Yesterday's Prisoners

[Dubble_g]

Used to write on here every once in a while (archive here: https://one-way-mirror.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html) but haven't for a bit ... until I got this one idea for a story rattling around my brain so I've started writing it out. It may be your cup of tea, it may not. But then, even tea isn't everyone's cup of tea.

Still a WIP so feedback, comments and criticism welcome!

***

Athena and Lucky sat beneath the umbrella tree at the top of the hill, amid the translucent, pale grass and red Merah flowers that dotted the hillside like a spatter of blood. There was a bottle that they passed back and forth, filled with something bronze and sweet. Athena would wipe the mouth of the bottle with the cuff of her cadet fatigues before taking a swig. Lucky didn’t. Once in a while Lucky would thump the tree, to make it furl its curving, curling branches, and give them a better view of the stars wheeling above.

It was a timeless and romantic scene, an ancient one: A boy and a girl on a hill beneath the eternal night sky.

There was nothing timeless or ancient about it.

The hill was terraformed, the grass genetically modified, the air artificially oxygenated. Her name wasn’t Athena, his wasn’t Lucky. They didn’t even especially like each other.

It was a small world orbiting a small star, with small towns and a small population, and they’d known each other since childhood. A dozen years standard. A dozen years’ worth of petty fights, squabbles, taunts and injuries. Conversation was now just a matter of finding something new to argue about.

“Aliens,” Lucky was saying with a smile. It was a flickering, serpentine thing that slowly slithered across his face from one side to the other, and was gone. “It’s just statistics. Over a hundred billion galaxies, times a few hundred billion stars each, that’s what, a septillion stars or so. Even if the chance of one of them having a habitable planet with intelligent life is one in a trillion, one in a quadrillion, that still leaves billions and billions and billions of alien races out there. We just haven’t met them yet.”

“Fermi’s paradox,” Athena dismissed. “If they’re there, where are they?”

The ground fell away from the base of the hill in gentle, rolling swells like the sea, pale white hillcrests and shadowy troughs, dotted here and there by the deeper black pools of time-worn craters. The craters were the eroded reminders of a war already two or three centuries old, when the meadow had been a killing field, and even now if you dug in the ground you’d get a shovelful of shell casings, armor fragments or bones.

Unlike the pair on the hill, it was a timeless scene. An ancient one.

“Fermi’s paradox? Showoff,” Lucky gave a half-hearted shrug, and leaned back on his elbows, tearing idly at the grass beside him, annihilating whole microcosms with each careless tug. “Well, what’s your answer then?”

“Look around you,” she waved at the tree, the blood-red flowers and colorless grass, then down at the pockmarked plains. “What happened to life on this planet? Transformed, altered, spliced, mutated, improved! Then blasted into a million pieces every century or so. Whatever potential this place once had to be the cradle of an intelligent civilization has been wiped out, turned into pretty little perennials and funnily-shaped trees. Into fortifications and bunkers. Any chance for sentient life in the universe will be wiped out before it gets as far as discovering fire by another, more advanced species.”

Lucky shrugged again, ripped a blade of glasslike grass from the ground and stuck it between his teeth. “Okay, then where are they? These aliens that are wiping everything out? Why haven’t they shown up yet?”

The umbrella tree chose that moment to unfurl itself again, the outer layer of pink fronds stretching out first, followed by each inner layer in succession in a kind of spiral pattern towards the center and the crown of the tree.

So Athena’s face was in darkness when she replied: “It’s us.” She laughed, half a chuckle, half a snort. “The genocidal killing aliens wiping out all chance at life. They’re us. We’re the aliens.”

She dusted imaginary, invisible dust from the legs of her fatigues, from the MechWarrior cadet patch on her shoulder. “Killing and destruction, they’re part of our nature. Probably of any intelligent species.”
 
Lucky laughed, a splintered sound like wood snapping. “Nature?” He spat out the blade of grass and held it up before his eye, looking straight through its frosted, glassy surface at Athena. “This grass look natural to you? You think anything at all about our current situation is even remotely natural? Two upjumped apes hundreds of light years from home, thinking we know what alien life is going to be like. See, that’s what I’m saying: The universe is so big, even one-in-a-billion chances must be happening all the time. Peaceful aliens. You admitting someone else is right. The works.”

Athena replied with a rude gesture. Lucky wasn’t looking though, so it didn’t feel very satisfying.

There was only one other cadet on the planet with the same patch on their shoulder, and it was on Lucky’s. Only two out of their age cohort had tested out for the training. It was what set the two apart, what threw them together, despite their differences. One so serious, one incapable of it. One living by wisdom, the other by blind fortune. Yet for whatever reason, they’d both made it, been accepted into the rarest, loftiest, most prestigious branch of the military.

It should have been a moment of triumph. A dream come true. A chance for them to escape a lifetime of back-breaking working scratching a living from the thin and uncooperative soil. To see the universe, if only from inside an armored cockpit 10 meters up. To win fame and glory.

“We’ll never come back, you know,” Athena said suddenly.

The planet was too small for a MechWarrior academy. Their DropShip would leave with the dawn, taking them first the hundreds of thousands of kilometers to the system jump point and the waiting JumpShip. In an eyeblink, they’d be whisked trillions of kilometers to a distant system, and then again, and again, leapfrogging across interstellar space in titanic bounds at physically impossible speeds, until at last they reached the regional capital and the academy. So far away the light of their arrival would not be seen even by the grandchildren of the friends and family they left behind.

Two people, on the edge of adulthood, leaving home to find their fortunes. Timeless. Ancient. Twisted by time and technology into something unrecognizable.

“Never? Ever the optimist, Athena.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”

“Me neither.”

She passed him the bottle and he took a half-hearted swig without looking at it. Athena brushed again at her shoulders, and the silence between them stretched for light years.

Somewhere overhead was the star around which the academy orbited, somewhere else was a star where legions of invaders had just materialized from beyond the limits of explored space. Not aliens, it would turn out in the end, but nevertheless alien, strange outsiders, artificially born and bred, but with the same hunger for war and conquest.

“Wish I could say I was glad you’ll be going with me,” Athena told Lucky.

“Same,” said Lucky.

“I still remember the time you hit me in the ear with that ice ball.”

“Good times. Spectacular.”

“Shitacular.” A sigh. “I still have no idea how you made it this far. Luck. Did you even study for the final exam?”

“Yes, but don’t let that stop you. I know perfectionists have trouble accepting other people try as well.”

“And I know cynics tell jokes to cover for their laziness.”

Athena stood, thought about good-byes, but they’d see each other again in the morning, and had said all they could say over the years. One word more or less wouldn’t matter. So instead she turned and strode down the hill, in the clumping, too-large strides, and Lucky watched her go through the filter of his blade of grass.

Both of them thinking the other wrong, not knowing the coming of the Clans would soon prove both of them half-right: There were aliens, and they were us.

Both of them thinking the night marked a change in their lives. Not knowing those lives would be shattered, altered far beyond anything they’d imagined. That events were already hurtling towards them, like the ancient light of a distant star.

And so Lucky lay back in the grass and looked up, unknowingly, at the star where the traditional ideas of what was normal and natural were even now being crushed and blasted apart, uprooted like so much fragile grass.

He pointed a finger up at them like a pistol, mimed taking a shot.

“Be seeing you soon,” he told the stars with a mocking smile.

Not knowing the joke was on him.

[AlphaMirage]

Good start, I always like your work Dubble_g even when it kept dropping my fanfics downboard

[Tegyrius]

Ahhhhh.

Yeeeesssss.

Welcome back.

[Kidd]

Ah, here we go again. Strapped in and ready to roll!

[snakespinner]

Dubble_g is back. Lock up your mechs and daughters.
Good start. :thumbsup:

[mikecj]

Nice.  I thought it was a B5 Bester reference at the end for a moment.

[DOC_Agren]

He's back!!! :thumbsup:

[Dave Talley]

nice

[Dubble_g]

Good start, I always like your work Dubble_g even when it kept dropping my fanfics downboard

Really? Don't think I ever had more than one going at a time ... well, I'll be taking my time with this one. Plenty of chance to stay at the top of the board.

Nice.  I thought it was a B5 Bester reference at the end for a moment.

As in Babylon 5? I don't think I remember that show well enough to refer to it. I think some of my earlier stories overdid the pop culture references, so I'm trying to steer clear this time around.

***

It was an alien sunset on an alien world. Night fell without darkness. The orange glow on the primary star failed and died, replaced with a cold and eerie bone light, a grave light, from the system’s distant secondary star.

Like a coin, he thought. It shone like an obol, the coin the ancient Greeks believed was needed to pay Charon for passage to the underworld.

For the Greeks, nightfall would have brought an end to the fighting, as both sides retired to their camps. So much was the same thousands of years later, but so much had changed. On this alien soil beneath its alien suns, their descendants were still fighting, but now the sunset brought no relief, only a shift to newer and deadlier ways of fighting.

An Athenian or Spartan would have recognized nothing human in the figures that moved across the plain. With twisted, hydra limbs that vomited poison and fire, chimera hides covered in inky black scales and monocular cyclopean heads, they were patchwork nightmares, the insane visions of a mad and paranoid god, harbingers of the world’s end.

The ground beneath his ’Mech’s feet swayed, side to side. Another tremor on this tectonically hyperactive planet. He waited it out, tried to enjoy the rocking chair motion. Nothing dangerous in an earthquake out here, among the rolling hills.

MechWarrior Lukas Keystone, no longer called Lucky, watched them march forward from his perch just behind the ridgeline. Like the chorus in a Greek tragedy, enumerating their follies and failures.

“Too slow. Too slow, dammit. Move it, move it, move,” he muttered to himself, watching the other two companies in the battalion set off again after pausing for the tremor, creeping down a dry riverbed, shielded from the enemy by a row of low hills. “Unity, it’s like watching UrbanMechs making a conga line. They aren’t going to wait forever, folks. Move. Move.”

Lukas had been fighting the Clans for nearly a decade, with nothing to show for it but white hairs and greyed-out memories. Too cynical, rebellious and antisocial for command, still just a MechWarrior. Too young for Luthien, Twycross or Tukkayid (though that had not saved Athena), would probably be too old by the time the Truce expired. No glories, no battle honors, just a sprinkling of hard-won victories atop a bowl brimming with defeats.

Take this op, for example.

A deep raid in Clan-held space, supposedly up against ‘weaker’ second- or third-line units. Who had proven remarkably determined and resilient, and had repeatedly handed Lukas’s unit their arses in every engagement. Even their obsolescent, retrofitted Inner Sphere designs were tougher, moved faster and hit harder than anything his unit had in their arsenal.

