Canyon
their mechs in Tarasunah. Make sure they understand: is a long, twisting, box canyon that the locals know, but
this isn’t a full rest or a permanent posting, just a ’right most interlopers don’t. If he sends Nikolas Sarkozy as a
now’ layover. Tasking from Central is incomplete, and guide, he can get the party in on the ground below the in-
nobody’s sure which end is up and what fires need to get evitably thick anti-air emplacements stopping an airdrop:
put out right now. Lancers are the cavalry: make sure this relatively stealthy approach will allow an element of
your players understand this doesn’t let them set down surprise to the mission.
roots often. A day or two of layover, though, is plenty
after a combat op. However, if a GM so chooses, some Riding out to the canyon with Nikolai is going to be tense.
resources will be provided to help flesh out the town if Don’t be afraid to have players make skill trigger checks
they like this area as a setting. to respond to assorted situations and oddities, but keep
it short and sweet: there’s a door to kick in.
Either way, after some downtime and a social event, Sher-
iff Creek and possibly Betsy Marone come in to talk to One major tactical decision, however, will be the choice to
the players. attack in the day or at night. While it won’t affect response
speeds, it will influence who the first wave of attackers
After getting some time on satellite scans, and more than will be: a morning attack will, according to Nikolas, be an
a little bit of luck, Sheriff Creek has gotten a handle on engagement starting with infantry and maybe a tank or
where a bandit gang has holed up. They’ve gotten dug two, while an evening engagement will be a mech-based
in good in an illegal mining complex, and more impor- slugfest as the foot soldiers trail out of their bunks.
tantly, they’ve got a pirate printer. In short, they can build
mechs. On a strategic level, that makes them the single-
most potent non-state actor on Al-Sorah: the rest of the
bandits have clear and concise chains of command they
report to in order to receive military equipment. If ques-
tioned, Sheriff Creek will explain why this is so important:
if the colony government can ferret out how the chains of
command run, they can shut down hundreds of bandits
in one fell swoop.
Far more importantly to the players, however, is the tac-

tical level. Mechs are a direct escalation of force that
will result in the Navy taking a far more active role in the
pacification of the world, and possibly sending in an ac-
tual deployment of peacekeepers. The party’s relation-
ship with Union may vary wildly, but their profit margins
don’t- the minute the DoJ hits the sand in force, they’re
in charge and calling in their marker: the ability to print
GMS licenses at cost. If players need numbers, a full
License Level increase is approximately 1,000 Manna:
they can expect to get paid half of that if the DoJ gets
here and boosts their contract with Sheriff Creek- who
might have to explain his own indiscretions and selective
enforcements.
If it needs explaining, DoJ is the Department of Justice:

the trigger-pullers. HR, Human Rights, are the paper-
pusher follow ups who are more involved in ensuring the
justice system is working.
[35] SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Beat 2: Jamming in Tarasunah

Beat 2: Jamming in Tarasunah
2
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Beat 2: Jamming in Tarasunah [36]

