To Climb Back Again

[mikecj]

Nice speech of his...

[Dubble_g]

Nice speech of his...

oh so deep.  You are developing this story just fine.

Right. I try to combine the thinky bits with the Michael Bay bits. 'Nother bit of speechifying in this episode, before we get back to things exploding.

well this is getting more interesting we like 8)

Your musically inclined friends--and their clicks--are always most welcome!

I'll be away for 2-3 days, back next week. Till then.

* * *

An overhead skylight had broken, allowing rainwater in, forming dirty pools at the bottom of the main escalators. The beige floor tiles were cracked and mud-splattered; they crunched and shattered under Cutter’s feet. Most of the shops had been broken into, looted, unwanted clothes, books or other junk left in untidy piles to gather dust. A few ferns and trees in planters had died, their leaves turned brown and scattered across the broken floor.
 
After some hunting, Furey found the control to bend the knee joints, and wedged the ’Mech behind and under the escalators, out of view from the road. He pulled his carbine out from under the seat as Phoebe unlocked the cupola hatch and pulled herself out of the cockpit.

First Furey then Phoebe slid down the side of the ’Mech and jumped to the ground. They found one of the closest stores had been a wood furniture shop, a number of rocking chairs and chests scattered haphazardly about and—Phoebe fist-bumped Furey’s shoulder in delight—a four-poster bed in the far corner, a bare mattress still sitting slightly askew on the carved frame.

“One of us takes the bed, the other the mattress?” Furey suggested.

“Don’t be such a prude. We’ll share. I promise to keep my hands to myself if you do the same.”

“I shall endeavor to control myself.”

Together, they dragged and pushed the other furniture into a ragged wall between the bed and the front of the store, making sure they were hidden from view. Dinner was ration bars, washed down with lukewarm water.

Phoebe kicked off her boots and flopped back onto the mattress. “You know what’s gonna happen, don’t you?”

“The Blakists will find us and kill us?”

“Uh no. I was thinking we’re gonna end up sleeping together.” She ran her fingers through her hair, spreading it out on the mattress beneath her. “Okay-looking guy, absolutely gorgeous girl—that’s me, before any of your snarky remarks—trapped behind enemy lines, making a daring escape. Bound to happen. Just not yet. Okay? And definitely not if you call it ‘coupling’ again. I’m a woman, not a fracking power outlet.”

He turned his back towards her, sitting on the edge of the mattress, so he didn’t see her smile at his discomfort. “Get some sleep, Phoebe.”

“Will do. Been told I snore. Hope you’re a deep sleeper.”

“I cat-nap, mostly.”

“Very funny, Fog Leopard. You don’t get nightmares? Must've been terrible,” she murmured drowsily. “Seeing all … Nothing. Sorry. That was insensitive.”

“Do not waste your pity on me,” he replied. “Growing up, all I wanted to be was a great warrior, to fight in many battles, to test myself against everything the galaxy could throw against me and grow stronger, better, more cunning through that testing. It turns out the galaxy is not without a sense of humor. They came true, all my wishes came true.”

He’d fought as a MechWarrior, a tank crewmember, a foot soldier, a commando, a private, an officer, even a major at one point—and now here he was, back down at the bottom of the ladder again. After a decade of rattling around the Inner Sphere, staggering from war to war, he had fought in more battles on more worlds for more sides than anyone at his age, save perhaps the Widowmaker herself.

“Karma is a bitch,” she agreed.

“Yes,” he echoed absently. “It is.”

She was right, but perhaps not in the way she meant.

Clan Smoke Jaguar had devoted themselves to testing one another, to honing themselves like a blade, sharp in their belief that victory was the only arbiter of rightness, that the best thing to be was the strongest, the most powerful. That human nature and history had shown might did indeed make right, and so the only way to survive was to be the mightiest.

They’d been tested. And they’d lost.

The Inner Sphere might claim this was a refutation of their beliefs, a rejection of the Smoke Jaguar way, but how wrong, how very, absolutely, totally and utterly wrong—it was the ultimate proof. Unshakeable, undeniable proof the Smoke Jaguars had been right all along. They had only been stopped by a force stronger, mightier, more ruthless and determined. Might did indeed make right. The irony—the karma—was that the Smoke Jaguars had been defeated by the very ideas they sought to embody.

