Time Enough

[Dubble_g]

Quick intro: This is another story about Dmitri Dyubichev, a recurring character in some of the other stories I've posted here:

- Takes part in the Capellan invasion of Redfield, just before the main BTech timeline kicks off.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qn64txr8oh20v2p/Family.pdf
- Deserts from the Confederation and gets caught up in a plot to kidnap body double scientists (and gets tangled in a relationship with a Magistracy of Canopus spy named Ilsa)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kp0jz8efqpfw5ur/Mask%20Does%20Not%20Make%20the%20Man.pdf
- Works for the FWL during the 4th Succession War, and stumbles across a doomsday weapon
https://www.dropbox.com/s/375pnqwhuglhfd2/Diamonds%20in%20the%20Rust.pdf

This one picks up a number of years after Diamonds in the Rust. One of the major features of the BTech universe for me is a sense of history and the endless march of time. So I wanted to write a story that captured a little of that, on a more personal scale. Hope you like.

* * *

Artemis Province
Canopus IV
Magistracy of Canopus
13 March 3032

Dmitri Dyubichev pushed himself backwards out of the innards of the battered old AgroMech’s back. Its paint had long since abraded away, leaving bare metal whose shine had dulled with age. It was a wonder the damn thing worked at all. It must have been ancient before he'd even been born.
 
Dyubichev straightened from the waist and massaged the muscles in his lower back. The ‘Mech wasn’t the only thing dulling with age, he mused.

A comet trail of dust was advancing down the road towards the farm. Dmitri squinted and saw the low, sleek shape of a sedan, one of the new Avantis, in dark blue and silver government colors.

Despite the heat, he felt a chill.

He slid down from the back of the ‘Mech, landed heavily in Canopus’s high gravity and stooped to pick up the grey printed T-Shirt he had left there. He pulled it on. It was a size too small, and had an image of the inlaid, intricate circles of the astronomical clock in Prague, on old Terra. It was a complex and difficult clock to read, but for those who knew how, the time on the clock was midnight.

He made his way back to the stone house, through the fields of nodding grain, past the high silo that held not grain, but the silent brooding statue of his 70-ton Grasshopper, and watched as the car pulled up the gravel driveway and slowed to a halt. The bright torch of Canopus’s sun gave everything a blue, washed-out tint, as though he were in an over-exposed film, that still set his teeth on edge some times. He stuck his hands into his back pockets to keep them still. The driver’s door opened and his wife, Ilsa, stepped out.

Tension sublimated into relief. He walked, not ran, down to the car, wanting to memorize each moment. Ilsa wore a simple, loose blue dress, and her dark hair was gathered underneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. She tossed the hat through the open window back into the car.

He silently took her left hand in his right, her right in his left, and pressed his forehead against hers. They stood there in silent communion a long moment, the wayward wind blowing her hair about them it until it seemed the entire world was encompassed in the space between their eyes.

“Dmitri…” she said at last.

“Just a little more,” he murmured. “A little more.”

Finally, she extracted her hands from his, and put her palms against his shoulders, gently but firmly forcing him back a step. “Careful,” she said. “You’ll hurt the baby.”

All the possible replies collided together at the base of this throat. He had too many words. He had no words.

“It’s a girl,” she said. A beat later, when he made no answer: “Disappointed?”

He shook his head, never taking his eyes off hers, and wasn’t sure if he remembered how to stop. “If she’s anything like you? Terrified,” he said. And finally, kissed her. “Sorry, you’re right. Of course. Come inside. Can’t stand here forever.”

[Dubble_g]

Mitternacht Valley
Gunthar
Capellan Confederation (Contested)
5 June 3032

The Mitternacht Valley was high and steep-sided, with the sluggish trickle of the Alba River meandering down the center. The Alba itself was blocked by the 100-meter high concrete Mitternacht Dam, stretching across the width of the valley a few kilometers to the east. A broad, ferrocrete four-lane military highway bisected the valley on a bridge, blocky struts holding it 60 meters above the valley floor.

