"Who the hell are they!?" the mission commander, Rachel Garret, pounded the table. All the surviving MechWarriors from the supposedly simple recovery mission bowed their heads. No on knew the answer. "We got a report about a half an hour ago that a jumpship left orbit. How did the little bastards get past us?"

"Judging from their position, a magnetic storm raging on the other side of the planet gave them a two-day window in which to drop," replied Jennifer Maroon, the mission's systems specialist.

"That's good," the commander replied. "Now that we know how they got here, let's concentrate on who the they are. Johnathan, take a group of your best MechWarriors on a recon mission. We have enough transmitted data from the probe to find our way around this area. I want a label for these bastards on the battle computer before tomorrow!" and she stormed out of the room.

John Rakes rested his head in his folded hands. "We deploy in an hour," were his only words.

"Know thy enemy." Without knowing who the 351st is up against, Commander Garret cannot formulate an efficient strategy. Commaner Rakes' mechs have been out for over two hours without any further confrontation. Just as he thought they might have left, an alarm sounded.

Radar signal.

"Let's move!" Johnathan's orders came loud an clear. "There's a crippled mech in the area. Find it!"

Game Set-Up

First and formost, deal with the probe from the previous mission.

If the probe was damaged in the previous scenario, roll 2D6. Check the roll chart below to see what kind of advantage the 351st gains. Before you begin the scenario, check the Special Rules for advantage benefits.

Place two standard BattleTech maps as shown in the following diagram.

	N
Map A:
Map B:

Defender: Unknown Group

The defender this time is the unknown group of mechs. The defender may replace any destroyed mechs or killed MechWarriors from the previous battle, but the pilots are rolled randomly. The limit is four mechs totalling 150 tons. This does not include the crippled mech.

Nameless (Piloting 5, Gunnery 3) ASN-21 Assassin

This mech has no left leg, the rest of the mech takes 20 damage. This damage is applied in 5 point bursts directed to the front of the mech with the hit location table.

Deployment

The crippled mech itself is positioned, face-down at HexA0309.

The rest of the defender's forces are positioned at the following hexes, any mech to any spot. HexA0501, HexA0701, HexA0717, HexA0517.

Attacker: Federated Commonwealth 351st Mechanized Occupation Unit

It's time for the 351st to take the aggressive approach. The limit is three mechs totalling 175 tons, using any existing pilots or new ones. The only exception is this:

Commander Johnathan Rakes (Piloting 2, Gunnery 4) CPLT-C1 Catapult

Deployment

The attacker's mechs are positioned any where north of the water in Map A. Again, they are in tight formation and may not be any farther than 4 hexes from eachother, they also may not be any closer than 5 hexes away from any of defender's mechs. Nor may they be placed any where on Map B.

Victory Conditions

The defender is victorious under the following conditions.

• All of the attacker's mechs are destroyed
• The attackers never indentify the crippled mech

The attackers are vistorious under the following conditions.

• They identify the crippled mech and at least one mech makes it off the south edge of Map B.
• All the defender's mech are destroyed. This excludes the crippled Assassin unless it has been identified.

Special Rules

Here are the advantage definition for the FedCom 351st depending on a damamged probe. Jennifer Maroon is working on retrieving fragmentary data.

DBAR: If you know anything about engineering, you know this acronym. And you know its not good. The probe is damaged beyond all repair. No data can be retrieved.

Partial: Partial data is recovered from the probe before all the systems fry. Intentionally moving to an elevation of 1 causes no extra MP.

Complete: The probe's data tapes are intact and working. In addition to the level 1 thing explained in Partial, walking through rough terrain and light woods causes no additional MP.

All of the benefits count only for the 351st as remain for the rest of the campaign. If the probe is fine, all benefits are achieved. If it is destroyed, no benefits are acquired.

Concerning the crippled mech, identification is merely coming within two hexes of the mech and surviving to the end of the turn.