Beat 2: Jamming in Tarasunah
Table of Random Events
2
1-2 A group of children wearing shemaghs and carrying shovels proudly march through
the streets in loose formation, explaining they’re gonna help dig a fort. If you go
inspect their handiwork, there’s a surprisingly well-built Vauban style star fort made
of old, ripped sandbags and chicken wire.
3-4 Three dromedary subalterns wander through the village streets, where grateful people
line up to refill canteens. The tender laughs if you ask the cost: every citizen is entitled
to water for their day’s work.
5-6 In the evening light, now that the temperature is more reasonable, a trio of old men
smoke on the steps to the bar. Depending on how they feel about the players, they’ll
either offer a seat with the hookah or remain stoney and silent.
7-8 A team of agri-mechs comes in, dragging a mech wreck with them. If you inspect
it closely, it looks like an off-brand Sherman, sans reactor with the coolant systems
filled with sand and petroleum byproducts.
9-10 Two young women wearing hardsuits are flirting in the street, before a passerby
throws a paint balloon at them. One knocks the other to the ground, covering her
body, before swearing at the miscreant. She fought in the caravan battle, and is still
high-strung from the chase.
11-12 A technical- a civil vehicle with a machine-gun in the bed- comes rolling through town,
and the riders on the back are cocky about their work. They’ve been going toe to toe
with the bandits, or so they say, but a quick examination of their vehicle leaves it clean
and the weapon looks unfired. If called out on this, they explain they’re part of the
mine patrols and generally do IED sweeps. It’s been calm out so far.
13-14 A pair of men in out-of-place SSC business suits discuss philosophy in the bar be-
tween two pints of beer and a plate of takoyaki. If startled, the one on the left reaches
for a concealed weapon, while the one on the right stares with a gimlet, mechanical
eye.
15-16 A team of miners and prospectors come into town, clogging the bar with their odor and
their presence. The entire building is neigh-uninhabitable, but their cheer is obvious:
the tectonic activities finally calmed down enough to get back to work.
17-18 People are celebrating, shooting off small arms into the air and setting off fireworks.
It’s the mayor’s son’s birthday, and he’s riding high on a palanquin carried by a team
of eight subalterns. The celebrations are in full swing when he’s finally awarded his
first pistol: a sign of adulthood out in the frontier. A child’s first real tool is a sign of the
way their life will play out- pity his is destined for the gun.
19-20 Another convoy is rolling in, this time with a small non-schedule printer. It’s not rated
to make military grade parts, but it is enough to take the burden off a lot of the convoy-
runners. It’ll get set up behind the bar as soon as possible- think you can move your
mechs to help get it in place? Damn thing is heavy.
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Beat 2: Jamming in Tarasunah [38]

COMBAT 2: HERE’S TO
YOU
SITREP REINFORCEMENTS
Punitive Raid- In the course of 12 turns, ingress into the For parties engaging in the Day
enemy, cause havoc, and return to the ingress/egress
zone. • Replace 2x non-Grunt mechs of the GM’s choice
with Pirate Squads, and add the replaced mechs
OBJECTIVE as Reinforcements on Round 4 or if there are more
Kill as many enemies as possible, scoring 3 for every players than enemies.
dead enemy (1 for Grunts) or points for objectives as • Spawn in 1x Priest, 1x Bastion, and 2x Assaults
listed. Lose 1 point for every enemy in the Egress Zone every third round after the fourth (thereby arriving
at mission end. Lose 5 points for any downed friendly on Round 7 and Round 10). Add two Grunts of any
mechs or allies. Lose 3 points for every turn after 12 that Support or Controller to the reinforcement waves
the entire party is not in the Egress Zone. For the Puni- for every player over 3 the party has.
tive Raid sitrep, the party may not Extract until the en-
tire party (discounting drones and deployables) is in the For parties engaging in the Night
Egress Zones.
• Spawn in three Pirate Squads as reinforcements
Objective Targets and Values: on Round 4, or when the number of players is greater
Boss Trasyn: 10 points than the number of enemies.
The Printer: 10 points • Spawn in 1x Hive, 1x Sentinel, 1x Grunt Sniper,
and 1x Grunt Breacher every third round after the
OPFOR fourth (thereby arriving on Round 7 and Round 10).
OPFOR at LL2 Add two Grunts of any Support or Controller to
the reinforcement waves for every player over 3 the
1x Boss Trasyn, Ultra Berserker
party has.
1x Ronin
For 3 Players 1x Vehicle Bombard
BATTLEFIELD
1x Vehicle Pyro The battlefield here should be open, with a few obvious
Ultra Berserker: Add Hellfire and well-marked OPFOR Ingress Zones. Players should
Projector be able to intuit that this is where the extra reinforcements
Add 1 Grunt Archer are coming from easily. Otherwise, be sparing with cover:
For 4 Players
Add 1 Grunt Assault a few pieces of Size 3 and Size 2 cover should be plenty,
Add 1 Support w/ Remote Reboot, maybe old vehicles left out or piles of scrap from con-
Remote Cloud quests past. In some position there is a Size 3 unit la-
Ultra Berserker: Add Limitless beled “The Printer” (EVA 5 HP 30); which counts for 10
For 5 Players points in scoring.
Add 2 Grunt Ronin
OPFOR at LL3
TACTICS
1x Boss Trasyn, Ultra Berserker w/ Emphasize the players aren’t here to kill everything: this
Lead the Charge is an act of reprisal, not an attack to break the bandit’s
For 3 Players 2x Ronin w/ Instinct Mode back. They’re getting in, doing as much damage as pos-
1x Vehicle Archer sible, and ideally whacking the enemy leader: Boss Trasyn,
1x Pyro w/ Flame Shield piloting an Ultra Berserker. According to Nikolas, he’s
Ultra Berserker: Add Argus Armor the one who managed to get that pirate printer running.
For 4 Players Bagging the printer is an equally high priority: don’t influ-
Add 2 Grunt Vehicle Assault
Ultra Berserker: Add Limitless, Add ence the party one way or the other, though.
Retribution
For 5 Players
Add 2 Grunt Ronin
Add 2 Grunt Berserker
[39] SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Combat 2: Here’s to You

