2
Kit muttered curses in three languages. Her shoulders slumped.
I’ve made a terrible mistake, she mocked herself.
I should have told them to quit. This is hopeless. She ran her hands through her hair in vexation, finding that the bun she was experimenting with in an effort to project more of the buttoned-down military bearing she imagined a MechWarrior academy instructor should project was coming apart again. Now coppery strands were hanging loose around her ears and forehead, all the more irritating because of Maxwell’s tropical humidity and the fact that none of HTI’s ramshackle facilities seemed to have climate control that functioned properly.
She was seated in a cramped control room overlooking a room about the size of a typical secondary school gymnasium. Most of the floor space was taken up by a company’s worth of BattleMech simulator pods, black ovoids arranged in two parallel rows of six. They were the only simulators HTI possessed, and three of them had been unusable ever since Kit had arrived at the academy for maintenance reasons. Kit had heard that the Inner Sphere’s major military academies had enough simpods to run training scenarios pitting entire battalions against each other. Kit was currently observing a holographic projection of a simulated skirmish between two lances of cadets.
At least, it was supposed to have been a lance-on-lance battle, but one of the ill-maintained pods had abruptly ceased to function even before the first exchange of fire, leaving a frustrated cadet sitting in the dark. There was a storm of protests and appeals from the remainder of the now-shorthanded Blue Team, but Instructor Captain Lobenhofer, the slab of old soldier sitting in the control room next to Kit, was unsympathetic. “Consider it a twist in the scenario,” he growled. “Adapt and overcome.”
Perhaps to their credit, Blue Team wasn’t giving up, and the plan they had come up with showed at least some ability for creative tactical thinking. Unfortunately, it was also idiotic. Even Kit, who knew her training under her grandfather’s instruction had been long on “stick and pedal” ‘Mech-handling skills and somewhat short on strategy, could see that much. Kit knew ‘Mechs, knew what different types were good at and what they weren’t good at, and Blue Team was utterly wasting the assets remaining to them.
Of the three Blue ‘Mechs left, the heaviest and most powerful was a
Warhammer. The other pair were medium types with mostly short-ranged weapons, a
Phoenix Hawk and a
Hunchback. The cadet in the pod which had malfunctioned had been piloting a simulated
Trebuchet, and so Blue Team had lost their long-range fire support. The environment for the exercise had undulating foothills at either boundary of the battlefield, with a flat plain in between. To do any damage, Blue Team’s pair of medium ‘Mechs would have to get across the expanse.
The solution to the problem Blue Team had devised was to advance across the plain in single file, with their
Warhammer in the lead and the
Phoenix Hawk and
Hunchback following close behind, apparently hoping to let the heavy ‘Mech absorb the brunt of Red Team’s fire until the two mediums could get into effective range. Unfortunately this required the
Warhammer to close to a range less than optimal for its own weapons loadout, and the
Warhammer’s armor protection was really not sufficient for the seventy-ton machine to simply be used as a shield. The only factors giving Blue Team’s plan a chance of success were the poor quality of Red Team’s gunnery and the fact the Reds had made a bizarre tactical decision of their own by hiding their
Dervish in the hills to lob indirect salvos of LRMs relying on spotting from the other Red ‘Mechs.
They even found the best way to miss with guided weapons, Kit mused.
The Blues’
Warhammer was still in the fight but mauled by the time it made it across the plain and the
Phoenix Hawk and
Hunchback broke out of its shadow and charged. Besides the
Dervish trying so hard to be a non-factor in the battle, the Red Team lance consisted of a
Thunderbolt, a
Hermes II, and a
Centurion. They started to focus their fire on the Blue
Hunchback in a sensible effort to down it before it could bring its massive autocannon into play. Kit watched on the holo as the
Hunchback staggered under the Reds’ barrage and responded with an autocannon shot at the edge of the weapon’s range which missed the enemy
Centurion cleanly. The Hunchback made it another hundred meters, continuing to lose armor. Then the cadet piloting it, apparently lacking confidence in his ability to fire on the move, brought the ‘Mech to a halt and planted his feet to line up a shot. The AC/20 thundered and the
Centurion reeled under the impact of the high-caliber rounds, a moment before the Reds’ concentrated fire found the shells still in the
Hunchback’s magazines and turned the ‘Mech into a fireball on the tri-vid feed that lit up the control room. Kit could hear the cadet’s angry curses as his simpod popped open below.
The trainee in the simulated
Warhammer was clearly determined to play a greater role in the battle than just serving as a seventy-ton shield and was blazing away with her entire arsenal. The Red
Thunderbolt was shedding armor by the ton, but it had plenty to spare, and the Blue trainee was completely disregarding her heat scale. The
Warhammer’s movements grew sluggish and Kit knew that vents inside the simulator pod would be punishing the Whammy pilot for her recklessness by pumping in hot air. Defiant, she put another salvo into the
Thunderbolt. The
Warhammer plodded to a halt, then a load of short-range missile warheads in its right torso cooked off from the heat, destroying half the ‘Mech. The
Thunderbolt’s return fire saw to the other half.