The hillsides to the north and south were densely covered with plants more akin to vines than trees, elongated and twisted with thorns like sawblades, coiling and looping around one another as they struggled upwards in the race towards the sun’s brief, flickering light. Gunthar spun about its star like a child’s top, giving it a rotation period of just eight hours, four-hour days giving way to equally mayfly nights.

The eight remaining BattleMechs of D Company, Second Battalion of the Third Canopian Fusiliers were dug into the southern slopes of the valley. They were weary and demoralized after a year and a half of grinding combat with the defending Capellan mercenaries, the Fifteenth Dracon.

Still, Ensign Alice Bell had to admit the new Commander seemed to know his stuff, even if he was an outsider. The company’s position was well-prepared, with clear, overlapping fields of fire. Three ’Mechs were down in the valley, four along the ridge, with the Commander’s Grasshopper in reserve. Her own Hermes II was hunkered down on one knee at the base of the slope with the other two lighter, more mobile ’Mechs, an Assassin and a Wasp.

She kept her eyes on the 360-degree scanner strip in the heads-up display of her cockpit. The powerful communications suite in the Hermes II made her the link between the forward scouts and the rest of the unit on the crest above. The sun was arrowing its way across the sky, and already the horizon was dark with the promise of night. If the mercenaries were coming, it would be soon.

Nothing on thermal imaging. She switched to the magnetic anomaly detector. Bingo.

“Delta Actual, this is Delta Three,” she called. “MAD contacts. Nine-plus bravo-mikes, bearing oh-five. Range two kilometers.”

“Acknowledged, Delta Three,” came the reply. “Alright folks, time to get the party started. Company is coming. Delta Three, keep your eyes on them, let me know if they’re coming across the valley or if they’re going to rush the bridge. Nobody fire until I give the order, and nobody play hero. All we need to do is stall these guys, buy us some time.”

[snakespinner]

More reading pleasure for your unworthy bots. ;D
Nice start.

[mikecj]

More please!

[DOC_Agren]

Dmitri is back

[Dubble_g]

snakespinner: How I have missed you, my digital and not-imaginary-in-any-way friends!
mikecj: Ask and ye shall receive...
DOC_Agren is also back. So I guess I can expect 700 hits from your next post in this thread?

* * *

Artemis Province
13 March 3032

The round kitchen table was wooden, smooth and unvarnished, made from the local cypress-yew hybrid. Dmitri liked the feel of the ancient wood, tracing the years, the good and the bad, feeling the life beneath his fingers. He placed a gently steaming cup of green tea in front of Ilsa, another for himself, and lowered himself into the chair opposite.

“Four months,” he said. He couldn’t help but smile.

She nodded. “Four months.” Patted her stomach. “Four months in the capital, but five months on the way.”

“I’m glad. You’ll be staying, of course? Stress can’t be good for. You know. The baby,” he reached for her, reconsidered, tapped the side of his tea mug instead. “Especially with. Everything. I watch the news. What they say. What they don’t. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“We can still turn it around,” there was no hesitation. “Andurien is pushing them hard, too. One more puff and the whole house of cards will come tumbling down. Which is the reason, one of the reasons, for coming.”

His smile faded.

“We have young men and women, brave young and women, but we don’t have leaders,” Ilsa went on. “These nobles buying their commissions, they have no idea what to do under fire. You were an officer Dmitri. They need you. We need you.”

He laced his fingers together on the table, frowning down at them. “You know what I think of the invasion,” he said. “How can you tell me in one breath that I’m a father, and in the next ask me to go to war?”

She reached across the table, placing her hands on his. “I’m asking you as a father. To protect our daughter.”

“Protect?” he shook his head. “By supporting an unprovoked invasion of a realm hundreds of light years away? Against my home, against the weakest of the successor states.”