Combat 2: Here’s to You
Boss Traysn, being an Ultra Berserker, is going to be a
difficult fight. Make sure to explain the mechanics behind
the Ultras to players, or what would normally be a difficult
OUTCOME
TOTAL VICTORY
(Boss Traysn killed, Printer Destroyed, or 40+ points or
2
fight will instead result in tearing hair out. He’s going to all enemies killed)
be charging in and laying the hurt on, and Berserkers are
tricky to kill unless the party knows what they’re doing- The PCs do not actually evacuate so much as saunter
larger parties, facing him with more equipment, are going away from the area, shades on, explosions backlighting
to have to dedicate resources to putting him down. For- them, and drinks are on Sheriff Creek when they get back
tunately, being a Berserker, he’s liable to kill several of to town. They have done the impossible, and turned an
his own subordinates: a feature designed into this mod- existential threat into a past tense. Kicking in this ban-
ule, since otherwise it may prove to be a bit much with dit gang will force the rest to lay low, and it might be
the strength of the OPFOR support assets. possible to scrounge up a bonus for them. If players
continue to operate on Al-Sorah through missions of the
Non-Grunt melee/CQB enemies such as the Ronin and GM’s own design, allow them to keep Betsy’s IFV and
Pyro should focus on beating the everloving hell out of the Nicolas’ Squad as reserves with Limited 2 on them.
party’s backline. Don’t let up and allow Artillery mechs to
put fire into Traysn, force them to defend themselves if STANDARD VICTORY
the party isn’t cooperating. This should bring them out (Boss Traysn killed or Printer destroyed, or 30+ points
of range of Support mechs in later waves: this is by de- earned)
sign. Support mechs will be focusing on buffing OPFOR
artillery, making them an important target for survival and The PCs have come in, kicked ass, and made sure it’s
score reasons. going to be a long time before things get rolling on con-
voy raids again. Standard militia units should be able to
Controller, Artillery, and Support units should stick to- roll on in and clean house from here, especially with pri-
gether if at all possible, with Support focusing on keeping mary enemy assets having been destroyed in the initial
low-health Controller units in shape to continue applying clash. Nikolas is quite happy with this performance, and
battlefield control. Archers are an excellent way to make makes sure Sheriff Creek knows about it soon: you’ve
the players divorce their attention from Boss Traysn, and done Tarasunah good work for the money spent, and with
gives the player Artillery an excellent way to advance the this battle under their collective belts they may be able to
fight if the party’s frontline can keep the melee chaff out get a Scheduled Printer soon to up-armor the militia.
of the backline.
MARGINAL DEFEAT
Grunts are a bit more than one-drop points sponges here, (Neither Boss Traysn nor Printer destroyed, or between
for once. Instead of the usual ’threaten odd angles before 20 and 30 points earned)
dying horribly’, in this instance they’ve got a far more im-
portant role: in reinforcement waves, they re-enable the The PCs have conducted a raid on the enemy position,
Controller and Support abilities that have probably got- but the bandits are dug in hard and fast. If missing mechs
ten neutralized by now. If the party has not neutralized are part of the reason, then the fact that there’s a pile
the initial Controller and Support units, consider allowing of missing military materiel is going to be blamed on the
them to evac early: they probably need it. issues with the counterforce raid. There was a good faith
effort put in, though, and Sheriff Creek is willing to pay
Reinforcements, if they’re brought in, have Betsy’s IFV out: this raid was an ambitious backhand blow, and he
focus fire on Boss Traysn, while Nicolas’ squad goes after knew it. That doesn’t mean, though, that things are going
targets of opportunity. to be too warm for the party: expect grudging respect to
surly unhappiness, depending on if Nikolas’ Squad were
called in and he survives.
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Combat 2: Here’s to You [40]