That made Lukas’s Locust useless in its intended role as a scout. So here he was, machine hugging the restless, unsteady ground. Squatting over its folded legs, playing forward observer.

There was a lead figurine of an owl glued to the control panel in his cockpit. It watched him with disapproving eyes. “I know, I know,” Lukas told it. “It’d be different, if you were still here.” That was an old memory, as dull and heavy as lead, one more shot of failure in the bitter draught of life.

Lukas switched his view back to the Clan positions, flipping through the various overlays—thermal, low-light, magnetic. They were obligingly holding position along a ridge parallel to his own, hull-down, only their weapons pods peaking over the crest line.

In the valley behind him, the Archers, Catapults, Crusaders, Trebuchets and Whitworths of the battalion’s fire company waited.

A digital countdown on Lukas’s control panel blinked towards zero. Another glance at the two companies in the valley. “Come on, come on, comeoncomeon.”

Zero.

With a rolling, roaring whoosh hundreds of missiles took to the sky behind him, blanketing the valley in roiling clouds of smoke. Their fiery trails arced high into the pale sky, then plunged towards the far side of the valley and the Clan BattleMechs. Here and there serpentine coils of Gatling anti-missile fire rose to meet them, bursting some apart in molten, glowing fragments. The rest slammed into the ground in front of the Clan positions in geysers of fire and earth, ghostly white smoke rings of shockwaves pulsing out from each detonation. Lukas felt the distant impacts through the neurohelmet, faint tremors shaking the ground beneath the Locust’s feet, in a weak echo of the earlier earthquake.

He watched the curtains of smoke drift slowly across the ridge, pushed and pulled apart by the tireless wind. He noted, without much surprise, the enemy was unscathed.

“Short 60 meters,” he signaled back. There was a grunt of acknowledgement from the company commander.

It didn’t really matter if they hit anything. Their job was to distract the Clanners with a bombardment of their right flank, while the rest of the battalion maneuvered in a wide arc and massed against the left flank. All they needed to do was keep the enemy’s eyes on them, and away from the valley.

A second storm of missiles took flight, looped overhead, and fell to earth. The staccato blasts echoed and re-echoed down the valley between the two ridges.

When the last thunder died away, a bird started to sing from somewhere nearby.

Lukas closed his eyes for a second, and just listened.

“Argos two, this is Argos Actual. Report. Have they taken the bait?” The commander’s voice blotted out the songbird.

Lukas opened his eyes again, keyed the channel. “Argos two. No sir, no sign of movement.”

A curse. “Acknowledged,” then the channel went dead. A moment later, the hissing roar of another barrage. The missiles hung suspended in the sky for an instant, like a flock of migratory fireflies, then fell in molten, murderous rain.

If at first you don’t succeed, try doing the same damn thing again, thought Lukas sourly. “Argos two,” he called in. “Still no reaction. They’re not taking the bait, sir.”

Whatever the commander might have said in response was lost in a series of ear-shattering booms from the right flank. The horizon lit up like an artificial sunrise, dazzlingly bright, a hundred times brighter than the tarnished light of the secondary star. Multicolored strobes of light burned across the sky, soon joined by the pounding of autocannon and the tearing scream of missile fire.

“Illium and Thebes are attacking.” The commander had probably figured that out on their own, Lukas knew, but being slightly useless seemed written into his mission profile at the moment. “Taking heavy fire.”

He upped the magnification, and shook his head. As each attacking BattleMech crested the row of hills behind which they’d been sheltering, they immediately became the apex of a cone of searing, strobing laser fire, enveloped in a blazing, fractured disco ball of killing light. Lukas watched them stagger forward under the withering fire. Like soldiers advancing in the First Mechanized War, over a millennia ago. An ancient scene. Magnificent, but it wasn’t war.

A fourth volley of missiles from his company scattered explosions across the hillside, now looking almost petty and childish, like sand thrown in the enemy’s face, when compared to the maelstrom on the right flank.

“I got movement. Two stars shifting to reinforce their left. Pioneer Lance is advancing…” Flashbulb firecracker lights were followed a second later by the crump of explosions. “Ouch. Damn. Pioneer Lance is down. All four of them. Here come the big boys. Assault One and Two engaging. Go, go, go. Taking particle fire. Ah, right in the head. Unity, we just lost a Stalker. Think they’re hitting the ground more than the other guys. Taccom says they have at least two of those Marauder refits, couple of Warhammers, at least one heavyweight Phoenix Hawk. A-1 and -2 are getting torn to pieces out there, sir. Sir? Sir?”

His only answer was a fifth barrage. With all the impact of pebbles thrown in the ocean.

“Sir, there are maybe five ’Mechs, tops, still facing us. We need to do more to take the pressure off Illium and Thebes than landscaping that ridge. Sir.”

Lukas glanced up to the 360 viewstrip running above the main window, saw what was happening behind him, and swore. The BattleMechs of the company were arranging themselves into a wedge, the commander’s Orion at the point.

“I was thinking more in terms of covering a withdrawal by Illium and Thebes sir, not charging right—” Dead silence on the channel. He punched it again, and realized the commander had locked him out. Muted him. Lukas thought about throwing open the hatch and shouting.

At an unheard signal, the BattleMechs lurched into motion, pounding up the slope behind his Locust, sweeping past him, over the top of the ridge and down into the valley below. Like knights from a bygone era, thundering forward, armor glittering in the cold light. They rode into a glowing hailstorm of fire, were swallowed up by it, and were gone.

Lukas brought the Locust to its feet, watched the figures on his monitor flicker out one by one. “I really shouldn’t” he told himself. Pushed the throttle forward. “Terrible idea.” Down the hill, in the wake of the charging company. Into the valley, already littered with dead.

[snakespinner]

Locust, light brigade.
Frontal assault against superior entrenched enemies.
How some stupid people never learn. :thumbsup:

[Dubble_g]

“D-d-discretion,” Lukas told the owl figurine through chattering teeth, “is the b-b-better part of va-val-ow. Shit.”

The Locust lurched and swayed up the icy mountain slope with each step, actuators audibly whining and groaning in protest. The damage schematic for both legs glowed up at him in a festive, cheery red. At some point the heater in the cockpit had failed, allowing him to face the prospect of possibly becoming the first pilot in the history of BattleMech warfare to freeze to death inside his machine.

There was still a Locust IIc somewhere down the slope though, and a pilot who’d probably be willing to warm Lukas up a few thousand degrees or so.

“But if you. Ow. Were so ow damn wise, Athena. Ow. Then how. Ow. Did the Clans. Ow. Take you down ow so easy? Hmm? Yee-ouch. Damn.”

With a final, despairing shriek, the left hip actuator locked in place, throwing Lukas forward against the restraints of his harness.

“No,” he told the BattleMech sternly. “No. Definitely not. Out of the question. No way.” He urged the Locust forward again in a shuffling half-step, scraping the immobile leg across the ice and dragging it after him like a dead limb. “I absolutely forbid it. I think I was quite clear just now: This is not happening.”

Movement in the left hip continued to not happen.

Instead, the dead foot smacked against a hidden boulder beneath the layer of snow and ice, throwing the Locust off-balance and pitching it nose-forward straight into the snow.

Lukas looked up in time to see a vast wall of snow filling the viewport, rushing up towards him with cold finality. “Of course,” he managed, just before the nose hit. Everything went very, very white, then very black.

Emergency lighting filled the cockpit with a subdued, comforting orange light. “Ah, that wasn’t so b—” The light flickered once, twice, then went out, sinking Lukas back into darkness. “—ut of course.”

He popped his harness and half-turned, fumbled behind the seat, feeling for the emergency survival gear that should be strapped there. Trying not to think about how deep into the snow a 20-ton machine could bury itself, if it had a mind to. Which his evidently did.

A handheld flashlight nestled at the very bottom of his gear—of course—finally yielded itself up to his questing hand, and with the pale cone of light he took stock of his inventory. Survival knife, MREs, water, 9mm pistol, but not much in the way of warmer clothing. The plains were temperate, and nobody had expected a mountain hike. He stuffed the food and other supplies into a rucksack, threw as much on as he could without limiting movement—shorts over top of trousers, an undershirt, T-Shirt and long-sleeved shirt, windbreaker.

Wedged the tip of the knife under the edge of the owl figurine. Rocked it back and forth a little, then tried to lever the lead away from the panel. It tore loose, taking a ragged chunk of plastic along with it. Lukas shrugged, put the figurine in an inside pocked, and zipped it shut.

Tore a spare T-Shirt with his knife and wrapped the two halves around his hands as makeshift gloves. Unlocked the roof hatch and braced himself, teeth clenched, eyes squeezed shut. Picturing a mountain of eager snow on the other side, just waiting to avalanche in and play a game of ‘Who Wants to Die of Hypothermia?’. Put his shoulder against the hatch and threw it open.

A handful of snow smacked into his face, shockingly, breathtakingly cold. And.

And.

That was it.

Lukas opened his eyes, knuckling away the crystals clumped in his eyelashes. Saw the ’Mech had sunk barely half a meter into the snow. Tangerine sun, cloudless sky. Perhaps a hundred meters away there was a regiment of conifer trees, prettily dusted with snow. A postcard scene, if it wasn’t for the 20-ton death machine that had planted itself face-first in the snowy slope.

He consulted his handheld GPS. The map unit flickered to life. There seemed to be nothing nearby except elevation contour lines. There was one building, or complex of buildings, further up the slope though. He tried to zoom in. LOW BATTERY SWITCH TO POWER SAVE MODE [Y/N]? He tapped ‘N’. SWITCHING TO POWER SAVE MODE. “No, you useless piece of j—” NO BATTERY. The screen went black.

Lukas stood looking at the blank screen for a minute. Breathing deeply. He considered tossing it for a moment, but put it back in his rucksack in the end. Might be worth bartering with the locals, if nothing else. He took another deep, calming breath, had a quick look around before he set off.

Far down the slope, a figure was moving. Faint echoes of its metal footfalls rang at the edge of hearing. A wedge-shaped body slung between two birdlike legs. The Locust IIc, heading right up the mountainside towards him.

Lukas grabbed the rucksack and tried to sprint for the tree line. The thick snow slowed him, like running in a nightmare, making him flounder towards trees that seemed to recede with each step, even as the crunch of BattleMech strides grew louder.

Close enough to feel now, tiny quakes in the snow. The trees still agonizingly far away. Faster, faster, bent nearly double, feeling the crosshairs across his back. Faster. Loose snow skittering downhill, rolling itself into tiny balls as it went. Faster.