“And what happens when the Confederation falls, Dmitri?” she asked. “How long before Davion or Marik or even the Taurians turn their eyes this way? The big fish eat the little, that’s the pattern. Eat or be eaten. And if we don’t try to take out the Capellans, then someone else will, and then we’ll have to deal with the victor. Better that they should have to deal with us.”

He said nothing. It was an old argument, their lines well-rehearsed, like actors in a play. He would argue peace could never be born from war, she’d call him naïve, tell him that peace bred only complacency and weakness. She might end up returning to the capital without spending the night. But maybe it was the thought of his daughter, yet unborn, maybe he was just tired, tired of work, tired of fighting, he just couldn’t go through the same motions again. “Maybe you’re right,” he shrugged.

“I know your dream, Dmitri, and we could put up walls, keep ourselves safe for a year, a decade, but what then? After 10 years, we’d still be weak and they would be that much stronger. We have to face the Inner Sphere some day,” Ilsa said.

[Dubble_g]

Mitternacht Valley
5 June 3032

“Delta Actual, this is Delta Three,” Alice Bell signaled. “I have the contacts on visual. Narrow frontage, high speed. Looks like they’re going to rush the bridge.”

“Delta Actual here, understood,” the Commander replied. “Hold your fire, Deltas, wait for my signal.” His voice changed tone as he switched to another channel. “Dutch One, this is Delta Actual. Operation Chastise is go. Repeat, Chastise is go.”

“Dutch One here,” said a new voice, one Alice didn’t recognize. “Chastise is confirmed.”

She didn’t have time to puzzle the exchange out. The viewscreen in the Hermes II fizzed with activity as the battle computer struggled to identify and label each enemy ’Mech as it crested the rise on the far side of the valley. A string of red icons popped into view, scrolling with speed, weight and model data. Instead of spreading out in a line, she saw they were formed into a long column, two by two, lumbering down either side of the highway.

A risky strategy, Alice thought, betting they could punch through the Fusilier line before the defenders could bring enough firepower to bear on the column, but then she knew her company had lost four ’Mechs in the last few encounters, including their former Commander, without seriously hurting the mercenaries. Maybe their confidence was warranted.

The Fifteenth Dracon must have spotted the heat signatures of Alice and her lancemates, for even as they stormed across the bridge, they were firing into the woods on the far slopes. Long-range missiles came arcing down, blasting apart vines and showering the Hermes II in gouts of viscous sap. One missile found its mark, impacting high on her left shoulder, but the armor easily held.

The lead ’Mechs, a Javelin and a Commando, were nearly two-thirds the way across the bridge when the Commander shouted, “Target the lead ’Mechs. Fire, fire, fire!”

Alice centered her crosshairs on the Javelin, canting the Hermes II back at the waist and loosed a volley of cannon fire up at the ‘Mech. The chest-mounted autocannon spat a stream of depleted-uranium shells upwards with a noise like a hammer beating sheet metal, making Alice’s whole machine buck as it tried to absorb the recoil. But the Javelin was moving too fast, the angle was too narrow, and her shots mostly impacted against the bottom of the bridge.

For a moment, it looked like the Fifteenth Dracon’s gamble had paid off.

Then the Commander stepped his Grasshopper onto the end of the southern end of the bridge, in the middle of the highway, flanked by a Centurion and a Panther. The three ’Mechs, facing straight on at the onrushing mercenaries, opened fire.

Streams of laser fire scored the lead Commando’s chest and arms. A PPC bolt blasted into the Javelin’s leg just below the knee, shearing the leg away. The ’Mech tumbled, skidding across the ferrocrete. The ’Mech behind it, a Phoenix Hawk, ran straight into the sprawled hulk, tripped and went down on one knee. Laser, cannon and PPC fire converged on the staggering ’Mech, knocking it sprawling backwards.

The Commando pilot panicked, tried to turn his ’Mech around and run back across the bridge. Instead, he collided with a Griffin charging forward. The Commando reeled backwards from the impact, through a guard rail, off the edge of the bridge. With no jump jets to save it, the ’Mech tumbled end over end until it slammed into the ground, face-down, 60 meters below. A moment later, fires in the ’Mech reached the missile ammo bins and the wreckage erupted with a volcanic roar.

