14

The landing went smoothly as the Aurigans didn't have any force defending the world, so we were unchallenged.

The ground force that had came with the Iberia was the 2nd Company of the 3rd​ Taurian Guard Battalion; a mix of assaults and heavies, probably the heaviest 'Mech company in the whole Concordat and maybe in the whole Periphery. They also had with then a mix of LRM carriers, Manticore tanks and a standard company of infantry. Unlike us, they didn't have air support.

On the negative side for the Revenants our unit had to disembark from cargo DropShips, which us took a lot of time, all under the eyes of the people my unit want to impress. Not good. I really needed to get my hand on a true military DropShip.

Because we had to deal with 3 small and one big exit, we placed 8 tanks and 1 arty piece before each exit, with the Long Tom of the Iberia ready to support any place. Each small exit also received a 'Mech Lance while the big entry was dealt by two, which left one Lance in reserve to help anyone in need.

And my initial fears were confirmed as the Castle defenses rejected the code we provided and as soon as we got that answer, drones started to exit the fort while several heavy turrets could be seen emerging from the ground.

And, boy, the memories from the game were very wrong about the strength of the defenses. The turrets were about a dozen in numbers, all heavy and with advanced weapons; the drones were modified Von Luckners heavy tanks, difficult to kill and with a heavy firepower. The only good thing for us was that in the cold climate of this planet, each of our 'Mechs could fire at maximum rate without running hot.

As planned we launched our ASFs to help us but as soon as they approached the area to bombard / strafe the turrets, two massive laser beams were fired from the Castle, destroying one of the Hammerheads and forcing the others ASFs into a panicked retreat.

Shit! That could only be Naval Lasers, They didn't exist in the game and they meant a death sentence for any forces flying in sight.

The only good news was that my initial plan of landing away had probably saved us from a total disaster.

The turrets survived longer than I thought and hit badly some 'Mechs and destroying some unlucky Merkavas with them the poor sods. The only way to deal with them was to use our artillery pieces to destroy them one by one but this took some time. The drones were caught in several rings of deadly fire and were most of the time destroyed as soon as they exited the doors, but not before they could at least fire one salvo and in some cases more.

Everywhere around, there was only confusion. I saw near me the four Toro in our Light Lance concentrating their PPC fire on one of the drones, delivering plenty of damage to the big tank, more than enough to destroy it.

To make things worse, the units we were fighting were the Royal variant, with a more lethal weapon load-out. "Shit, I should keep focused" was my thought as my 'Mech was hit by a salvo of cluster ammo from one of the drones, I lost most of my armor on the right side. I hastily retreat to what I thought was outside of the LBX-10 range just to be hit by another shot that ripped off my left arm and the Large Laser in there.

I saw Vasseur's Thunderbolt going down, with one leg ripped-off by what looked like a Gauss round fired by one of the turrets.

What appeared to be an eternity later, but was just a few minutes, the TMI specialists finally managed to extract the right code and the defenses powered down.

Castle Nautilus was ours and this time, we had enough time to explore and comprehensively loot it. We were very lucky as very few people had died but several 'Mechs and tanks had been severely damaged, not counting the three destroyed Merkavas and their entire crews.

The first thing we all went to look was the 'Mech bay (call it professional curiosity). And it was jackpot: 40 'Mechs present, all of them Royal versions. Thanks to the contract with the Concordat, the Revenants had first choice, but that meant only 20% of them, so 8 top of the line Royal SLDF 'Mechs for the Revenants .

I selected 1 assault lance and a mixed heavy/medium one. 1 Atlas II, 1 Highlander 732b (the ones from the game, even if this was the 'standard' Atlas II with an LBX-10 and not an AC/20), 1 Nightstar NSR-9Jb (an unknown Royal variant with a Tacticon b-2000 Battle Computer the one you could find in the Cyclops and there was no discussion: this one was for me) and a Royal Thug (THG-11Eb), 2 Royal Crab (CRB-27b) and 2 BL-6b-KNT, the Royal variant of the Black Knight.

I caught Vasseur, with his right arm in a sling and his left leg in a cast, looking to the Highlander I had selected with the kind of look reserved for one's bride. I was sure what his future 'Mech would be.

They were fabulous machines all of them, even if the maintenance was going to be a headache. I was reasonably sure that producing ammo for the Gauss Rifles was going to be easy and that the Artemis IV systems could fire standard munition, just without the guidance advantages. Only testing would give me the answer about the cluster ammo for the LBX but the gun could still fire standard ammo; so, this was also not a big problem. Furthermore, the armory had hundreds of tons of ammo, armor plates for the 'Mechs and spare parts, including many DHS and I got 20% of all these, nice.

The hangars also had several tanks and ASFs, our share of the booty was four Demon tanks (Royal) and two GTHA-500b Gotha ASFs (also Royal).

The research part of the Castle had then Nirasaki mainframes and dozens of terminals from the Star League time and hundreds of datacores. I didn't even get a chance to look at them as the TMI people quickly took control of them without any discussion possible. I heard them saying that they belonged to the Concordat, end of the discussion.

The Castle was also powered by the biggest, most powerful fusion reactor that I had ever seen (and by the expressions of the people around, it was a really big one indeed) and that one was also for the Concordat. I smiled at the greedy bastards.

They also took control of all the surviving drones, 13 in total and we also got our hands on two K-1 DropShuttles.