Then Lukas was under the shadow of their branches. Half a dozen strides into the woods, he threw himself behind the largest tree and fell, panting, chest heaving, against the snow.

The crunching, whirring footsteps of the Locust grew in volume, reached a crescendo, and then came to a sudden halt. Silence returned to the mountainside. A bird started to pipe, high overhead, just like the one he’d heard down in the plains. Lukas fought to control his pulse. Unholstered his pistol, knowing how useless it was, trying to get his numb fingers to work the cold metal of the slide.

The faint purr of servomotors. The ping of cooling metal. That idiot bird, still trilling in its branch. But no footfalls. The thing wasn’t moving.

Lukas leaned around the tree trunk, risked a quick glance. No, the Locust was still there, standing immobile over his machine like a bird of prey with its kill. Maybe the Clanner thought he was still inside. Which meant the sensible thing to do was to keep moving, put as much distance between him and it before the pilot discovered his mistake.

The torso of the BattleMech shifted, raised slightly. Quad laser batteries on either side twitched slightly, like insectile antennae. The chin turret swiveled, tracking lens of a pulse laser across the tree line. The bird fell suddenly silent. Lukas ducked back behind the tree.

Definitely, better to put some distance. Lukas gathered himself into a crouch went the earthquake hit.

It was like trying to stand on a seesaw, or the deck of a ship in rough seas. The trees above him were swaying from side to side, shedding their cargo of fresh snow, most of it which seemed to go straight down the back of his jacket. Somewhere, a branch snapped and fell crashing to the forest floor.

Standing was out the question. He tried to crawl, gave up, settled for slithering, snakelike, through the snow, pulling himself away one arm length at a time. A clump of snow landed on his head, forcing him to stop and pat it away. As if on signal, the quaking died away.

Lukas lay still. Satisfied the earthquake was over, he got to his knees again.

A tree trunk five meters to his left blew apart, the middle section just vanishing, sending the top third vaulting into the air like a javelin before it fell back to earth.

A glance back. The Locust was still on its feet, all weapons now pointing into the forest. At him. Of course, on IR, he’d stand out like an Atlas in a scout lance. Lukas threw himself flat again as a burst of ruby and emerald light hummed and scythed through the trees, blasting trunks to kindling and murderous clouds of splinters.

There was a distant rumble, like thunder.

Couldn’t risk standing, running. Lukas rolled. Light pulsed overhead, trees popping and snapping. Clutching the rucksack against his chest. Praying. To anyone. Poseidon, god of earthquakes, maybe. But rolling, rolling as fast as he could.

There was a snake-hiss of vaporized snow as beams carved through the ground where he’d been. Hot enough to sting his unprotected neck, the back of his exposed hands, like a sudden sunburn. A tree trunk was blown clear off its roots, went spinning like a toothpick, before slamming to the ground right in front of him.

The thunder was constant now, an angry growl, insistent, demanding.

Lukas lay face down in the snow. Couldn’t roll any further with the fallen trunk in his way. Stand up and die, or lie here and die. Not much of a choice. He felt the lead figurine digging into his side, like a reproach. Sorry, Athena. You were always the smart one, and my luck finally ran out, he thought.

The thunder was loud, felt close. Closer than he’d ever heard before.

A little rain could hardly hurt him now. Lukas closed his eyes, and awaited the inevitable.

The Locust took a step. Savoring the moment perhaps.

“Come on,” Lukas muttered. “Get it over with.”

He could barely hear himself over the thunder, now turned to full-throated roar, and still growing in volume. The Locust took a step, then another, but getting fainter, away from him. Lukas opened his eyes a crack. Sat up.

The mountain was moving.

A massive, white, foaming, frothing tide was hurling itself down the slope, its voice bellowing, volcanic in intensity, incandescent in fury, bottomless in appetite. Not in a steady rush but by leaps and surges, bounding towards them like a titanic winter wolf. Its hazy, powdery spray blew into the sky like the tail of a meteorite.

The BattleMech pilot hesitated, took one step down the slope, then realized he couldn’t outrun the flow. Turned back towards the forest and took a stride, another. It was too late. The wall of snow crashed down, swept past the Locust, hitting it broadside and lifting it carelessly, effortlessly off its feet. Useless, helpless laser beams pierced the sky like a scream. Then it was gone.

[Dubble_g]

The avalanche, perhaps herded and channeled by trees and ridges further up the slope, had skirted the edge of the forest, mere meters from where Lukas lay.

“Now that,” he said almost admiringly to himself, “was lucky.”

He found his feet, and trudged over to the edge of the avalanche’s path. He squinted down the slope but could see no sign of the Locust. Was an avalanche enough to take out a BattleMech? Somehow he doubted it. The pilot would be knocked about, probably bruised and disoriented. And probably really, really mad.

Best not to stick around. Best not to push this rediscovered luck of his.

Lukas tried to recall the GPS map, and the building he’d seen there. Looked around but no clues were forthcoming. Where to go? He shrugged. “Up.” He faced up the slope, cinched his backpack a little tighter, picked up a fallen branch to act as a stick, and started walking.

After an hour or two of climbing, he stumbled across the road, paved, wide enough for two vehicles. Plowed within the last day or two—there was only a thin layer of snow on it, and high snowbanks on either side.

He was freezing. He was also getting sunburned. Red, raw skin already scalded by the near-miss of laser fire was beginning to throb uncomfortably. He took his jacket off and tried to tie the arms about his head, to keep the worst of it off. But that still left him in the oddly liminal state of sweating while also slowly freezing to death.

“Lucky,” he muttered as he plodded on. Air was becoming a prized commodity, and he probably shouldn’t be wasting it on self-deprecating humor. “Always so lucky.” Then again, doing the smart thing had never really been his forte.

Both of the system’s stars were overhead now, the primary setting, the secondary rising, the deep orange and pale blue light mixing to turn the sky the color of a washed-out peach. The temperature, already uncomfortably low, took the opportunity to plummet.

Lukas had to stop, wheezing, leaning on his makeshift walking stick. Lifted the jacket tied about his head to look up the road ahead. There, glowing like an oasis amid the frigid desert, stood the building.

It sat on a lonely crag, reached by a steep and twisting, switchback path, exposed to the knife wind along most of its length. The building itself was oddly baroque, a sprawling mass of concrete, steel and glass that seemed to erupt from the rock it perched upon. The construction looked like it was made of two pieces or phases, grafted together like hybrid plants—a flat-sided concrete bunker at one end, with narrow windows and a flat roof, and a glass-lined observatory at the other.

There was a broad asphalt parking lot at the base of the crag, in which a number of rugged tracked and wheeled vehicles were parked. There were also—he nearly screamed with relief—people moving among the vehicles, grey-clad, bundled from head to foot against the cold.

“Lucky,” Lukas nodded to himself. “Always so lucky.” He stumbled forward, walking stick forgotten, shouting and waving his arms.

The figures stopped moving, all turned to look in his direction.

“Hey!” Lukas yelled, unable to think of anything else to say. “Heyyy! Heyyyyyy!” Were they Clan? Spheroid? What were they doing here, on the top of this desolate mountain? Eco-tourists? Extreme sports fanatics? A religious cult? Refugees? Resistance fighters? Hermits? He couldn’t think of anything to say that couldn’t potentially get him killed. So he settled for: “Heyyy!”

Heads swiveled back and forth, with some pointing in his direction, and in the direction of the building. Which might be good, might not. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. “Heyyyyyy!” Some decision seemed to have been reached—one figure started walking towards him. “Heyyy!”

The grey-bundled figure, anonymous behind woolen hat, snow goggles, face mask and parka jacket, pulled off one of its gloves, unzipped a pocket and reached inside. “Hey!”

The hand pulled out something that looked an awful lot like a stubby, boxy pistol. “Hey, HEY, HEYHEYHEY!”

The figure squeezed the trigger. An ear-shattering wail assaulted his ears, and he blacked out.

He remembered that night, under the umbrella tree, but this time when Athena spoke it was in a man’s voice, and it didn’t sound like she was talking to him.

“… a Spheroid. He cannot be…” Athena pointed at the stars.

“…useful in the project…” She wiped the mouth of the bottle and handed to him.

“…would you rather … easier to … untraceable. A stroke of luck…” She stood, and walked away.

The only thing worse than being dead, Lukas decided when he awoke, was not being dead. It hurt more, for a start. He hadn’t had a headache like this since his first year at the academy. Whereas when you were dead you could just be … dead. Of course, you couldn’t really appreciate it, on account of being. You know. Dead. But there was the comfort, however abstract it would prove in practice, that at least everyone would leave you alone.

A stunner. The bastards had stunned him. Him! Harmless, innocent, appearing out of nowhere, raving like a madman … okay yeah, they’d probably been justified. Still. A stunner! On him!

He was lying on a bed. Which was an improvement over lying in the snow, if only a slight one. The bed looked like a giant cyanide pill, a sort of pharmaceutical white rectangle with rounded corners and a perfectly hard and flat back that Lukas was rapidly discovering had no pity for the curvature of the spine.

It wasn’t a hospital bed, that much was certain. Lukas sensed that having a living guest was definitely not its intended purpose. It felt more suited to more dispassionate work. Dissection, perhaps.

Lukas closed his eyes and breathed deeply, let his neck sink back, blinked and looked up at the Polaris of a single white light set in the center of the high ceiling, dividing the room into bleached highlights and reluctant shadows. He was alone, utterly alone in the room. The only other furniture was what looked like a large dessert trolley from an aggressively modern restaurant, piled high with his clothing, boots, and a printed note crowded with closely-spaced script.

There was a blanket, plain and grey, that he kicked aside as he swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the bed … table … thing. He was wearing what might have been pajamas, or minimalist training wear: Close-fitting, plain grey top and bottom, without a single logo or identifying mark. Perhaps this was an anti-capitalist commune, people who eschewed all fashion, style or brand as the work of the oppressive capitalist class. Or simply people with no fashion sense.

He stripped off the pajamas, and pulled on his own clothes, setting aside the note for later. A minimum number of layers this time, as the room as comfortable if chilly. His pistol and knife, he noted without surprise, were missing. The note, on further study, was brusque and to the point:

APOLOGIES FOR THE SECURITY. WALL INTERCOM: PUSH 5 # WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE.

There was a windowless door, and a wall-mounted intercom beside it: A ten-key number pad, round speaker and small mic, square display at the top that currently showed only a blank grey. Lukas tried the door handle. Locked. Of course. Well, what the hell, he figured. He stabbed five, the pound key, and waited.

The speaker crackled to life: “Good, you are awake. I will be down in five.” And the line went dead.

