Planet: Camelot
Captain Carlos Hicks sat in his mech couch and chewed on his last MRE protein package. It had been one weird month. The Prince of Iron had had the audaciousness to dictate Clan members to attack members of the RND and other Dragon Clans that had joined the Prince of Flowers. When asked what this had to do with putting down the mad General, all his eminence had to say was that Ronin needed to know their place and not ask the “whys”, only to follow orders and succeed. To illustrate his point, he loosed an Iron drop ship down into the middle of Gold Clan to make a lesson for the rest. It had been a crazy fight to start, but once the Thong Brothers and Ken Freon had awoken and got into their mechs, the fight turned into a turkey shoot. Iron units tried to encircle the left flank, but were not ready for the speed with which the Gold members responded. Streaking out of the skies on jump jets, several 90 tonners landed behind Iron lines and ripped into them with retooled lasers and freeze gear. This caused whole units to get caught in a cross fire, unable to respond, then turned to slag as the Gold Clan ground pounders came into play, laying down sheets of fire power. Within minutes, all Shogunate mechs had been torn apart and blistered for their efforts.
“Well, it looks like we got our answer as to how to proceed. Search and scrap anything usefull off these Shogunate units, load up anything extra onto this wonderful ship they decided to give us, and let’s go rendezvous with the Clans at the predetermined coordinates. Hicks! Take your wing into the drop ship and make sure the Captain knows his new chain of command!”
Major Freon was about five five, hawk-like face, and vibrating with energy. He had decided there was no way in drek that he was going to fire on clan members or members of RND for the sake of this pompous jackanapes to solidify some sort of hold on his own government. That’s not what he or the Dragon Clans had signed on for. There were way too many good men and women who threw their lot in with the Prince of Flowers to be getting into all that. Mad General with an Army bent on universal domination? Sure thing. Give me cords and we’ll shoot. Need help with your personal electoral process within your own district? Ehhhhh, no. Nope. Not even. Go rig your own election. Now you’re going to throw a drop ship of mechs at us and see if that’ll get us to change our minds? Prince of Iron, you have a funny way of trying to get on someone’s good side.
Dropship Graille:
Commander Watanabe was nervous. He had received orders to take a Battalion of mechs to go deal with the Gold Dragon Clan, a group of hired Ronin. Unable to procure one of the Enlightened Batalions from the main Army, he had to take a Battalion of Reservists from Planet Odi. While excellent fishermen, the Odi soldiers were still learning the ways of war. Their Colonel had insisted on radio silence to begin the raid and now he wasn’t responding. On top of it, Watanabe now had more than 2 score of target locks from ground units on his ship.
<clang, clang, clang>
Blast doors to the deck opened up. All activity stopped as crew men turned to see who had opened the hatch. Standing before them was a mech pilot wearing Captains bars, red rimmed eyes, and a lopsided grin. It looked like he had a huge sunburn on one side of his face, and had a couple burnt patches on his flight suit.
“I would like to inform the honorable Commander of this hear ship that he now reports to Major Freon and the Gold Dragon Clan. Any questions and or points of resistance can be directed to my men outside of your drop bay window yonder.”
Watanabe turned and saw a row of Regis and Boreas mechas all standing in his drop bay with heavy guns all aimed at the Bridge. “May I be the first to welcome Major Freon and the Gold Clan on board. Who might I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Carlos. Captain Carlos. Glad to hear you’re on board with the program! Now point me to the Cantina, it’s been a long morning.”
That had been twenty days ago. Since then, all Dragon Clans supporting the Prince of Iron had pulled their members and retreated to this corner world of Camelot on the edge of the Meiji Shogunate. They had listened to the power struggle, and were happy when it was announced that The Prince of Flowers had consolidated his power finally. Now things were getting a bit tense again. Members of the RND clans have been showing up in orbit of Camelot. Word had it that rumors were being spread as this being a Bastion of the last holdouts of The Prince of Iron’s forces and Kiyomasa didn’t want to take a chance in that. What he doesn’t seem to realize though, is that his Ronin’s were all familiar with each other through multitudes of Clan Wars, Mechalympix’s, and alien threats. This isn’t an “unknown threat”, these are their brothers in arms, who purposely withdrew from civil war as opposed to being forced to attack their family and friends for someone else’s purposes.
“Romeo, November, Delta, this is Delta Uniform. Please send cords for a sit down, over…”
The Meiji Shogunate was about to realize that keeping a Dragon as a pet was a good thing for a little bit, but that the Dragon would quickly realize there was a leash around it’s neck and who was attempting to hold it.
Submitted by Carlos Hicks# 905078