Avanti's AngelsAvanti's AngelsExperience: veteran. Loyalty: reliable. Employer: Magistracy of Canopus; later Kurita (?)
[excerpted from Loren Coleman's Double Blind, available at www.fasa.com]
Commander: Marcus GioAvanti
Executive Officer: Charlene Boske
Communications Officer: Ki-Lynn Tanaga (DC native)
Contract Coordinator / Chief Scout: Jase Torgensson
Chief Technician: Yuri Petrovka
Naval Assets: Heaven Sent (Union-class dropship), Head of a Pin ("Pinhead", Fortress-class dropship)
17 March 3058 - Avanti's Angels had just come off a contract on Arboris where the Farmers Freedom Army had hired them to harass Capellan Confederation forces on the planet. Someone somewhere must have decided to recoup some of the expenses of hiring a company of BattleMechs. After two months of successful hit-and-fade tactics against the Ishara Grenadiers, the FFA literally sold the Angels' position to Grenadier commander Choung Vong. The Angels barely made it off Arboris--their losses cutting deeply into their strength. They lost two warriors and three of their BattleMechs, with the rest of the company severely mauled. Bringing themselves back up to even near-full strength had cost the Angels every last C-bill in the company coffers as well as most of the mercenaries' personal funds, though they gained a MechWarrior in Brent Karsskhov, a defectot from the FFA.
With the operating expenses necessary to support a military unit threatening to drive the Angels into dissolution, Marcus had jumped at Baron Shienzé's offer of a contract to help New Home maintain its recently won independence. The fee would barely pay bills from two months back, but it did include better salvage rights than the Angels had seen for some time. Not enough to bring them back to full strength after expenses, but maybe enough to help them on their way. So with one eye on the future and another warily regarding their new employer, the Angels had come to the aid of New Home.
The planet was making its bid for freedom, supported by the Thirtieth Lyran Guards, who had decided not to accept Katrina Steiner's invitation to return to the Lyran Alliance. The New Home Regulars, a faction of the Zhanzheng de guang terrorist group supported by Sun-Tzu Liao, had been waging a fairly successful guerrilla war against the Thirtieth for several months. With the decision not to accept Katrina's offer, the Thirtieth lost its chief source of supply and could not afford to risk resources in an extended campaign. So it fell to the Angels to locate and destroy several remote bases in an attempt to cripple the resistance efforts of the New Home Regulars - a job for which Avanti's Angels were especially suited. The Angels specialized in a blitzkrieg-style of warfare. Infiltration, extraction, raiding--any situation calling for a hit-hard-and-fade-fast approach. It was a philosophy of combat fostered by the two years of hell that had been the Clan invasion.
The Angels had been a part of House Kurita's DCMS forces during the initial CLan invasion, a six-BattleMech ad hoc unit created to provide regular units any amount of extra resistance against the Clans. The unofficial term was sacrificial offering, as Marcus always put it, the Angels always drawing rear-guard duty to allow line regiments precious moments to escape.
Whether augmenting DCMS regular forces or standing alone, the Angels took a beating in almost every stand against the Clans. Marcus saw too many good warriors fall, some of them friends, men and women losing their lives over a patch of ground that was soon scorched black by weapons or churned up under the giant feet or heavy treads of war machines. But the Angels survived, grafting to themselves the orphans of lost battles and other shattered units. Technicians and infantry. 'Mech pilots, including coybow Vince Foley, with their own machines or numbering among the Dispossessed. Their survival potential drew the stragglers in, just as their experience of being on the run taught them superior - even elite - tactics in small-unit engagements, not to mention special skills such has how to salvage on the fly.
That early sense of growth was fleeting, however, as the next battle would promptly claim its price in lives and equipment. Those years of almost constant combat and change bred into the Angels their nomadic lifestyle, as well as their belief that the offense held all the advantages. The mercenaries avoided defensive engagements and they never accepted garrison duty. Marcus himself would never again allow too much importance to settle on any one thing. Not a place, person, or battle. "Keep the initiative, and you can dictate the battle," a lesson he was applying in the Angels' next situation.
The New Home Regulars' Ceruman base camp contained their chief stockpile of supplies. Guarding it was a strengthened company of BattleMechs and a battalion of conventional infantry, while Marcus had landed on New Home with only a bare company - one of his 'Mechs currently down for repair - and one light Savannah Master hovercraft. Eleven against sixteen--not the best odds, until Marcus decided to tip the balance. Marcus' plan called for elimination of the New Home Regulars' supplies of weapons and materiel, which he accomplished in short order with a well-timed strike.