“Hello? Excuse me? Hello?” Lukas shouted into the mic. No response. He pressed five-sharp again. “Hello?” Nothing. Pressed it again. Drummed his fingers on the wall beside the intercom for a few seconds. Pressed five. And again. And again. Once more, for luck. Nothing. He started in on the other numbers: one, two, three. The grey screen beeped once, and displayed: INPUT ERROR, ACCESS SUSPENDED. CONTACT ADMINISTRATOR FOR ASSISTANCE.

The door clicked open and a woman stepped inside. Dressed in the plain, featureless grey that seemed to be the standard around here. Long lab coat, loose slacks, high-necked blouse. She paused just inside the entrance, hands clasped in front of her waist, looking at Lukas expectantly.

He wasn’t sure if he was dreaming again. Some after-effect of the stunner. He took a step back, shaking his head to clear it. Knuckled his eyes, and blinked once or twice.

“For real?” he asked.

The woman said nothing, just smiled a little and cocked an eyebrow.

“Unity,” Lukas managed at last. “Athena. It’s you, isn’t it?”

Athena, umbrella tree Athena, cold-calculating Athena, irritating him to death Athena, perfectionist Athena, only connection to home Athena, long-lost Athena, dead almost 10 years past in her first engagement against the Clans Athena. Only. Not.

“You are looking … well. Lukas.”

“Like hell I am,” he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed-slash-table. He gestured at her helplessly. “But you. I mean. You. You know? You. Here. Alive. Alive here. Here alive. You alive here. You know? Not dead. You know?” His hand froze mid-gesture. “Which is. A thing. Not being dead. Not to be rude, but: Why not?

She winked, leaned forward and made a dramatic show of putting a finger against her lips. “Top secret. You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone what?”

“About the aliens.” A pause. “Come on, I will show you.”

[Dubble_g]

Lukas trailed after Athena down sterile, white corridors under harsh fluorescent lights. Their footsteps echoed in silence.

“Aliens?”

The long-lost face glanced over her shoulder at him. “Aliens,” she nodded, then laughed. “Oh come on, alien life is nothing new, right? We have been encountering native life forms on planets since the first Exodus. Everything from microorganisms to giant lizards. Just one thing has been missing: Intelligent life. That has been something else. This is not it, but it is close. The closest anyone has ever come to the real deal, except maybe for the pinks on Stein’s Folly.”

People passed them in the corridor in groups of twos or threes, dressed identically to Athena, some clutching noteputers under their arms, or clip boards to their chests. Athena stood aside to let them pass, eyes lowered deferentially. They neither greeted Athena nor acknowledged Lukas, save for one or two sideways glances as they brushed by.

Lukas turned to watch a pair of nearly identical blond women walk by. They did not look back, but rather disappeared around a bend in the corridor. Athena marched on, and he had to jog to catch back up to her.

“What is this place, Athena?”

“Alice, if you please. It is a research station,” Athena said. “Scientist caste. Used to be geological, plate tectonics, but we have repurposed it for xenovirology.”

“We?” He reached for her elbow. “Athena … Alice. What happened to you?”

Athena looked down, patted his hand on her elbow, then gently but firmly pried his fingers loose. A few more strides down the hallway she stopped before a pair of double doors, and reached over to an intercom, just like the one in the room Lukas had awoken in. She tapped in a five-digit code, and the doors swung open. “I suppose I owe you an apology,” Athena said, stepping through the doorway. “You were right, that night before we left for the academy. The universe has more surprises in store for us than anyone can imagine.”

The room was in darkness. All he could tell from the light leaking from the hallway was that it was narrow, rectangular, and completely bare. The entire far wall seemed to be made of something reflective, or transparent.

Then Athena turned on the lights.

His brain tried to make sense of what it was seeing, tried to fit the lines and shapes into ready-made categories. But it was like fitting round pegs in square holes. The far wall was made of glass, and beyond it was a blue-black cube that held something, something alien. It was the only word. Larger than man-sized, something vaguely cephalopod or jellyfish about the body structure, a central mass and long, ropy limbs. The skin looked tough though, wrinkled and bumpy like bark. One limb seemed curled around a wedge of sharp, flaked stone. Jagged, almost metallic bumps ringing the main body, eyes or ears or mouths, he couldn’t tell. The whole thing entombed inside a massive block of mottled ice. Literally trapped in the past, he thought. A prisoner of time.

“We call them Medusae. Found this specimen up in the glacier, shaken loose by an earthquake,” Athena explained. “That is why this station was set up here. Quite something, are they not? We think they were smart, maybe a little smarter than Terran dolphins or chimps. Just beginning to use tools consistently, systematically, passing that knowledge on. In perhaps another two to three million years, they might have evolved human-like intelligence.”

“What happened?”

“A virus,” Athena sounded sad. “Wiped out the whole species, completely extinct, the whole planetful of them, as little as just 5,000 years ago. Like someone flipped a switch.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “They were here one day, gone the next. We were so close. So damn close. You understand, 5,000 years is practically nothing, an eye-blink on the evolutionary scale. It is as though they died out a microsecond before humans arrived.”

Lukas took a step forward, and another. Pressed his hands against the glass, feeling the cold leaking through from the other side. Know the feeling, he thought. The only thing worse than being dead, he wanted to tell the thing, was not being dead. “Probably just as well, for their sake,” he said instead. “Why do the Clans care though? Never struck me as the type to pursue knowledge for its own sake.”

“The disease, the virus,” she said. “There is a reason diseases deadly enough to wipe out entire species tend not to evolve naturally: There is not much of an evolutionary advantage in completely killing off the host you depend on for your own survival. So this is a rare one, perhaps even unique, something capable of wiping out an entire species practically overnight.”

Lukas felt cold then, and not from the cold seeping through the glass from the ice on the other side. He lowered his hands, turned to face Athena. “Biological warfare? That’s what this is all about? Unity, Athena, how can you—”

She was shaking her head, palms up to stop his flow of word. “You’re right and wrong again, Lukas. Lucky. Still trapped in the past, though, us against them, Inner Sphere good, Clan bad. ‘My House, right or wrong’. There are people who might use biological weapons, but you will not find them in the Clans. Come on, you know it is not our style. Ah, but. On New Avalon, Luthien, Sian, Atreus, Tharkad, even Terra, ah now, there you will find plenty who would. Yes, we are studying the virus, but to find a way of counteracting it in case the Sphere ever develops anything like it. We are interested in defending ourselves against something like this, not weaponizing it.”

Lukas folded his arms over his chest. “Every nuclear arsenal ever in history has been for ‘self-defense’,” he noted dryly.

She gave him a pitying look. “In history, perhaps. In the past.”

He threw up his hands. “You know what? Whatever. Maybe you’re right, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. Look, I’ve got to get back to my unit, while there’s still a unit to get back to. Motor pool outside must have a jeep or something—can you get the keys, get me down there?”

Athena stuck her hands in her lab coat pocket and looked at her feet. “And why,” she sighed, “would I want to do that?”

“Look, the folks here might be nice, but there’s still the whole rest of their warmongering, bloodthirsty society, you know?” Lukas took a step towards her, put his hands on either of her arms. Craned his neck so he could look into her downward-cast eyes. “Sure it’s peaceful here, but there’s a whole galaxy out there. And these guys have to be stopped. The gene-bred fanatic supersoldiers that shot your ride from under you and took you prisoner? Remember them?”

She took her hands from her pockets, grabbed his wrists, and forced him to release her. “Took me prisoner?” she said. “Oh, Lukas, Lukas. Lucky. The Clans never captured me.” A patient smile. “I deserted.”

Lukas released her as though her coat were white hot. “You who, hey, what now?”

“Listen to you: ‘Warmongering’. ‘Bloodthirsty’. The pot calling the kettle black. Bombing ourselves back to the dark ages, ruled by princes and dukes like some illiterate peasants from two thousand years ago. Lucky, you and I came from a planet of dirt-poor farmers where for two young kids, going off to learn how to kill and murder people was the best thing that could happen to us. And then along came the Clans. With technology that advanced, not regressed. Who found a way to limit war, not let it destroy their civilization. I jumped the first chance I got.”

“At the price of turning their civilization into a malking … ant colony. Where old-fashioned homo sapiens like you and me fit in somewhere beneath drones.”

“Is neo-feudalism any different? Where do commoners like you or I fit in? At least here, I have a place.” Athena turned off the light again, and stood silhouetted in the doorway, motioning for Lukas to follow. “And you might, too. If you can stop living in the past. Come on, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

[mikecj]

She sounds like Anna Sheridan. 

[Dubble_g]

She sounds like Anna Sheridan.

Not ashamed to admit I had to look this one up, too. Good lord, was that really 20 years ago? Makes my back hurt just thinking about it.
AlphaMirage is going to be mad at me for bumping his thread again but THAT'S SHOW BUSINESS BABY (jazz hands)!

***

Director Brandt was nondescript in a way that spoke of special effort, a concerted focus on appearing as dull and uninteresting as possible. Mentally, Lukas immediately dubbed him ‘Director Bland’. Brown hair, cut conservatively short, brown eyes, glasses, a face that was plain without being ugly, neither thin nor overweight, studiously expressionless. A man as grey as the clothes everyone in the facility wore.

The room was evidently a cafeteria, empty now save for the three of them, with long rows of rectangular tables and columns of identical chairs marching down either side. Brandt, Lukas and Athena sat at a round table by a floor-to-ceiling window in the luminous, well-lit half of the building. Three cups of tea sat steaming quietly on the table, untouched. Brandt held a thin, paper-sized noteputer, which he kept his eyes glued to in preference to making eye contact.

“Administrator Alice says you are from her homeworld.”

Lukas sat back in his chair, as plain and grey and functional as the rest of the place, arms crossed over his chest, saying nothing. “He is,” Athena filled the ensuing silence.

Brandt tapped the pad. “Age. Height. Hm, yes. Weight. I see. Alcohol? Tobacco? Trouble breathing? Shortness of breath?”

Lukas frowned, glanced at Athena. “Do you drink or smoke?” she put in helpfully, then turned back to Brandt. “He doesn’t smoke. Alcohol almost every day, but in moderation.”

“Hey, a lot less now,” Lukas objected.

“Family medical history? Cancer, heart disease?” Brandt glanced up at Lukas, who met his gaze impassively. The Director looked away first, back to the pad in his hand.

“Doctors, eh?” Athena gave a forced laugh.

“Athena—” Lukas started.