With the bridge now completely blocked by the wrecked Javelin and Phoenix Hawk, the Fifteenth Dracon’s charge stalled in confusion. Their ’Mechs bunched in the middle of the bridge, as the Fusiliers poured fire into their ranks.
Alice was whooping and hollering with the rest of the company as she kept her finger on the primary trigger, hosing fire on the mercenaries as fast as the autocannon could feed the ammo. They were clustered so tightly now, almost every shot found a target.

“On your toes, Delta Three, watch for jumpers,” warned the Commander. Then, “Dutch One. Chastise, now.”

Alice soon saw what he meant. Rather than stand and take punishment without any cover, five ’Mechs, the Griffin plus a Dervish, Vindicator, Spider and Blackjack, leapt from the sides of the bridge, and cushioned their fall with their jump jets as they hit the ground at the bottom of the valley.

A distant boom to the east was almost lost in the roar of their jets.

[Dave Talley]

More!

[DOC_Agren]

I will see what I can do for your views!!! [blank] :P

[mikecj]

nicely written!

[snakespinner]

Your Digital and not imaginary in any way friends approve and desire more. :)) O0

[Dubble_g]

Dave: You betcha.
Doc: Counting on you!
Mike: Thanks my man.
Ss: Anything for my robot overlords friends (remember me when the robopocalypse comes!)

* * *

Artemis Province
14 March 3032

Dmitri awoke to the sun in his eyes, as a strong breeze ruffled the curtains by the open bedroom window.

Ilsa was sitting at the desk beside the bed, black hair tucked behind one ear. Clicking away at something on a noteputer. She glanced sideways at him. “Aren’t you ever getting out of bed?”

He stretched like a cat, from his fingers to his toes. “Just a little more.”

“I thought farmers were all up at the break of dawn.”

“We are, unless we’re seeing our wives for the first time in four months.”

She closed the noteputer, turned to face him. “How can you be like this? There are people dying out there, Dmitri.”

He levered himself out of bed, shambled over to the drawers and found something to wear. Faded blue jeans, a Black Cats T-Shirt. “That’s the way it is with tragedies,” he said, as he pulled the T-Shirt over his head. “One man’s catastrophe is another man’s Monday.”

“Only if good men stand by and do nothing.”

“I am doing something. Can’t do everything,” he found his way into the bathroom. Squinted at his reflection with one eye. Then the other. Ran a hand through his hair. Good enough. Turned back, leaned against the bathroom doorway. “Look, Ilsa, I know it sounds noble and brave to go off and fight and die for magestrix and country, but I can probably do more good here than out there. I grow wheat. Soldiers have to eat. Factory workers have to eat. You folks at the Intelligence Ministry have to eat. The Magistracy buys most of the crop, controls the price of the rest. I’m doing my part.”

“It sounds brave because it is brave, Dmitri,” her cheeks flushed with anger. “Those men and women are heroes. They—”

“No,” he cut her off. “No. Don’t talk about them that way. You’ve done field work for the MIM, you’ve been in danger, but sorry, you still don’t understand. Soldiers aren't sports athletes or rock stars. They’re not people we should be cheering for. They’re ... they’re miners on the other side of a collapsed tunnel, running out of air. They’re sailors trapped on a ship that’s slowly sinking, in a cabin slowly filling with water. We shouldn’t be cheering them on, we should be tearing out our hair, screaming for someone to save them. They’re people running out of time.”

Her palm slapped down on the desk in frustration. “Then help buy them that time!”

[snakespinner]

Wife's always trying to give their husbands extra hard work. }:)

Remember keep your Robots close and a couple of gallons of vodka closer, you will need it.