TOTAL DEFEAT
(Neither Boss Traysn nor Printer destroyed, less than 20
points earned, or party destroyed)
Fleeing the battle, the PCs are frantically hounded through

the canyons around the Bandit Base, until finally penned
up in a box canyon. The bandits, being practical sorts,
’only’ jack the party’s mechs and decline to shoot them:
after all, the desert will take them soon enough. Even-
tually, they’re rescued by a militia patrol, but the stain of
dishonor won’t go away so easily. They’re the laughing-
stock of the town, and worse: Creek won’t authorize a full
payment. They’ll need to do a third story beat or combat
this mission to earn a License Level, once their mechs
get reprinted. Make sure it’s embarrassing: they’re not
Lancers until they find a way to make up for this mess.
[41] SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Combat 2: Here’s to You

Combat 2: Here’s to You
2
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Combat 2: Here’s to You [42]

BEAT 3: HELLO FAX
MACHINE BROKE WHO
THIS
After their success or failures regarding the events of their Sheriff Creek is sitting at the bar in Central, drinking
punitive raid, the party should be returning back to Tara- a canned lager and glaring across the table at one of the
sunah or Central, the capital of Al-Sorah. Either one is mech techs.
fine for an immediate fallback: the continuing counterin-
surgency efforts are both ongoing and steadily making “I don’t know why you’re pretending otherwise, Sher-
progress. Unfortunately for the party, a DoJ/HR team is iff,” the mech tech says, swirling a can of beer. “Your
dropping to the planet, but the amount of ’unfortunately’ is ride’s hosed. No two ways about it.”
relative. Either way, they’re being requested to Central,
and an empty convoy can get them there quickly enough. “You can’t just do a core swap?” Creek asks, gulp-
ing.
If the PCs have won both of their combats to date, the
HR compliment of the team wants to meet with them. “Nope. Full reprint or bust. You’ve got cludges six-
Headed up by Boreal Sangres, the HR lead is compli- deep on that thing, and I won’t touch it.”
mentary of the work they’ve been doing, and is happy
“Then I’ll have to get my own printer running,” Sher-
to help them with their work as long as it doesn’t require
iff Creek declares, fishing around in his coat for some
material support. He’s willing to donate printer time off
smokes.
the Navy cruiser they came in on in a pinch, though, and
is perfectly willing to expedite any license requests they “You do that, chief. There’s not gonna be more than
have: parties with a manna-based system license sys- the main three for quite a while.”
tem can get a one-time 20% off coupon towards their next
frame license, or a free Talent training. Otherwise, issue At this point, Creek grins. “Nah, see, we can totally
a free Reserve from a table of the party’s choice. get a fourth one. Just need to be quick about it.”
If the PCs have won one of their two combats to date, “You’re nuts.”
the DoJ compliment wants to meet them. Headed up by
Soixante-doux Cheval, they’re reasonably conciliatory “No, think of it. We’ve got spare D-5 power systems.
about losses suffered, and offer their services in helping The bandits have their unlicensed printer up in Broken
teach the players anything they need to know. Cheval is Arrow; we can take the main arms from it. Zuwara makes
an old Gunnery Sergeant; both experienced, and more printer beds, we can head up there and buy a new one.
than willing and able to thump wisdom into player heads. A GMS printer control module should get us a Schedule
Use their speaking time as a chance to quietly review 1 capability: all we really need is a team to put it together,
what went right and wrong: and remember, as a GM, to a place to put it, and a steady supply of feed.”
point out things they did right.
Turning to you, Sheriff Creek gives the party a wide
If the PCs have lost both of their two combats, they get smile. “If y’all help me, I’ll keep paying you: same rates,