Brandt suddenly switched off the pad, and dropped it on the table with a clunk. “MechWarrior Lukas, your unit has been destroyed or scattered and driven from this planet. You are stranded here. If you wish to mount some kind of lunatic one-man guerilla campaign, that is your affair. We want no part in it. This is a peaceful installation, where we seek to preserve life, not end it. Now, ordinarily you should be interned with the planetary garrison. But. Administrator Alice has spoken on your behalf, out of misguided loyalty due to your shared origins perhaps, but nevertheless in recognition of her many years of loyal service we will allow you to leave, rather than handing you over to the warrior caste.”

“Leave? Just like that?” Lukas repeated. “I’m not a prisoner?”

“All we ask is that, should you by some miracle return to the Inner Sphere and report to your superiors, you explain this facility has no military value and is not a target. You may think every member of the Clans is some berserk barbarian, but I assure you, we want no part in your squabbles. On the other hand, if you wish, you may remain here with us.”

Athena reached out, put a hand over his. “Where else are you going to go? It is not so bad here,” she reassured him. “Even Spheroids can play a role in Clan society. Look at me: I am chief administrator of this station. The scientist caste wants to do what their caste says on the label: science. They need people like you and me to take care of the day-to-day business of running the place.”

Lukas withdrew his hand. “You’re asking me to desert as well?”

Brandt snorted and looked at the ceiling. Athena flinched and flicked a quick glance in his direction before looking back at Lukas. “I am giving you a choice. What is it that you think you are fighting for? We left home because we wanted a better life. This is it, Lukas. Lucky. This is your chance. Stop looking backwards, start looking forwards. Stop fighting for other people, and start living for yourself.”

“The Sphere has to know what the Clans are doing here, Athena. An alien virus, that’s. I mean it’s. The possibility for evil is just so. So. You know?”

Athena looked at him sadly. “On your honor Lukas, not a word. Otherwise the Sphere will come, and try to take our research. To use it. If you swear, I will trust you, for the memory of the home and childhood we both shared. But. If not? Then I stun you again and you wake up in a warrior caste prison camp.”

Lukas tensed, hands pressed against the underside of the table, but the squat, square stunner was already in Athena’s hand, pointed directly at his head. She slowly edged back her chair, and stood up. “Please, Lucky.” She sounded genuinely torn. “Please. Do not—don’t.”

Brandt swiveled back and forth looking at the two, like a spectator at a ping-pong match. Expressionless, clinically detached. He picked up his pad from the table, switched it back on, retrieved a stylus from the case and scribbled a note.

The cups on the table rattled faintly, a tinny chuckle of derision.

“Put your hands on the table, please,” Athena asked. “We both trained at MechWarriors. You know I can move as fast as you.”

“Ten years ago,” he agreed. “Sounds like you haven’t been doing much training since then.” Stunners emitted a focused cone of sound rather than a projectile. Flip the table, duck behind it, and the shot wouldn’t penetrate.

The cups jumped a little in their saucers, as though excited at the prospect.

Lukas stopped, looked down at them, then back up at Athena in dawning understanding. “That’s not an earthquake,” he said. Relaxed his arms and lifted them over the table. In unspoken agreement, Lukas and Athena both turned to look out the giant glass window.

There, striding towards the station, was a beaten, battered and much-abused Locust IIc.

Lukas had once seen a Dasher get punched by an Atlas. Light mechjocks usually knew to keep their distance from the big boys, but this one had been distracted, hot in pursuit of Lukas and his Locust, and hadn’t noticed the Atlas until stepped from around a rocky outcropping and its fist was filling the Dasher’s forward viewport. The Atlas’s hand was almost as big as the Dasher’s cockpit, and the blow had buckled and crumpled the side like tin foil, ferroglass bursting outward in a diamond-sparkling explosion, smashed it almost flat, leaving the clearly-visible imprint of its five fingers in the side of the Dasher’s head.

The Locust IIc didn’t look quite that bad. But it was close.

The side of the torso looked like someone had been at it with a gigantic ballpeen hammer, or like the face of a plague victim, a mass of metal blisters, scars and sores. The left arm weapons pod had snapped completely away, leaving only a twitching stump, and the communications antenna was also missing. The cockpit ferroglass, Lukas noted with disappointment, was spiderwebbed with cracks, but otherwise intact.

“Not again,” he muttered, and heard an odd echo in the room. He looked at Athena, realizing she’d just said exactly the same thing. “You know this guy?”

She nodded, then jerked her head towards the BattleMech. “You do that?”

“The mountain did,” Lukas said glumly.

Brandt, he noticed, was on his feet, speaking urgently into a communicator.

“…to cauterize the source, if necessary. Be prepared to execute Deucalion. Out.” Brandt stabbed the communicator off, and looked at Athena. “You know what to do. And get this man out of here. He could ruin everything.” Brandt tucked his noteputer under one arm, and half-jogged, half-ran from the cafeteria.

Athena’s face twisted in distaste. She shucked off her lab coat, bundled it into a ball and threw it at Lukas. “No time to get you changed. Put this on,” she said, sticking the stunner into the rear waistband of her trousers, and covering it with her blouse. “Keep your head down and mouth shut. Let me handle this.”

Lukas caught the coat, held it in his hands without putting it on. “My gun,” he said.

Athena shook her head, striding towards the intercom on the wall. “Out of the question, you playing the hero is exactly what we do not need,” she snapped. Jabbed at the intercom with her thumb. “This is Administrator Alice. Snap inspection everyone. Report to the cafeteria, immediately.”

Outside, the Locust had halted in the motor pool at the base of the crag. It appeared to consider the six-wheeled trucks and tracked snowmobiles for a moment. The questing snout of its main laser cannon tracked slowly over each vehicle in turn.

Reluctantly, Lukas put one arm into the coat, then the other. Station staff began to trickle into the cafeteria and wordlessly lined up down the center of the room in a single line under Athena’s watchful eye. He didn’t see either Brandt or the blond twins from the corridor earlier. In fact, he didn’t see any faces or body types that scanned as ‘Clan’.

He frowned, and felt Athena tugging on his arm, pushing him towards the line of waiting staff. “What is going on?” he whispered to her, but she only shook her head.

Behind him, there was a loud, staccato hum, and then a dull crump. The cafeteria was briefly illuminated in bright red and orange, then plunged into dim shadow.

Lukas turned and saw a column of flame and smoke billowing up from one of the wheeled transports. Calmly, the Locust stalked around the edge of the motor pool, like one of the Martian war machines from War of the Worlds, incinerating each vehicle one by one. A lance of searing green light, then explosion. Flash. Boom. Next. Flash, boom.

Athena’s hold on his arm went slack. “He do this a lot?” Lukas asked sarcastically.

Athena just watched the Locust. Flash, boom. “No,” she bit out. Flash, boom. “This is … this is bad.”

[Dubble_g]

Clan MechWarriors, Lukas thought sourly, always looked like they’d just stepped fresh from a military fashion magazine photoshoot or historical drama tri-vid. Not the vaguely obscene overinflated-tire musculature of the Elementals, but professional-athlete level muscular, not an ounce of excess body fat among a legion of them. Every pore just oozing pheromones and confidence.

It was with no little satisfaction, then, that he noted the Locust pilot looked like shit.

The tumble down the mountainside had left the man with a puffy, swollen face, half-covered in a veritable topographical map of bruises, including everything from grey lowlands to ugly purple mountain ranges. He slammed through the cafeteria doors, one hand on a pulse laser pistol at his hip.

“Back so soon, Point Commander Cadmus,” Athena began mildly, looking straight ahead. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Outside, a pillar of heavy grey smoke rose from the ruins of the motor pool and reached high into the mountain air. Its edges were fuzzy, teased apart by the high winds.

“Quiet, freebirth,” the Clan MechWarrior snapped, coming to a halt in front of Athena. He shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. His eyes, Lukas noted from where he stood at the end of the line, were oddly dilated—from the effects of a stimulant or painkiller, perhaps. “One of the stravag raiders has escaped in this area. He must be found.”

“Of course,” agreed Athena flatly, still not looking at him. “Was he in one of our transports?”

He ignored the question. “Every possible avenue of escape must be cut off, squeezed shut, burned out, until he is run to ground.” Cadmus was sweating too, Lukas saw, despite the cool air inside the cafeteria. “Has anyone contacted you in the last two days?”

“No, Point Commander. This is a geological research station, Point Commander. What could any raider want with us?”

“You have seen no one? A lone man, on foot.”

“No, Point Commander. I must protest, we are fully accredited with your scientist caste and so protected by your laws. This destruction of our property—”

“I will not ask you to be quiet again, freebirth.” Cadmus started to pace, up and down the row of staff, up and down. Like a caged panther. Looking at the faces of each of the personnel as he passed, barely more than a handbreadth away. “And the rest of you? You are all quite sure you have seen nothing … unusual?”

Lukas caught Athena’s eye as Cadmus passed. She jerked her head minutely, side to side. No. Her hands were clasped behind her back though, he saw. Where she’d hidden the stunner.

“Do you know what the real difference between trueborns and freebirths is, Administrator? I’m not talking about genetics, not the surface details. But deep down, something deeper than DNA.” He paused in front of a short, brown-haired woman. “You? You know what the difference is?” The woman muttered a negative. Cadmus turned to the man beside her. “How about you, stravag? The difference between the heirs of Kerensky, and the scum that floats in the sewers of the Inner Sphere?” The man shook his head.

Cadmus resumed stalking along the room, and stopped in front of Lukas. Cadmus’s swollen, manic eyes met Lukas’s, held them for an endless heartbeat. “Hmmm?” Cadmus asked. “You look a little more lively than these sorry surats. What is your opinion?” Lukas made no effort to reply. “No? No ideas?” One index finger came up and roughly poked Lukas between the eyes. Lukas fought down the urge to grab and twist the wrist behind it. “Nothing going on there at all, is there? No, hardly surprising.”

Cadmus took a step back, looking Lukas up and down for a moment. Considering. “I do not remember—” he murmured. His thumb beat a nervous tune on the butt of the pistol.

Then he sneered and turned away.

“Honor,” Cadmus declared loudly. “Duty.” His slow, booted footfalls rang through the room like gunshots, punctuating each word. “Loyalty.” He circled behind the staff, slowly marching behind them. “You freebirths are incapable of these three. You are like primitives, like pre-civilization Neanderthals, driven by base needs and urges. You have no honor, only greed. Your only duty is feeding those appetites. And your only loyalty is to yourselves.” Reaching the end of the line, he walked past them, out to the window, where he stood with his back to them and watched the last of the flames flickering from the burned-out vehicles.