So that made it a four on one fight.
No, Kit corrected herself as she touched controls to adjust her view of the exercise,
Three on one. Although she hadn’t seen how he’d done it while she was watching the two heavy 'Mechs slug it out, the cadet in the
Phoenix Hawk had somehow taken down the Red
Hermes II.
As Kit now focused on the
Hawk, it leaped in behind the
Thunderbolt with its jump jets, slashing at the stocky heavy ‘Mech’s back with the array of lasers built into its arms. The
Thunderbolt started to make a painfully slow, shuffling turn to confront its enemy.
Plant your foot! Kit mentally implored the cadet.
You have to cut the throttle to zero and plant your foot!The
Hawk carved through the
Thunderbolt’s flank with another trident of laser beams. The
Thunderbolt swayed drunkenly, then toppled onto its back, and a data feed on the console in front of Kit in the control room told her that the heavy ‘Mech’s gyro had been destroyed. The
Phoenix Hawk seemed to regard its fallen foe contemptuously, then took a step closer and fired again, this time directly into the fallen T-Bolt’s cockpit. Status indicators on Kit’s console tagged the Red heavy as officially “destroyed,” although it had effectively been out of the fight as soon as it lost its gyro. “Förbannat!” she cursed aloud.
Was that necessary? Some sort of pre-existing grudge, maybe?
The
Phoenix Hawk paid for its gratuitous cheap shot by absorbing a salvo from the
Dervish, which had apparently finally decided to get involved in the fight, and the Red
Centurion was approaching fast. The
Hawk pilot fired his jump jets… and the holo froze, the
Phoenix Hawk hanging suspended in mid air.
“The exercise is over,” Lobenhofer barked. “Everyone out of the pods, now!” The more senior instructor’s Teutonic features had turned an incandescent shade of pink below his graying blond crew cut. Kit trailed behind him as he stomped down the stairs from the control room to the simulator hall floor where the seven cadets were standing around the pods, shifting uneasily on their feet in shorts, T-shirts, and cooling vests. Some shot accusatory looks at each other, but one - the
Phoenix Hawk pilot - stared straight ahead, his face an unreadable mask. Kit recognized him as one of the more hostile faces at the start of her classroom lecture a few days before.
“Tanner!” Lobenhofer shouted. The
Phoenix Hawk pilot’s face flinched just a hair and Kit gathered Tanner was the cadet’s name. “We have things to discuss. Everyone else, out! We’ll try to pull some lessons out of this shit show later.” Six of the cadets filed out of the hall, leaving Tanner, Lobenhofer, and Kit standing in silence.
When the older instructor finally spoke it was in a low rumble. “Do you want to tell me what the hell I just saw?”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“You know exactly what I mean!” Lobenhofer roared. “Why did you fire into Stepnik’s cockpit when he was already out of the fight?”
“It was only a simulation,” Tanner replied, then added through gritted teeth: “Sir.”
“Maybe you’ve misunderstood the point of these simulations,” Lobenhofer growled. “You train the way you fight!” Kit thought she saw Tanner’s lip quirk in a hint of a sneer as Lobenhofer recited the ancient military maxim. “You don’t shoot a MechWarrior once his ‘Mech is disabled or he’s given himself up!”
“Why not?” Tanner screamed back in Lobenhofer’s face loud enough that Kit recoiled in surprise, but she was more startled by the look on the cadet’s face. Where before there had been only sullen indifference, there was now rage, a wildness in the eyes. “You want me to treat these mock battles like the real thing? In a real fight, why should someone who was trying to kill you five seconds before get a pass just because he wasn’t good enough to get the job done? Why should he get to say ‘You got me, I’m done’ and then walk away still breathing?”
Lobenhofer absorbed the cadet’s tirade without flinching, but he was turning a deeper shade of purple. Kit was startled again when Tanner suddenly pointed a finger at her. “We all listened to her tell us that the idea of knightly, honorable combat is a bunch of bullshit!”
Lobenhofer’s head swiveled on his thick neck in Kit’s direction, as if the senior instructor had suddenly remembered she was there, and he and the cadet stared at her. She swallowed. “There may not be knights in armor, but there’s still right and wrong,” she managed. “And if you were the one on the losing side, in the knocked out ‘Mech… you wouldn’t want it to happen to you.”
Tanner sneered. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to make sure I’m not on the losing side.” Without waiting for a response from her or Lobenhofer, he stalked out of the hall.