handed off to Moraine Fukou, a junior member of HR and I can even sweeten the pot with first dibs on the
responsible for tracking the mercenaries and guns-for- printer after my Raleigh gets rebuilt.”
hire floating around this planet. Let the party understand
they’re not under suspicion for being bandits, but that HR The mech tech coughs. “Or you could reprint it on
is going to be going over their taxes very carefully this the main printer.”
year: a legal and bonded security company is expected
to deliver, and if there’s some irregularities in things, then Creek ignores him, and grins. “So, are you in?”
that’s going to end up getting hammered on.
If the party takes Creek up on the job, the following mis-
At this point, the module is, effectively, over. The question sion would take four parts: a Gauntlet, to steal the printer
is, though, how much more the party wants to play. If the arms; a Holdout, to protect Zuwara and the printer bed;
party wishes to call it a night, end here: otherwise, you and two encounters of your choice for the rest.
can use the following to set up the next mission- one you
will have to write yourself or commission from the author
of this one, sadly!
[43] SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Beat 3: Hello fax machine broke who this
Beat 3: Hello fax machine broke who this
2
SECTION 2 // MISSION: RED RIVER RUN//Beat 3: Hello fax machine broke who this [44]
SECTION 3
MECHS
� HA
�
LOZA
Defender/Controller
�
An early prototype and midpoint line of the Armories, the Loza is the point from which the
Saladin and the Sherman diverge. Built around an older stable of mixed laser/projectile weaponry,
the Loza is an example that happy mediums are often not what they first seem in person.
Initially panned for its lackluster fire support capabilities and poor damage resistance,
operators with more time in the cockpit realized a simple truth: the Loza is the single easiest
mech fielded by the Harrison Armories to modify, repair, and pilot after changes. As such, dozens
of components and weapons have been tested on their open-ended systems, keeping limited numbers in
production from introduction to present day.
Modern Armories pilots might pan their forefather here, but many still take the time to become
familiar with the bucket seat in the head of a Loza. For anyone wishing to build themselves up
higher, it serves as an adequate platform to start the climb with- and those interested in the last
word in customization understand why it refuses to die.
CORE STATS CORE SYSTEM

Size: 2 Save Target: 11
Carolean Coolant System
Before modern full-mech reactor/system
Armor: 3 Sensors: 10
intercoolers became commonplace, it was
HULL SYSTEMS
typical to tie all heat generation together
HP: 9 E-Defense: 7
to allow weapon and reactor thermal sinking
Repair Cap: 6 Tech Attack: +0
to work together to balance the load and
AGILITY SP: 7
empower heat-sensitive systems.
Evasion: 7 ENGINEERING
The Carolean Coolant System is a retrofit
Speed: 3 Heat Cap: 6
that combines the old monobloc heat control
and modern reactor intercoolers to ensure
TRAITS heat buildup is never allowed to become a
SHOCK HARDENED SYSTEMS critical issue.
The Loza has Resistance to �.
Open the Vents
GUARDIAN Active (1CP), Protocol
Adjacent allied characters can use the Loza for For the rest of the scene, when you use Dorsal
hard cover. Heat System, you reduce your � by 2, and
Dorsal Heat System reduce the Heat Control Die by 2. In addition the
Passive Loza may, as a Quick Action, clear all � and
reset the Heat Control Die as if it had Stabilized.
Gain the Heat Control Die, starting at 6. 1/Turn
as a free action, you may reduce your current �
by 1, to a minimum of O, and reduce the Heat
Control Die by 1. This does not count as clearing
� for the purposes of effects that trigger when
clearing �. When the Heat Control Die would
reach 0, remove the die, and the Loza may not
clear heat in this manner until it Stabilizes, which
resets the Heat Control Die to 6.
MOUNTS
FLEX HEAVY
MOUNT MOUNT
[47] SECTION 3 // MECHS//LOZA

