"Unknown number of assailants of unknown class, Mr Perkins, Commander Veijer's Highlander seems to have received critical damage..." The woman at the control panel paused a little as she felt the cold hands of Kevin Perkins sift carefully through here hair. She blushed but continued as if nothing happened. "The others are in bad condition as well, though it seems mostly to be... panic, sir."<br/><br/>Mr Perkin's, the company's financial advisor and former ComStar officer sighed heavily. Leave it to Walter to get shot with a whatever in the face. Had he been in serviceable condition at the moment he would have roared defiance and brimstone and the company would have calmed down and got to business. He had often thought of buying an Atlas with nothing but armor for him, but he knew fully well that he couldn't part the man with his Highlander. And as with all Highlanders, it craved battle, if possibly of the death-from-above variety. He took his sweet time thinking about it. As if they weren't hurtling towards the planet at death defying speed in a 3600 ton DropShip. He stroked the woman's hair and imagined how it would feel like. Dropship crash of 3020, back when he and Bones still was official. Only they survived miraculously. Bones mostly because he was strapped up in his Mech, which was all but demolished except for the cockpit. Kevin had no idea how he survived. He did so without his arms and one leg however.<br/><br/>He plucked the cigar from his mouth with his other cybernetic hand and smiled. It was a dashing smile, what with the dentures. Most of his face had been reconstructed and it was damned handsome even, the red scar down the middle of his face and up on his scalp lending something exotic about him.<br/><br/>"Well, we are just about there anyway. I guess we can help them out."<br/><br/>He looked over at the stern-monitor and saw the clouds break, showing the scene from above. It was amusing in a way, like watching ants swarming wasps that had made the mistake to land on the ant-hill. He leaned forward, smelling the woman's hair as he opened up the channels to all 'Mechs.<br/><br/>"Don't worry, little chickens, the hen-mother is here. Cathryn, set the targeter on these little pissants."<br/><br/>The space above the outpost was set ablaze with a light-show of Apocalyptic proportions. The PPCs fired first, a volley of three landing between the now surprised Battle Armors. Next came five ER large lasers, two of the Elementals toppling over from direct hits. While the Bastion was an old piece of Union scrap, it was a very well maintained piece of scrap, with superior targeting computers and a great array of weapons. The battery of six AC/5s held their silence, having run out of ammo during the last mission. The retro-thrusters stabilized the lumpy vessel and the engines revved up, pulling the Drop-Ship into a soft landing on the cross-section of the runways and unleashing a barrage of energy from the recycled heavy energy weapons and another twelve medium lasers. More battle armors fell smoking to the ground and for a split second there was hesitation among them before jump jets fired and they started to retreat towards the fog-covered mountain ridges. There was laughter over the comms as Perkins chimed in again.<br/><br/>"Well would you look at that. Never seen them 'Mechs in pocket size before. Pardon mefor being bossy, but would you kindly set up a perimeter so that we can begin salvage? And perhaps someone could check MacLeod for a crispy corpse or a pissed off commander, I'd hate to promote one of you sorry lot to the position."<br/><br/>That was Perkins. Bit of an asshole, bit of financial genius and a whole lot of attitude. But he crunched the numbers, had the contacts and bought the damned DropShip. They had to live with his bullshit bravado every once in a while.