“I fought at Tukkayid you know.” It was hard to tell if he was talking to them, to the window, or to the mountains and snow outside. “That’s why they sent me here, to a garrison cluster. The shame of it. Shame? The shame is yours. Your people’s. We should have won, we would have won, but you cheated. You fought without honor. My Star Commander was killed by a vibramine—a vibramine! A coward’s weapon. ComStar? Bah. Usurpers, the unwanted castoffs even from the dregs of your own society, loyal to no name or family.”

He whirled back around to face them, and unholstered his pistol. “Just like you. Loyal only to yourselves,” he repeated. A tremor shook the hand holding the pistol. “This is why one of you will tell me where the fugitive is.”

Cadmus snapped the safety off. Luminescent green lights blinked on along the side. The barrel wavered, leveled at the line of people standing in front of him. “Or I start shooting people until you change your minds.”

Athena took a step forward. “Point Commander, I—”

Cadmus fired.

It was hard to tell if he’d meant to or not. There was a kind of spastic quiver in his wrist, his hand clenched. A strobing burst of three beams spat from the barrel, striking the brown-haired woman and the man beside her. There was a charred, cooked meat smell, and the woman looked down at her blackened coat and blouse, grey now darkening to black with her blood. Her eyes were round with shock, her mouth worked soundlessly—then she slumped forward and sprawled face-down on the ground.

The man beside her clutched the charred skin of his smoking, smoldering arm, teeth gritted, blood dripping down his arm, along his hand and onto the floor.

“I told you to be quiet,” Cadmus said, looking almost surprised at first, but quickly subliming back into outrage. “I told you, quite clearly. Everyone heard me. My instructions were quite specific. Be quiet, I said. You should have listened. You should have done what I said. You should. You should. Now look what you did, Administrator. This is entirely your fault.”

He swung the laser pistol to point it at Athena. Lukas tensed, waiting for it to drift, if only a degree or two, give him that little margin. He didn’t think he could take a Clan MechWarrior, but maybe. Buy Athena enough time to get the stunner, put this guy down.

“Yes, he is here.” Athena said, resigned. “A fugitive came to us for aid. He is here.”

Lukas froze.

Cadmus smiled. Triumphant. Satisfied. “You see? So much for Inner Sphere loyalty. Where is he?”

Athena’s eyes met Lukas’s, then slid past. Her shoulders sank, as though feeling the weight of the past.

“Lower levels,” she said, dully. “Deucalion room.”

Lukas blinked.

Cadmus waved a hand dismissively. “Irrelevant then. Bring him here.”

“He is armed. He saw your BattleMech approach, and said he would shoot us if we did not get rid of you. Threatened to kill us. He will suspect a trap.”

It all came out so smoothly, Lukas thought. Just the right note of resigned acceptance and unwilling cooperation. If nothing else, the years had taught Athena to lie exceptionally well. Cadmus was eating it up, he could tell. This played right into his conception of Spheroids as weak and cowardly.

“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy, is it?” Cadmus sighed theatrically. “Take me to him, then. You and—” He pivoted again, bringing his gun to bear on Lukas. “That one. The other mice I think will stay put. This one looks like he has some spark. The two of you will walk in front. If I sense a trap, I will shoot him first, then you. Understand, Administrator?”

Athena walked slowly, stiffly to the cafeteria doorway, past the grey-black heap of the dead woman, face expressionless again. “I know my duty, Point Commander,” she said. And beckoned Lukas to join her.

[Kidd]

I don't think I've ever heard of a characater named "Brandt" that didn't, somehow, turn out to be bad news...

[Dubble_g]

I don't think I've ever heard of a characater named "Brandt" that didn't, somehow, turn out to be bad news...

Don't worry there is absolutely nothing going on here pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

***

They took the stairs. There was an elevator, but Cadmus wasn’t about to get into an enclosed box with two potential enemies. So. They took the stairs. Athena and Lukas in front, side by side. Cadmus had made them bind themselves together with a length of wire, Lukas’s right wrist to Athena’s left. The Clan MechWarrior walked a few paces behind them, too far to easily twist and grab his gun, but close enough to shoot them down if they ran.

The stairs zig-zagged down and down and down. A dozen steps, a landing, a 180-degree turn, another dozen steps, another landing, and so on down. Footsteps echoing and re-echoing in the stairwell shaft. They must be underground by now, Lukas reckoned, burrowing far into the crag that the facility sat on. Going down through geological layers. A million years of this planet’s history with every switchback turn.

Cadmus was walking slower now. Talking slower. Whatever drugs he’d pumped himself full of gradually wearing off. Hadn’t done anything to improve his mood though, or stopped him from holding forth on the numerous and manifold faults of the inhabitants of the Inner Sphere.

“I cannot understand what you are so upset about,” he was saying. “Everyone, even you freebirths, can agree the Star League was a golden age. When we are victorious, there will be one again.”

“That ever work?” Lukas wondered out loud. “Ever been a time when things were bad, then someone came along and fixed everything good and shiny as new, just like they were before?” Athena squeezed his right hand, and gave him a hard look. Meant: Don’t push your luck.

“Maybe not,” Cadmus admitted, unconcerned. “But past failure is no excuse not to try. When the ilClan is established on Terra, humanity will be reborn. Keep moving.”

“At what cost?” Athena squeezed his hand again, harder this time. Lukas felt little sympathy. She had thrown her lot in with these people. Seemed like people could overlook a lot of ugliness when it didn’t directly affect them.

“Ah, this is about the woman again. You Spheroids, always harping on past hurts and injuries. We Clans on the other hand are realists. We know there is always a price to be paid for progress.”

Which was rich for a culture obsessed with a three-century-old grudge, Lukas thought. The whole lot of them still pissed their great-to-the-whatever grandparents had been done dirty by the Great Houses when the thinly papered-over cracks of the old Star League had finally become blindingly obvious and the whole rotten edifice had come crashing down around their ears. (Unity forbid you should go so far as to suggest having an intergalactic society run by military aristocrats—i.e. those very same dearly beloved ancestors—had been part of the problem).

Just like his old unit commander back down on the plain, the Clans were all stridently, shrilly insistent on their holy, destiny-given right to make the same mistake twice.

But he took Athena’s hint. He’d probably pushed Cadmus enough.

“Administrator, I do hope this is not some ploy to distract me or waste my time. I shall be … vexed with you. And the rest of your staff.”

Athena stopped, and turned stiffly to look at the Point Commander. “You have my word, we are almost there. On my honor.” She was about to turn back, then paused. “It is a high security area, Point Commander. There are two airtight doors. The inner one will not open until the outer one is closed. The raider is inside the innermost chamber.”

Cadmus looked tired. Coming down off the stimulants and adrenaline from earlier. Maybe if they waited long enough, he’d just keel over and drop off to sleep. Probably too much to hope for, Lukas sighed. Even he would never be that lucky.

“Yes, yes. Get on with it.”

At the very bottom of the stairwell, on the deepest level of the research station, they reached a door like a JumpShip hatch, a massive slab of rubber-rimmed metal with a small viewport. Cadmus waved them back and took a quick peek through the window, then stepped back again. “Empty,” he confirmed. “Open it. You two first. Inside, then stand at the far end.”

Athena squeezed Lukas’s hand again, more gently this time. Trust me. It took the strength of the two of them to lever the door slowly open. They stepped inside the long, narrow corridor, ending in a second hatch nearly identical to the first. Lockers lined either wall, and there were a series of bulges in the ceiling, each dotted with rings of round, black holes. They walked to the end, and waited by the far hatch.

Satisfied, Cadmus stepped through after them.

“You have to close it,” Athena said, pointing behind him. “This one will not open otherwise.”

Cadmus grunted. Frowned a little, tired eyes calculating. He kept the pistol pointing at them while the other hand reached behind him for the door handle. It was heavy, and even as he strained it barely moved. He tried again, but succeeded in shifting it only a few millimeters. With a curse, Cadmus turned, braced his feet and pulled on the doorway with both hands.

Now, Lukas thought. This was their chance. He crouched to spring, then was jerked off balance when Athena hauled him sharply back, furiously shaking her head. Lukas pointed at the Clanner’s back emphatically. What were they waiting for? Athena held up her free palm, made shushing up-and-down motions. Patience, wait.

With a final hiss, the hatchway slammed shut.

“Now, open the other. Is there a password the raider is expecting?”

“Yes,” Athena nodded. “’Deucalion.’”

Cadmus waved his pistol at them. “Be my guest.”

Another heavy handle, another grunting effort to get the door open. This one swung inward, not outward like the other one. There was a hiss of escaping air as it hinged. “Deucalion,” Athena said clearly, and stepped through, half-dragging Lukas stumbling after her.

The room on the other side of the doorway, to his no great surprise, was empty.

A small rectangle of steel walls, floor and ceiling, painted a medicinal white. A single light set high in the ceiling, directly beneath which was another one of the rounded-rectangle beds, much like the one Lukas had found himself on when he woke up. The whole setup was pretty much like the room he’d been in, he noted glumly.

Which meant there was nowhere to take cover, no convenient bits of body armor left lying around, no handy stockpile of weaponry for blasting their captor out on his insufferable arse. They were, in a matter of a few very short seconds, royally screwed. Lukas turned to Athena, and mouthed: Now. What.

Behind him, Cadmus started coughing.

It started as a slight clearing of the throat, like a man about to make an important speech. Then bubbled into a short, barking cough. That went on and on and on. Cadmus tried to taking a wheezing breath, then his lungs rebelled and spasmed again. By the time Lukas and Athena had turned around, the man was doubled over, clutching his chest, thin strands of drool leaking from his mouth and dribbling onto the metal floor.

“The raider,” he gasped. “The … I must …”

“You already shot the raider, Point Commander. Remember? The woman in the cafeteria. Mission accomplished. Now, it has been a trying day, Point Commander,” Athena said solicitously between the man’s hacking, strangled gasps. She held up the wrist bound to Lukas, and began to work the wire loose as she spoke. “You need to take a rest and recover your strength.”

By the time she had worked them free, Cadmus was on his knees, sounding like he was trying to vomit up his throat and lungs. His saliva was now flecked with blood. The laser pistol clattered to the ground, unnoticed.

Lukas stooped to pick it up, careful to avoid touching Cadmus. He stopped with his fingers almost touching the grip. Cadmus fell on his side, curled into a fetal ball, his breath coming in quick, shallow, animal pants between wracking sobs. Lukas looked back at the gun again, reconsidered. Withdrew his hand.

“Oh, pick it up,” Athena said scornfully. “A little late for that now. You were exposed when you arrived.” She fished a communicator out of her lab coat pocket. “Yes, Director. Deucalion. We can stabilize, re-insert him into the population and observe.”