SECTION 3 // MECHS//LOZA
[48]
3
LOZA I: HYADES-PATTERN LASER RIFLE, LOZA II: ROSTOV-PATTERN PLASMACASTER,
ELECTRONIC WARFARE SUITE SIGNAL-TRANSCIEVER BULLETS
Hyades-Pattern Laser Carbine Rostov-Pattern Plasmacaster

Aux Rifle, 1�(Self) Heavy Rifle, 2�(Self), Reliable 4, AP
[�8][1�, 1�] [�12][1d3+1�, 1d3+2�]
..............................................................................
This weapon, and any mounts it is attached to, can
Before the advent of common energy weapons,
be repaired during a Short Rest without expending
there was a move to weaponize plasma by
Repairs.
shaping it into a coherent beam.
..............................................................................
Unfortunately, plasma does not like to form
As long as there have been Legionnaire
coherent anything: the solution, then, was to
Quartermasters, the drive to reduce
deploy a heavy-duty capacitor to generate
consumables has existed. Early pattern laser
plasma on-site. The fact the capacitor was in
rifles were designed with this goal in mind:
itself an excellent projectile was a bonus.
design a weapon good enough to not break,
damaging enough to be worth the mount space,
Signal-Transceiver Bullets
and reliable enough to withstand being handed
3 SP, Mod, Unique
to a first-time mech pilot and having said
mech sit on the gun. The Hyades-Pattern is Choose a Rifle, Nexus, or CQB: On hit, you gain
capable of withstanding a Barbarossa the following Invade option against the target until
tap-dancing on it: mission accomplished. the end of your current turn.
Malicious Propaganda: the target takes 1�, and may

Electronic Warfare Suite not draw line of sight on non-adjacent spaces until
2 SP, Unique, Quick Action
the end of its next turn.
You gain the following Quick Tech Actions
..............................................................................
Agressive Jamming: Make a tech attack against a
There are many ways to overcome the laws of
character within Sensors. On hit, choose yourself or
physics that dictate signal transmission. In
an allied character: your target treats you, or the
true Armories fashion, their approach to this
character you chose, as thought they have
is to move the emitter closer to the target.
Resistance to all damage until the end of their next
Ideally, the emitter does its work before
turn.
being destroyed on impact- if not, that’s what
Vital Point Targeting: Choose a character within follow-up shots are for.
Sensors and line of sight. They must make a
Systems save or take 1d6 additional damage when
they next take damage. On a success, they take 1d3
additional damage. This cannot stack with itself.
..............................................................................
Most Harrison Armories mechs are not armed
with a comprehensive electronic warfare suite,
but the Loza predates this decision.
[49] SECTION 3 // MECHS//LOZA