From their times against the Clans, the Angels had managed to salvage a small array of Clan-tech weapons and other equipment. While they had never retrieved a functional OmniMech - the dreaded Clan version of a BattleMech - they did stockpile a half-dozen Clan PPCs, some lasers, and even a Gauss rifle. GioAvanti used some of this equipment, grafted onto his Warhammer, to deadly effect against the commander of the enemy forces on New Home.
The enemy forces routed, the Angels assessed their damage (Mary Dear, the Marauder of Thomas Faber, a DC native but rumored to be a Clan-bred Elemental) was the worst damaged, with one arm destroyed) and their spoils: a 5-ton Savannah Master hovercraft similar to the one the Angels already owned, plus the burned-out shell of a Wolverine and a crushed Locust, plus a half-scrapped JagerMech, victim of Marcus' Clan PPCs. To this they added a warehouse full of enough munitions and supplies to repair the Angels' machines and possibly get the JagerMech back on its feet. Charlene and Vincent Foley, the two members of Prometheus element, had set off a blast, but not in the ordnance warehouse. The Angels were loathe to destroy supplies that could be taken instead, especially when the detonation of a few large aviation fuel tanks would suffice. GioAvanti ordered the Regulars pursued but only to keep them running, and left MechWarrior Paula (who tried, always in vain, to catch Marcus' romantic attentions, despite his businesslink attitude toward commanding a mercenary unit) in a Wasp to guard the JaegerMech's pilot, the enemy commander, as a prisoner.
19 March 3058 - As executive officer, Boske usually handled contract agreements with the aid of Jase Torgensson, a Free Rasalhague Republic native and one of the most resourceful men she'd ever met. Even the way he'd joined the Angels had been impressive. Having learned of their mission to raid behind Clan Ghost Bear lines on his homeworld of Utrecht, he'd offered his services if he would be allowed to extract his family. He'd even brought with him one of the Combine's rare C3 computers that allowed 'Mechs to share targeting system information, a feat he put down to clerical oversight at his last command. Jase now operated as the Angels' chief scout and was a fine assault 'Mech pilot to boot.
For this mission, however, he'd been left back on the world of Outreach, the center of almost all mercenary hiring activity in the Inner Sphere. The Angels were still in a precarious position financially, and Marcus knew they needed to have another assignment lined up. Jase had lent his BattleMaster to one of the two dispossessed MechWarriors currently on the Angels' roster, and he'd remained behind on Outreach with the Angels' other DropShip. the unit's dependents, and most of their technical support staff. The Head of a Pin, or Pinhead as it was affectionately known, was an ancient Fortress Class ship held together with not much more than promises and the skill of a few really good techs. Safe enough as long as it stayed out of combat, the Pinhead normally carried the Angels' dependents and support personnel from station to station.
Their next contract would take them to the Magistracy of Canopus for a high-paying, heavy-salvage mission. The Marian Hegemony had become aggressive of late. Not only had they stepped up their raids on Canopus worlds, but they had somehow gotten their hands on new technology and 'Mech designs. The Angels' job would be to locate the line of supply to the Hegemony, disrupt it, and report back to Emma Centrella on the identity of the supplier and the location of any equipment caches that they weren't able to capture themselves.
Sometime thereafter, GioAvanti refitted a 70-ton Caesar with some of the available Clan-tech salvage: "Clan tech...Both the right-torso Gauss rifle and the hand-held PPC that will be attached along with the right arm. That gives me back four tons to play with. This 'Mech will carry an extra ton of armor when I'm done with it, an extra double heat sink, and instead of four medium pulse lasers, I can mount five. The three forward-firing are also Clan, giving me better reach."
Double Blind
Using fast and furious
hit-and-run tactics, Marcus GioAvanti and his Avanti's Angels
mercenaries have earned a tough reputation throughout the Inner
Sphere. But the Inner Sphere isn't where their newest job is
taking them - because their latest employer resides in that
remote and mysterious region of space known as the Periphery...
INTERWORLD INTRIGUE The Magistracy of Canopus has been the target
of aggression by the Marian Hegemony, and in hiring Marcus and
his gutsy band of can-do commandos, it hopes to retaliate. But
the fact that the Canopians are armed with technology that is
considered rare in the Periphery is the least of Marcus's
problems. Marcus and his "Angels" will have to face the
real force behind the hostilities - the religious cult known as
Word of Blake. this fanatical group has a scheme deadly enough to
trap even the amazing Avanti's Angels....