Colonel Tim "Deathlord" Cooper, Executive Officer, Napier's Rednecks
It was about two days after touchdown; our forces had established a foothold on the western side of Tulagi's only major continent by taking a planetary militia base and General Napier moved out his assault and medium forces to attack Tulagi's western command center. The thinking was that after that went down the defenders on our side of the continent would be in total disarray, giving us free reign to take the spaceport by surprise and secure it for Kurita reinforcements. We didn't know exactly where this command base was, but we were able to triangulate to within about five kilometers of it thanks to our DropShips listening passively to its communications output.
The region of the planet thus indicated was an interesting one. Tulagi is a tiny little rock but exceedingly dense--it apparently has some sort of osmium-lead core surrounded by a very, very thick magma sludge--not quite liquid, as the magma of normal planets is imagined, but more colloidal. Compare strawberry jam to strawberry juice and you have an approximate comparison of Tulagi magma and more terrestrial magma. Anyway, this density, combined with Tulagi's relative proximity to its G6 giant parent star, Zubenelakrab, causes Tulagi to warp noticeably at certain spots along its equator due to tidal forces. Where the Davion defenders hid their base was one of these spots, which could have been compared to a macro-scale pumice sponge. Some techs who liked to think of themselves as theorists said that it looked like tidal forces had shattered a thin tectonic plate, creating an open magma pit which quickly cooled because of its natural chunkyness. Sounds good enough for me, and it explained the terrain well enough--potholes and sinkholes big enough to hide lances of 'Mechs combined with giant boulders studding the landscape. The dominant feature though had to be Big Zit Mountain--it seems that the first humans to see that hundred-meter-tall monstrocity had the same feelings towards it that we did--a giant pimple of a rock sticking up out of the plain. The fact that it was reddish yellow with iron and sulfate deposits and dotted with stunted joshua-tree like plants which looked like diseased hairs enhanced the visual analogy. I speak from the heart when I say this--the only reason that it didn't turn one's stomach just to look at it is because it was simply a big rock. An ugly, nasty, filthy, smelly rock, but a rock nonetheless.
A medium-sized communications outpost rested atop Big Zit; it was made up of barracks, computer centers, and machine shops centered around a primary computer spire. From a long ways off, General Napier in his Atlas (the "Alucard") and I, in my trusty BattleMaster (the "Übermensch"), could see two lances protecting the base: A unit of mostly JagerMechs and Hatchetmen protecting the comm outpost up top and a lone Grasshopper playing sentinel near a recess in the mountain. General Napier called me up using a laser-line and we discussed the tactical situation. I maintained that it was only a few crummy 'Mechs we could wipe off the face of the Universe with our four lances of assault, heavy, and medium 'Mechs and that our best strategy would be a staggered advance with long-range support 'Mechs providing suppressive fire while the short-ranged brawlers (like me) hauled ass towards the base, using the pits as cover. He said he was considering calling an airstrike using our heavy Shilone aerospace fighters. I argued that an airstrike would limit our salvage potential. He said that maybe napalm bombs were in order. While I should have stuck to my guns and continued arguing for salvage, the concept of a giant napalm fire was quite appealing and I shut up.
I think that the rationale behind the airstrike needs to be explained in a short aside. While we were on our way to said mountain base, those tricky FedSunners hit our armor base with a combined-forces strike--while two elements of Guardians and Mechbusters dropped napalm and cluster bombs over our base, Harasser, Pegasus, and Goblin tanks stormed over the hills. The fires caused by the bombs took nearly an hour to extinguish, and one Harasser commanded by some psychotic zealot distantly related to a distant relative of the Davions managed to drive into our Invader-class DropShip and do donuts inside, firing those damned twin SRM-6s the whole time. Jhonen crawled his Crusader (the "Fist of Allah") inside the vehicle carrier just to scare that moron Harasser out. Because all of this insanity was caused by our lacking of combat air patrols--General Napier didn't have much experience with aerospace assets--our esteemed General used airpower whenever he could find enough excuse. Such as poor JagerMechs standing atop Big Zit.
Within ten minutes six Shilones scrambled from the IMCV Aviary, our orbiting Leopard CV-class fighter carrier DropShip, came screaming out of the stratosphere and began pummeling the hell out of the mountain as we advanced. A JagerMech and a Hatchetman were completely drilled by dive bombings, the rest were consumed in the ever-expanding morass of chemically enhanced flames. There is nothing sadder than watching a JagerMech covered in flaming gel flail about a bit until it critically overheats and its ammunition goes up, spreading it across the ground and sky in a mushroom cloud the color of rotting autumn leaves. We did lose one Shilone to ack-ack from the Jagers, but it was considered a small price to pay for the total annihilation of the enemy almost without fighting.