[Dubble_g]

Mitternacht Valley
5 June 3032

The Hermes II staggered as a particle cannon bolt smashed into the right forearm, arcs of blue lightning writhing and dancing up to the elbow. In the cockpit, Alice saw her armor wireframe flicker from red to black, and the status indicator for her medium laser burned a dull, angry red.

“Commander, need some help here,” she called. “We can’t take much more of this.”

“Just hold them off for a few seconds,” he replied. “Fall back if you need to, fire the forest.”

Alice backpedaled, left arm flamer dousing the thorny vines in superheated plasma, setting them ablaze. The Capellans’ fire became more erratic as the intense heat washed out their sensors, particle cannon bolts flying wide of either side of her ’Mech with metallic screeches.

Her lancemates in the Assassin and Wasp took advantage of the distraction to ignite their jump jets and leap backwards up the hill, soaring just above the canopy on pale columns of fire.

“Covering fire!” she shouted, and yanked hard on her control stick, planting the left foot at an angle and pirouetting the Hermes II as she prepared to race back up the slope.

Alice didn’t see the PPC bolt that screamed through the forest inferno and tore into her ’Mech’s left hip. Armor shattered like glass and coruscating energy burned into the ’Mech’s bones, fusing the hip actuator in place. Unbalanced, its weight on one leg that had now gone rigid, the Hermes II toppled over, crashing face-down onto the forest floor.

“Delta Three is down!”

“Delta Four, Five, on me,” the Commander called coolly.

Alice was thrown violently against her harness, straps biting sharply at her shoulders and hips. She fumbled for the control yokes, praying to luck, to herself, to anyone who might be listening for her ’Mech to stand up again. The right arm didn’t respond, the left ended in the stubby bore of the flamer and could do little more than lever the torso up a few degrees. The right leg churned the earth but the left remained rigid, paralytic.

She glanced up at the 360 vision strip. Through the flames and smoke, she saw the Capellans behind her, advancing steadily across the valley. And beyond them, further to the east, something else.

“Chastise,” she whispered to herself, understanding what the Commander had done.

A wall of water 10 meters high was tearing down the valley. To the east, the Alba River was roaring through a newly-blown gap in the Mitternacht Dam. Hundreds of millions of tons of water, freed from their concrete prison, were sweeping down the valley, uprooting trees, houses and roads in a foaming torrent.

As soon as Alice saw the flood, she knew she wouldn’t make it. The Hermes II couldn’t stand. With the ’Mech’s face-down and its head parallel to the ground, ejecting would just catapult her directly and fatally into the nearest vine. Only option was to get out and run. She rammed her palm into the release button of her harness.

Nothing happened. She fumbled for her knife, weeping furiously, felt it catch in its sheath. Finally wriggled it free, sawed desperately at her restraints. No time, no time.

And then the Commander’s Grasshopper landed behind her, between the Hermes II and the Capellans, blocking their fire. He stood there, ’Mech rocking as they threw everything they had at him, lasers, particle fire, missiles, cannon, stood there and held his ground, his own lasers licking out in angry red torrents in response. Then he was charging forward, throwing off their aim, the Grasshopper’s shoulder catching the Spider on the chin and knocking it to the ground, where a follow-up kick bent its left knee at a wild angle.

“Delta Four, Five, get her out of here!” the Commander shouted.

The Assassin and Wasp were beside her ’Mech, each one taking an arm, and together they lifted it up, dragged her up the slope, crashing through the vines as the roar of the waters grew louder and louder and the ground shook like an earthquake.

[mikecj]

Wow!  great, thanks!

[Dubble_g]

Artemis Province
15 March 3032

“I can’t change your mind?” Ilsa stood by the driver’s side door of the sedan.

The sun was shining, a cool breeze blowing. A beautiful morning, the kind they put on postcards and travel shows. Nature had no respect for the moment, he thought. One man’s catastrophe, he knew, was another man’s Monday.

“And I can’t change yours.” Dmitri tried to reach out, reach across the gulf he felt forming between them, afraid he would only widen it. “And I know you won’t say yes, but I have to ask, can’t you stay? Just a week? A day?”