“Exposed.”

“Don’t worry, it’s harmless to you or me,” she smiled, reassuringly, as Cadmus at her feet sobbed up black gobs of blood. “We’ve engineered it to target the warrior caste DNA. You’ll be perfectly fine.”

A team of men in hazmat suits came through the outer door, brushing wordlessly past Lukas, and lifted Cadmus up onto the table. Anonymous inside the bulky, grey cloth, they busied themselves about the MechWarrior, strapping a mask over his face, injecting Cadmus with something that put the man under. His neck went limp, smacking the back of his head against the table with a crack.

“Perfectly fine.”

[AlphaMirage]

Not ashamed to admit I had to look this one up, too. Good lord, was that really 20 years ago? Makes my back hurt just thinking about it.
AlphaMirage is going to be mad at me for bumping his thread again but THAT'S SHOW BUSINESS BABY (jazz hands)!

***

Just to be contrary I am going to literally knock myself down board to comment on this.  Like the story thus far Dubble_g very creative and evocative can't wait to see how it develops

[Dubble_g]

Just to be contrary I am going to literally knock myself down board to comment on this.  Like the story thus far Dubble_g very creative and evocative can't wait to see how it develops

In case there's any doubt, my comment was meant in the spirit of gentle joshing. Actually, I try to be sensitive to this kind of thing: I usually post once a day, at around the same time, so there's no appearance of trying to knock anybody down the board.

I do appreciate a kind comment from another writer here, though. Thanks very much!

I tend to avoid reading other people's stories, to be honest, as I don't want to end up copying others even subconsciously. Plus, although word of encouragement is probably welcome, I know, I'm always convinced I'll come across as terrible insincere. I've nothing in the pipeline at the moment though, so may change that policy...

***

“You did weaponize it.”

They were back in the cafeteria, Lukas and Athena. Same table. Same everything, except for the brown stain on the floor. It was a quiet, peaceful scene. A man and a woman, sitting by the window. Pristine, glittering snow and majestic mountains outside.

There was nothing quiet or peaceful about it.

“Against the Clans, Lukas.”

There had been another earthquake while they sat, a little one, an aftershock of the one that had send Cadmus and his Locust tumbling down the mountain. Lukas had barely registered it.

“That’s why they need Spheroids to help run the facility, because we’re immune to the virus they’ve created.” Lukas stared dully out the window for a time. How long he’d been staring, he didn’t know. Not seeing his reflection or the snow outside, but the pathetic, curled-up ball that had once been his enemy. “You did weaponize it.”

“Don’t be petulant. You should be overjoyed. We have developed an airborne, invisible, 100% lethal weapon against your enemies.”

“Against their own people. Unity. Their own people. Why?”

“The usual. Power. Politics. Some things do not change, even after a thousand years, even among aliens.” Athena picked up her tea, blew on it and took a drink. It amazed him that you could be so detached, walk away from a man whose insides were tearing themselves apart, and then go have a nice, hot cup of tea. “Look, both the Clans and Inner Sphere have tried handing control of government to our respective warrior classes, either genetic or the militarized aristocracy, and look what it has gotten us. Centuries of bloodshed, with no end in sight. Putting warriors in control of your government ensures your first, last and only recourse to any and every disagreement is war. Perhaps, it is time for someone else to try.”

“A coup, against the warrior caste.” The transports had finished burning outside, leaving just charcoal lumps of steel and melted rubber. Cadmus’s Locust still stood there, battered and forlorn. “What happens now?”

“We have stabilized him, made it look like a local fever. I have contacted the garrison, and they are on their way to collect him. The viral suppressant will wear off in a day or so, and he will become contagious again.”

“And then what?”

“And then they die, of course. Every warrior on the planet. We will watch the spread carefully. A lot of valuable data to be gained, at least until the planet is quarantined. Our first large-scale test! Oh, do not look at me like that. What did you expect? Lukas, these are your enemies. You would have shot them dead if you met them on the battlefield.”

“But this…”

“Ah, the ancient prejudices. Not ‘honorable’, is that it? Pistols at dawn, mano a mano, is that what you want? Even when that would hand your enemy every advantage. Do you think it matters to the dead how they died? I have never heard a body ask how it got so cold.” She set down her tea. “Self-serving rules: No nuclear weapons, they kill people too quickly. No chemical or biological weapons, they kill them too slow. Oh, but it just so happens the weapons which the warrior class controls and has a monopoly on happen to kill people in just the right number at just the right speed. How lucky that worked out so perfectly. All entirely humanitarian, of course, and banning other weapons is surely not based on trying to stop anybody else for acquiring weapons that would make MechWarriors obsolete. Unity. You are like medieval knights, trying to ban the longbow.”

“I thought it was more about the potential of these weapons to escape anyone’s control and murder millions of innocents, rather than those who’d signed up to fight, knowing the risks.”

“You are tired,” Athena smiled sympathetically. “It has been a trying day. You need to take a rest and recover your strength.” A chime rang through the building, a digitized reproduction of an ancient bing-bong bell tune, from pre-exodus Terra. “End of shift. Come on, I will show you to your quarters.”

She stood, and extended her hand to Lukas. He looked at it for a moment, took a deep breath, and took it. Let her pull him to his feet. And suddenly became aware of how close he was standing to her. “Athena, I.” He placed his hands on her hips. “I, well. You remember the time I hit you with that ice ball? I—” He leaned closer his eyes on hers.

“Yes, Lucky?”

“I just wanted to say—” One hand traveled around to the small of Athena’s back.

A faint smile twitched across her face. “Go on.”

“—I’m not sorry.” His hand found the stunner in the back of her waistband. Tore it free while the other hand on her hip pushed her back a staggering step. Her mouth was still a rounded O of shock when he brought the stunner up and pressed the firing stud.

It was like watching a boxer get hit with a knockout punch. Athena’s face when animal-slack, eyes tracking aimlessly, sightlessly, then her body let go and she dropped straight for the floor, her forehead catching the edge of the table with a crack and bouncing away, leaving a faint smear of blood.

Lukas knelt, felt her pulse, turned her on her side so she wouldn’t choke. Stuffed the stunner into a coat pocket and strode quickly from the room.

The Clans were coming to recover their ‘sick’ MechWarrior. Who would expose them all to the virus. Maybe it would end there, maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe the virus wouldn't spread, maybe it would be less effective than they thought. Maybe the Hindenburg was as safe as houses, maybe the Titanic was unsinkable, maybe people were never as smart as they liked to think. He wouldn’t take the risk. The Clans had to be warned, made to stay away. And he had an idea how.

He walked briskly down the corridors, doing his best to look like he knew where he was going. The other staff ignored him, just as they’d ignored him before. An advantage to Clan snobbishness—it was beneath them to notice you. He just needed to find an exit. Down a flight of stairs. Exit must be somewhere to the left. Turn, turn. Brush past another Spheroid, pushing a trolley laden with blasted bits of transport.

Lukas was almost past when a hand grabbed his elbow.

“Hey, aren’t you the guy—” the Spheroid asked, “Who errrr---gh…”

Lukas whirled, fired the stunner at point blank range. The Spheroid jerked his head back instinctively, smacking the back of his skull into the wall, rebounding forward so the muzzle of the stunner was almost touching his forehead when it fired. The man’s muscles spasmed and twitched, and he slumped against the wall before falling over sideways.

Just as two more people came around the far corner. “Hey!” One of them shouted.

Lukas fired, but the stunner was a close-range weapon, and a focused cone of sound didn’t do much more than give you a headache beyond knife-fighting range. The two figures scrambled back around the corner.

“Lucky, always so lucky,” Lukas swore at himself. Ripped off the lab coat, and started to run. Left. Dead end. Back, go straight. Left, down a corridor. An alarm sounded, high and shrill. A puzzled face appeared in a doorway as Lukas pounded past.

“Hey, what’s the—hey!”

Lukas slammed the door shut with one hand, and kept running.

There, the exit. Double doors, opening outwards. Lukas set his shoulder, and plowed straight through them, flinging them open, bursting out into the frigid air outside. A blast of icy wind caught him almost immediately, sent him staggering two steps sideways.

Half a dozen winter-bundled figures were just outside the doorway. Most with goggles and scarves, but the closest one’s face was clearly visible: Director Brandt. The man turned as Lukas burst through the doors frowned, then anger replaced confusion. “Stop him!” he shouted to the others. “STOP HIM!”

Hands reached out for Lukas. He ducked under one pair, swept the legs out from another man. Awkward and weighed down by their winter gear, the scientists couldn’t stop Lukas from slipping past, as he bolted across the asphalt. Towards the waiting specter of the Locust.

He’d make it, Lukas thought. The ladder up to the BattleMech’s cockpit still dangled free, twisting and turning in the mountain wind. He’d make it.

A spray of laser beams zipped by him, scorching the ground and sending up bursts of vaporized snow like exclamation marks. He looked back. Brandt had Cadmus’s laser pistol, and was down on one knee, pistol braced in both hands. Brandt fired again, too high this time, and Lukas felt the heat across his scalp as the beams missed by millimeters.

He might not make it.

Lukas leaped, grabbed for the wildly swinging ladder, got one hand on it, then the other. Metal brutally cold beneath his skin, the numbness shooting up his arm to his elbow. He clenched his teeth, hauled himself upwards. The wind working in his favor now, pushing and pulling him almost at random, the ladder arcing like a pendulum and throwing off Brandt’s aim. Laser beams sparked off the nearest leg of the Locust. Lukas kept climbing. Faster, had to climb faster.

Looked down. Brandt was running forward now, closing the range. Once he was directly under the ladder, it would be child’s play to shoot him down, Lukas realized. Had to climb faster. Fingers and hands gone totally numb now, could barely feel the slap of the metal with each rung. His left foot slipped, and he dangled for a precious second, before he hooked it and hauled himself up, up and up.

The heat in his leg was almost welcome, before the blaze of pain followed. Lukas looked down, and saw his pant leg smoking, and a bloody hole burned through the left calf. Brandt almost directly beneath him now, pistol braced in two hands. Lukas looked up. He was almost there. Almost. Haul, haul, left leg dragging behind him like a dead weight. Almost there, the top of the BattleMech almost in reach. Got one arm over the top of the torso. More sparks as beams deflected off the BattleMech’s armor. Haul.

And he was on top of the ’Mech, shielded from Brandt’s laser fire.

[Dubble_g]

Hey-o, last installment today. Thanks for reading.

***

Lukas hit the ladder retract, and then dragged himself along the top of the Locust IIc to the still-open cockpit hatch, and dove headfirst inside.