Of course, two things came up that forced us to go in and fight anyway. The first was that the fighters reported a second comm tower on the northern peak that they couldn't deal with because their fuel situation was becoming critical. The second was something that I myself saw, and that was the Grasshopper disappearing into the mountain before bombs rained down on the position it used to occupy.
Proceeding to the edge of Big Zit, we saw a ramp that led down into a tunnel carved into the mountain. Looking into the tunnel did not reveal a light at the other end, indicating that it turned or had closed doors or something; it certainly wasn't a civilian engineering project. I had heard of military bases inside of mountains before but this was the first I was actually experiencing. We discovered, after turning on our headlights, that a blast door sealed off the tunnel just inside the opening. Having no better way to open it, we slagged it--and that took a lot of ammunition. Entering the door revealed to us a long tunnel ten meters wide and eighteen meters high with an arched roof--a vault, it's called in architecture--that extended a few hundred meters foreward and was coated in a glistening liquid which was either water or some sort of thin oil. The tunnel was thin, so we proceeded one at a time in thirty-meter intervals with General Napier and I in the lead. About a hundred and fifty meters into the tunnel there was a smallish recess with a deserted barracks-like building in it, with no life that I could see with my lamps. Further down was a sharp turn in the tunnel, obviously designed to make it difficult to run around inside the structure, and after that, another blast door.
While General Napier was busy zapping the door, Albert in his Rifleman got a nasty shock in the back from a platoon of laser infantry which was hugging the floor when I walked by. Riflemen simply aren't armored well enough to take much of anything, especially in the back. This necessitated an evacuation of everybody behind Albert just so we could move him out--taking fire all the while--and then move everybody back in. The infantry in there were well trained--keep down until they saw the paper-thin rear armor of either a damaged or poorly-designed 'Mech and then have a field day. We started spraying buildings with machine gun fire just to suppress the bastards.
Infantry aside, the base was a masterwork of engineering. Arched vaults, buildings half-carved half-set into the stone, and a big reactor in a side chamber--well, at least it looked like a reactor with giant heat exchange pumps and massive coolant pipes sinuating their way through the rock. Jack almost plugged a hole into it, but I convinced him to do otherwise--we had to clear the area first, and then go about senselessly destroying complex yet relatively harmless machinery. Along the way we discovered another massive armored door, but we decided to ignore it until we had cleared this section.
We had cleared most of the buildings when suddenly the lighting got really dim and really red. We could see infantry and base personnel (what was left of them) running out into little escape tunnels. It was about that time that General Napier decided that it was time to leave and we all beat feet to the newly discovered door. He blew it open, and it revealed another giant entry tunnel, complete with hard turns, slick floors, and additional doorways. We began advancing slowly through this tunnel when the lights began to brighten until they became a harsh white. Then they all went out. There was this giant boom echoing through the caverns and a horrendous sound, a mix of rushing water and an avalanche. Then Tommy, in his Warhammer, reported good news and bad news. The good news was that he had some light. The bad news was that it was coming from liquid hot magma that was spreading from what we now know was a geothermal reactor and coating the base in hot rocky death. Smart idea for a self-destruct system; Lord knows we didn't get anything out of that base afterwards. Tommy was in the unfortunate situation of being dead last in line.
General Napier shooting down doors, everyone jostling in their 'Mechs to escape, and poor Tommy stuck only one step ahead of surprisingly fluid rock. The tunnel exited the mountain, the aperture concealed from the outside world by a waterfall, and we all ran like hell (and yes, assault 'Mechs can run like hell if they have to) out of there. Tommy waddled that poor thin-legged Warhammer into the tunnel, took the turn slow 'cause he didn't want to fall down and definitely sign his own death certificate, and then sprinted that thing out with a giant--I mean at least ten meters tall--wave of magma rushing after him. He plowed through that waterfall, took a quick right, and BAM! The waterfall vaporized as maybe an eighth of that frickin' big zit exploded with the force of... well... a volcanic eruption. Tommy's 'Mech was spattered and so got some rock permanently welded to its armor plate but came out no worse for wear except for some melted heels. He decided not to fix them because he said it made his Warhammer "look 'ard." I observed that it only looked like it had shingles.
Either way, we all vowed from that point onward never to fight in mountains again at any cost.
Tim "Deathlord" Cooper
Acting Commanding Officer, Napier's Rednecks
First Tulagi Guards