“Stay here?” she asked, sweeping her arm across the golden fields. Across the stone house. Across the silo and its mute colossus. Across the weather-beaten AgroMech, still standing forlornly in the fields. “Here, on the farm the Magistracy gave you? In the home the Magistracy built for you? While you refuse to fight for it?” She turned back to him. “You owe us, Dmitri.”

Mitternacht Valley
5 June 3032

Alice looked at the vision strip, saw the mercenaries were trying to flee now, leaving the Spider on the ground. Saw the Commander in pursuit, saw him ram his ’Mech’s fist into the Blackjack, sending it tottering back. Then hit his jump jets just as the waters came crashing down around the bridge.

Saw the flash of particle cannon fire caress the ’Mech’s left leg, shorting out the jump jets.

Sending it tumbling out of the sky. Into the path of the raging flood.

“Commander Donovan!” Alice called, knowing it was too late. “Commander Donovan!”

The bridge swayed a moment, then staggered as one of the supports gave out, pulling the main span down after it, almost graceful, chunks of ferrocrete kicking up geysers of water as it crumbled and collapsed, as though in slow motion.

“Nothing you could have done,” said Delta Four. “It was just his time.”

Artemis Province
15 March 3032

Dmitri hung his head. “You’re right, I do owe you, I owe lots of people. That's the thing, though. Every time I try to repay that debt, I only make new ones. I’ve got blood on my hands, whole oceans of it. Time was, I thought if I swam hard enough I could keep my head above it. Only, I found the more I swim the higher the waters get.” Looked up, willing her to understand, begging. “Ilsa, I’m tired of swimming. I don’t want to swim forever.”

Her mouth was set in a line, poised to say the words she couldn’t take back, that would break them. And maybe she, too, felt the change between them, the new life, the responsibility they now had. Saw the days, months, years stretching ahead of them. She stopped. Bit her lip. Reached for him instead. “You’re right, I don’t understand,” hugged him tightly. Just for a little. Not for long enough. “Maybe I never will.”

He held her back, never wanting to let go. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll get past this. Some day.

“Just give it time.”

END

[mikecj]

wow!

[snakespinner]

Ouch!
Divorce Canopian style. O0

[Dubble_g]

Thanks for reading fellas. Couple of footnotes before I sign off on this one.

Major source for this was Historical: Brush Wars, easily one of my favorite supplements ever. My Herb bot outdid itself on that one. The general setup of Canopian Fusiliers vs. 15th Dracon on Gunther is taken from there.

The Canopian tradition of allowing the rich to buy officer commissions (a bit like the Victorian English) is taken from the Periphery Handbook.

Cutting back and forth between Canopus and Gunther let me play with the will-he-won't-he question, with a little bit of misdirection when the nameless new Commander of the Fusiliers happens to pilot the same Mech as Dmitri. In a setting about endless fighting, I liked that the ending was about someone ultimately choosing not to fight.

- The Prague clock is a real thing and is delightfully over the top and grotesque. Pic attached.
- The Black Cats were mentioned waaaay back in the original CityTech box set. Another way to work in the sense of time passing into the story.
- "Chastise" was the code name for the Allied bombing attack on the Ruhr dams in Germany during WW2.
- Dmitri's speech about soldiers not being sports stars is a paraphrase of one of the most powerful and memorable quotes I've ever read about WW2, from US war artist and correspondent George Biddle: "I wish the people at home, instead of thinking of their boys in terms of football stars, would think of them in terms of miners trapped underground or suffocating to death in a tenth-story fire."

Think that might be it for Dmitri. Let him enjoy a well-earned retirement.

Working on another BattleCorps-style story (3-5,000 words, avoid breaking canon, standalone)--trying to write something about why, if "war is hell", it is so difficult for the people in the BTech universe to find peace.
(Also have the lore-style story, but that doesn't seem to have gained much traction so I think I might let it quickly die a slow and horrible death)