The Clan cockpit was familiar and strange all at the same time, like coming back to your childhood home after someone else had been living there. The pilot’s seat was where it should be, throttle, weapons selection and control, sensors, all looking slicker and sleeker than they had in his old 3M, but still recognizable. And, miracle of miracles, the arrogant Clanner hadn’t shut the reactor down.

“Always so lucky,” Lukas grimaced to himself, and hauled himself painfully into the chair. His leg was now slick with blood, and he had to use both hands to lever it painfully into position. Took stock. The armor schematic, like an uncooperative traffic light, was mostly red with a dash of yellow. The sensors were glitchy but worked, although the cracked front ferroglass leaked worse than a Capellan spy. Gyro was wobbly but still functional, so at least it would move. Half the lasers were offline (oh right, the arm had snapped away), and communications were out: tightbeam laser, radio, the works. How to warn the Clans before they shot him down? Morse code maybe.

There was a rattle on the armor of the Locust, like a light fall of hail. Lukas switched on the exterior cameras, saw Brandt still below him, firing his pistol up at the Locust, while someone else seemed to have found Lukas’s service pistol and was busy pinging bullets off the side.

Lukas slipped the slim, lightweight neurohelmet over his head, wincing a little at the stale-sweat smell, toggled on the main laser cannon, aimed, and fired. Brandt had a moment to look up, see the maw of the cannon aimed down at him and take a step back, before he became a greasy black smear across the surface of the parking lot.

His companion dropped the pistol and sprinted back inside the research facility.

Lukas grunted, satisfied, turned the Locust around and sent it in a lumbering walk down the road that snaked up the mountain.

The Clan rescue team hove into view shortly, consisting of the expected six-wheeled MASH truck, and a quite unexpected bodyguard in the form of a Griffin IIc.

The Clan refit was almost dainty compared to its Inner Sphere ancestor, shaving off 15 tons, yet still packing a quartet of missile launchers along with the heavy punch of a laser. Even if his ’Mech hadn’t been missing half its weaponry and three-quarters of its armor, the thing would still have outweighed Lukas’s Locust IIc nearly two-to-one. It was a fight he would almost certainly lose.

“Let’s hope there won’t be a fight, then,” Lukas said, trying to sound optimistic. He’d have to trust in his luck.

The ’Mech and truck slowed as they saw him approach. Lukas halted the Locust dead center in the middle of the road, blocking the truck’s path. He aimed the nose cannon at the road at his own feet, and burned a line across it in vivid green fire. Hoped that would get the message across: Do not cross this line.

“Take the hint, guys. Take the hint.”

The Griffin stepped forward, shielding the MASH truck with its body. It was hesitant though, the main laser cannon not pointed directly at Lukas, as such, just in his general direction. The head unit twisted left and right, as though listening to something.

“Not worth it, buddy. Back off, just back off.”

On cue, the head unit swiveled to look directly at his ’Mech.

Of course, the pilot couldn’t hear him, Lukas told himself, a half-smile on his face. Just coincidental timing. No way that MechJock could hear him … although. The Griffin could certainly hear other people. Such as. Such as the research facility directly behind him. Who would tell the Clanner whatever they—

Lukas reversed the Locust a skittering step, just as a column of burning red light pulsed by the viewport.

“No, you arsehole, I’m trying to save you,” Lukas shouted, then threw the ’Mech to one side as a hail of nearly two dozen missiles carved through the air and blasted into the ground at its feet. Unity, maybe he would have to try Morse code. He aimed the four remaining arm-mounted lasers into the sky, and fired a trio of quick pulses: S. Now for three long pulses—

The Griffin fired again. The Locust shuddered violently, and a new set of warning lights began blinking excitedly on his screen. Outside, the remaining small laser weapons pod went wheeling away, hit the ground, bounced once, twice, and settled heavily into the snow.

On the road, the MASH unit’s tires spun, kicking up a plume of packed snow, caught, and sent the truck rocketing off. Straight towards the research facility. Towards the comatose, infected body of Point Commander Cadmus, and the killing bug he carried. Patient Zero in a carefully engineered plague.

“No, dammit, nonono,” Lukas ducked the Locust under another missile salvo, then threw it into a run after the truck. “Stop, stop you idiots, stop.” He aimed the remaining laser just ahead of the MASH unit, blasting divots out of the road.

The truck swerved, skidded sideways. Found traction. Slewed around and accelerated.

Lukas slammed the throttle open, urging his machine to catch up. Range numbers on the reticle began to shrink, but slowly, too slowly. With the gyro damaged, the cockpit bounced him like a jackhammer, the targeting reticle dancing across the screen in an epileptic frenzy. Try to hit the tires, force them to stop. He fired. Laser scored the road just behind the truck. Damn. Griffin behind him, angling for a shot, not risking missiles now he was close to the MASH unit, but laser pulses stabbing through the air close, so close.

Almost on top of the truck now. All Lukas needed was one more shot. Crosshairs finally settled over the rear wheel, locked. Gold. A happy tone of approval in his headphones. Squeezed the trigger. Just a split second after the Griffin fired. Its beam hit first, burning into the left hip joint, myomer fibers glowing and curling in the heat, metal bones slagging and charring in the inferno. Locking the hip in place. Throwing his shot off.

Harmlessly wide, missing by a dozen meters. Missing by a mile.

No hope of catching the MASH truck. Racing off, get further and further away, his Locust limping now. The Griffin would be on him in seconds.

One last chance. Have to trust his luck. Lukas ripped open a panel on the controls, exposing a row of three switches and a big red button. He flipped all three switches down in quick succession, ignoring a series of increasingly alarmed wailing of sirens inside the cockpit, punched the button, then fumbled for the ejection lever. Pulled it, and was instantly rocketed into the sky.

Overhead were the two suns, the hot orange one and the distant blue one, and as he vaulted skyward, it seemed as though they were close enough to touch. Then the parachute deployed, blocking his view.

Below, the shielding dropped from the fusion reactor of the Locust. There was a microsecond flash, incredibly bright, a brief blip of pure, almost godlike radiance. A split second of dark. Then the explosion. Suddenly superheated air blasted free of the torso in an incandescent ball of flame, tearing the Locust apart, sending meter-sized fragments of it flying in every direction.

The blast wave raced across the mountainside like a tidal wave, catching the rear of the MASH truck, lifting it clear of the road, and flinging it on its side.

It blasted into the Griffin IIc, knocking it to its knees.

It blasted into the tiny, fragile gnat that was Lukas’s ejection seat. Swatted him aside. The seat’s parachute tore free, then his restraints, throwing him free of the seat with a scream, and he was tumbling, around and around and head over heels.

Falling. Under twin suns on an alien world, while a third, artificial sun burned beneath him. Falling, like Icarus, from flying too close to the sun. A timeless, ancient scene.

There was nothing timeless or ancient about—

There was a brief puff of snow when the body hit the ground. Soon lost in the tireless, endless wind.

***

The End.

Inspiration for this one was two-fold. On the one hand, wanted to do my usual trick of giving the BT universe black hats a coherent worldview and motivations (the Society in this case, like the WoB in "Message in a Bullet" and the Smoke Jaguars in "To Climb Back Again" -- see the archive link at the bottom of the post), and on the other, experimenting with tension--not letting the protagonist have everything their way, but throwing a series of obstacles at them until the final success/outcome.

Thematically, it's a take on the idea that 'war never changes', trying to show how wildly different war in BT would be compared to what we've known historically.

[XaosGorilla]

Nice.  Good to see That no good deed goes unpunished.

[mikecj]

Very nice Society story, thanks for sharing

[Kidd]

Nice. Short, but nice.

Yeah the Jihad is a trove of unexplored POVs.

[Dubble_g]

Nice. Short, but nice.

Yeah the Jihad is a trove of unexplored POVs.

True. I'm going to be away for a bit over the holidays so thought I'd wrap this up before I left, plus it's a fairly lightweight idea. No sense in dragging it on longer than necessary.

Thanks for reading, guys.

[Icerose20]

Just my take, but spending so much time on Lukas for that ending was a waste of the readers time.  Especially if you wanted to 'focus' on the Society's POV.   

Good read till the end.   

[Tegyrius]

Enh.  I think I've posted before that much of Dubble_g's work examines the realities of the BT universe through a noir-toned lense.  That's different from many of the canon novels but "different" isn't the same as "wrong."  Contrary to what Stackpole would have us believe, not every protagonist is omnicompetently heroic and not every journey ends well.

He's also, in my own opinion as a professional writer, the most technically-proficient fanfic contributor currently active on the board, and better than many published game novelists.  So I never consider reading his work a waste of time.

[FaithBomb]

Just gone done reading this, and I'm super impressed. I really love the...shall we say, less traditional setting. I'd also like to echo the positive sentiments regarding the ending. Every character's journey has an eventual end, and they're not all glorious or positive. Sometimes you go to Z'ha'dum and die....and stay dead. ;) (How's that for your Babylon 5 reference?)

[Kidd]

So I never consider reading his work a waste of time.

YEAH BUT WE WANT MORE! MORE! MOOOORRE!

[Dubble_g]

On mobile today, so please excuse the (doubtless rampant) autocorrect-isms and other fat finger mistakes...

@Icerose20 That's an interesting point about making the story from the Society's point of view. Don't know if I could make that work, but it's something to think about. As to idea of the reader being owed something in return for their investment of time is one I've seen frequently the last few years, especially in regards to fantasy series by George Martin and Patrick Rothfuss. Without getting into the merits of either side, honestly I just try to have fun writing, and hope the result is fun to read.

If you like straight up military sf or intergalactic scheming there are a few authors here who frankly write it far better than I ever could. AlphaMirage (up thread) is a prolific and inventive writer, and I see FaithBomb has also posted a link to their story recently.

As both Tegyrius and FaithBomb mentioned, I try to include different settings, viewpoints or themes than you get in the official fiction. To me, that's what fanfiction is all about. Not to blow my own horn (ok yeah that's  what Imma gonna do) if you'd like something novella-length and a bit more uplifting, I've written a few stories a touch less bleak:

To Climb Back Again
http://one-way-mirror.blogspot.com/p/climb.html

Message in a Bullet
https://one-way-mirror.blogspot.com/p/message-in-bullet.html

@Kidd if I get an idea, there will be more ... currently filling my idea notebook with non-BT things at the moment. There's a Viking story, a pair of assassin's during the 30 years war, an amnesiac android in a post-apoc future... lord knows what I'll do with any of it though.

Ok now my eyes hurt from squinting at the tiny screen. Thanks for the very kind words. Stay frosty.