LOZA III: LIBRAE-PATTERN RIFLE, ANGEL ELEC-
TRONIC COUNTERMEASURES SUITE
3
Librae-Pattern Rifle
Main Rifle, Unique, 1 SP
[�15][1d6�]
On Attack: Choose whether to fire in Interference
or Elimination profile.
Interference: On Hit, Smart weapons and Tech
Attacks gain +1� against the target until the end of
their next turn.
Elimination: This weapon gains Smart and +2�
damage.
..............................................................................
For centuries, the topic of weaponizing
malicious signals to execute malware or
hostile liturgicode in an active battlefield
was a concept that excited and encouraged
designers. Unfortunately, hostile code takes
time to affect a system, and laser weapons are
too high-power to transmit data before
destroying the receiver. According to the
Armories, the solution was therefore to make
every factor in the laser a data-carrier, even
if it did lower potential terminal effects.
After pilot complaints, a switch was added to
provide emergency, unsophisticated firepower.
Angel Electronic Countermeasures Suite

3 SP, Protocol, Limited 3, 3�(Self), Unique
As a Protocol, choose one of the following options
and gain its benefit until the end of your next turn.
Seraphim Mode: Gain +1� on all Tech Attacks, and
gain +1� on all your saves.
Cherubim Mode: Enemies within Sensors gain +1�

on all Tech Attacks targeting you this turn, and gain
+1� when making any save against your effects.
..............................................................................
The Legions normally prefer to push electronic
warfare capabilities to subordinate
formations, but intelligent mech officers
understand that the only way to absolutely
have it when you need it is to bring it along
yourself.
SECTION 3 // MECHS//LOZA [50]

Night Watch On Al-Sorah

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Night Watch on Al-Sorah

September 22, 2022

Lancer is copyright Massif Press

Copyright © 2022 by Tabac Iberez

Credit to the following staff for their work:

Story Writer- Tabac Iberez

Mission Writer & Extras- Tabac Iberez & Matt Williamson

Editing- Darrian Richey & Matt Williamson

MISSION: RED RIVER

“Six tricks in lances,” Malachite said, tapping the table.

“Now look at your cards this time,” I reminded Lukaz.

“Seven tricks in manna?” he said, hesitant.

“Much better,” Tivi said, smiling while his ear flicked.

[3] SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah

“Okay, well, maybe a little, but still: fuck all y’all.”

“No!” Malachite said, before looking pitifully at Tivi. “Tivi, help!”

I gasped, striking my heart. “You wound me, Tivi!”

I just rolled my eyes. “Malin, how long until we get there.”

“How creative?” Lukaz asked. “Are we gonna slingshot a black hole?”

Everyone looked at him like he was nuts, which, well, he was.

SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah [4]

“So why do you need me?”

“I caught him after the first week this time.”

“Lukaz, what in the name of dirt?” I asked, pointing to the gun.

“No, I got it off Yarrharo.”

[5] SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah

“Can’t I send a subaltern to do it?”

“Fine, fine,” I bitched, putting away the portable torch. “Jesus.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, geeze,” He muttered. “Can you help?”

SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah [6]

“The planet, though?”

“Thank you, Malin.”

“So what’s so interesting about Al-Sorah, then?” I wondered out loud.

“I suspect we’ll find out when we make planetfall.”

No response. Rapping again, harder, I called out again. “Lukaz?”

“Go ’way, Mom. I’m sleeping.”

“Love you too, mom.”

I had no response to that. I really didn’t.

[7] SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah

“A Perry?” I asked. “Never heard of that one before.”

“Awesome!” I said, grinning. “What’s it look like?”

“People are still homesteading in this?” Malachite asked, blinking surprise.

SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah [8]

“They’ll raise hell if I pirate their satellites.”

[9] SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah

“Good. I’m going down to mount up.”

SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah [10]

“Five minutes,” The ship said back.

I was walking, and taking my first steps on Al-Sorah.

“Yep,” Tivi said. “We rolling hot?”

“Then the evacuation is a stunt?”

[11] SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah

“Escort’s here!” Sheriff Creek said. “Get these puppies rolling!”

SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah [12]

“Do I have to?”

“Okay,” I grumbled. “I might have to.”

“Yes you should.”

[13] SECTION 1 // SHORT STORY//Night Watch on Al-Sorah

I blinked. “You’re nuts.”