“It’s vintage, manufactured in twenty-nine eighty-seven on Tranquil, for the Wolf’s Dragoons."
That would be 18 years before they came to the IS in canon
If mechs can make it centuries imagine what the vehicle fleets could manage.
------
Wordlessly Morgana looked at the instrument cluster, stick, and three pedals on Arne’s side of the truck.
“What do you mean it’s a manual? They have been obsolete for centuries!”
“Apparently, back then the Clans saw automatic transmission as a bourgeoisie excess. Must have felt the effort needed to make an automatic gearbox for civvies took away from military production in some capacity.”Her eye twitched slightly in something between nervousness and frustration.
“I can’t drive this.”
“Piloting a Battlemech is harder than driving a stick shift.” A flip-out key came to his hand, the ring accompanied by a three Clan logo tokens, Thunderbird, Wolf, and Stone Lion. Arguably the most eye catching of the ten and with the ‘Circle of Equals’ programs broadcast throughout the Inner Sphere via Clan Council operated HPGs known everywhere.
“This little growler survived because nobody wanted to learn how to drive it. So, I’m going to teach you.
We have big empty highways in New Olympia so it will be easier to learn than before. Unfortunately, most traffic is one way, off-world, and not many new cars come back.” The garage door opened to dark silhouetted buildings and early autumn snows. New Olympia built in the shadow of its once grand sister city beneath the rocky forms of Mount Wotan and its kin. Tharkad’s weak sun wouldn’t rise over the mountains until nearly midday and cloudy weather caused by the warmer air coming off the North Ocean to the East frequently obscured it this time of year.
They drove through this land of shadow and light, dark and bright. No longer did cosmopolitan towers, designed by some of the Inner Sphere’s most respected architects, stand proudly proclaiming the wealth and pride of the Commonwealth. Gone was the metropolitan traffic of luxury automobiles easily gliding along a broad motorways. No more streetcars sped silently along immaculate greenways toward Interstellar corporate offices. Beneath them the New Danube carried no barges laden with goods to and from the Spaceport hidden on the other side of the mountains. The grand railways that once flanked it had long been picked clean for scrap steel on a planet once known for its industrial might.
Only one of the ‘The Five Sisters,’ bridges whose elegant spans once gracefully crossed the New Danube, had been restored to operation but not its former glory. Two streetlights flickered until one only a lonely light stood vigil.
Billboards advertised opportunities off-world or among the Self-Defense Force. Only one caught Morgana’s attention this one extolled the Steiner-Davion Foundation’s work to repair the damage of the Jihad. She stared at the sign which oddly didn’t have a picture of the former Archon-Princess on it.
“All the money in the Universe won’t fix what you did Katherine.” She saw flickering red lights atop Tharkad’s HPG antennae farm. The compound stood tall over the former COMSTAR one, now turned into a nature preserve, its cratered campus turned to a lakeside attraction. A dedicated road connected it to the highway. Flashing lights appeared ahead next to their exit. She was beginning to get a hand on the downshift.
“Slow down Em. We have to lift a gate.”
“Gate?” She looked over the half-lit valley the only buildings of note were churches rebuilt post-Jihad and pre-constructed barns for the sheep grazing what was left of its vast parkland. Her headlights illuminated the red and black arm barrier as Arne hopped out and creakily lifted the pendulum gate.
The small adjacent security booth was dark and empty.
“It’s supposed to be guarded too. Not that the TSDF bothers anymore, everything worthwhile has already been stripped. Now it just stops joy riders.” Arne returned to the truck rubbing gloved hands to combat the cold.
“The roads aren’t maintained anymore. Budgetary problems or so General Bohm says.”They drove north over Tharkad City’s once smooth but now littered with rocky debris pavement. Its once beautiful boulevards hidden beneath snow only visible with reflective poles. Tharkad’s legendary winter and Blakist fire had eroded away the city until it was just a moldering expanse of concrete. One where walls jutted out like the jaws of an ancient beast ready to fall on unlucky travelers.
At the base of what was once the Triad Heights they bypassed another gate warning of hazardous roads. The Growler crawling over landslides avoiding the damaged drop-off of its perilous switchbacks. She watched Arne grow increasingly concerned the further they rose.
Morgana stepped out onto what was once the Marble Plaza surrounded by the ruins of almost three hundred buildings, once the envy of Empires. The only point of reference she had left was a large Lyran Commonwealth’s flag crinkling in the chilling western winds.
It had been a decade since she last stood in this location. Memories of its grandeur and destruction intruded on her, sensations she hadn’t felt in a long time. Light crept over the mountains reflecting off white snow contrasted with blackened crumbling stone.
Cold seeped past her worn red AFFC surplus coat, the only thing turning her numb or so she told herself.
“It looks like a graveyard.”She felt a firm hand on her shoulder, turning she her tearful face reflected on Arne’s sunglasses. Behind them the Commonwealth flag creaked lightly on the breeze.
“Are you okay Em?”
“I had nightmares about what it would look. I only remember the ashes falling over the mountain. We didn’t fly over it on the way out.” Morgana stepped toward the ragged edge of a ruined retaining wall. She knelt and crumbled some of the snow in her gloves before breathing deep.
“At least a graveyard is more peaceful than a battlefield.”