This ‘Jihad’ showed how well the Spheroids had learned that lesson: might made right, so if you wanted to change the galaxy, you first had to destroy it. That too, was karma: through war with the Clans the Spheroids had gotten so good at killing they couldn’t stop.

Furey had planned on staying awake, at least the few first hours, but the soft, gentle rhythm of Phoebe’s breathing and the welcoming surface of the mattress pulled him down into uneasy sleep.

He dreamed the bed lay in a Circle of Equals, built like a Roman arena, and the last Khan, Lincoln Osis, was on a seat among the stands, looking down on him with disgust. Lying there, rubbing up next to some freeborn stravag, he was a disgrace, a failure, unworthy of his heritage. It was good that he had missed the battle on Huntress: he would only have embarrassed himself. And his dream-self felt Phoebe standing next to him, and he felt ashamed that she had heard those words, seen him humiliated so.

But she just raised her hands, put four fingers on either side of his face, and let her nails trace scars down his cheeks, like bloody tears.

I want to scar the galaxy forever, she said.

When he awoke, he was flat on his back on the bed, with one of Phoebe’s legs hooked over his knee, her breath loud in his ear. He gently slid out from under her, retrieved the carbine from where it had fallen on the floor, and poked his head around to check the ’Mech.

The gargoyle form of Cutter still squatted there, back towards him. The muddy pool of water at the base of the escalator had expanded as far as Cutter’s feet. Looked like it had rained again in the night.

Phoebe was up, knuckling her sleep-crusted eyes when he wandered back.

“How much further, do you think?” he asked.

“Well good morning to you too,” she grumbled, pushing a few fiery strands of hair out of her face. “Dunno, think we’re pretty close, depending on how far the lines moved in the last day or two.”

The Circinus Federation invasion force, a cobbled-together collection of militia, bandits and mercenaries with a sprinkling of Blakist advisors, had struck Blantleff in mid-March. They’d run headlong into two cohors from the defending Marian Hegemony VI Legio and their mercenary allies, Hardy’s Hardcases, a mechanized infantry regiment that included at least one former Smoke Jaguar cadet.

A see-saw battle for Blantzville had been raging for weeks, though as more Blake militia arrived the tide had begun to turn in the Circinians’ favor, pushing the Legio and Hardcases to the edges of the city. Most of the rest of the planet was rolling grassland and steppe, offering no defensible barrier until one reached almost the other side of the planet and the city of Dersidatz. If the Marians lost the city, it would be a long, long retreat.

“Last chance to go,” Furey offered. “You do not have to come.”

“No, right. I could stay here and be shot for a deserter instead. Choices, choices. Come on Furey, you don’t get rid of me that easy.”

“It was worth a try,” he said, and smiled at the face she pulled at him. “If, when, we reach my unit, your name is Private Maeve Callahan.” Furey saw her frown at that. “A dead woman, from my unit,” he explained. “If anyone checks the roster it will show up, and I doubt anyone will have time to do more.”

“Someone close to you?”

In his head, Khan Osis laughed. Close? The woman had been freeborn filth, worse than a bandit caste. Ah but you lost, Furey thought, you lost and you died and you killed us with you. “A soldier,” he said instead. “She died fighting.”

“Oh. Very comforting.”

They saw no one on the streets as they set out, past kudzu-vine strangled walls and the firefly embers of still-burning buildings, past a wide but empty campground once used by visiting nomads to pitch their yurts, past a huddle of taller buildings that once housed companies selling farming machinery.

At the corner ahead sat two wrecked Chevalier tanks, one with a wrecking ball-sized hole in its side, the second missing its turret, which lay upside-down in the road beside it.

Something silver streaked by the view slit and the building five meters to their left exploded outwards in a fountain of concrete fragments and furiously billowing dust.

At the corner of a junction in the road, a building had been nearly completely demolished, leaving only its foundation intact. In the middle of this ruin sat a Regulator hovertank, a lightweight machine built around the decidedly heavyweight punch of a single gauss rifle. This one was painted the orange and grey of Hardy’s Hardcases.

Furey swore, stood on the reverse pedal, sending Cutter scuttling back out of the intersection and putting a ruined building between them and the Regulator.

“You have comms,” Furey said to Phoebe. “Twelve hundred megahertz, 16kbs, code 5602. Tell them we are friendly. Maeve Callahan. You are Private Maeve Callahan, Tyson’s Company.”

Phoebe punched in the code, clicked the channel open. “Hey, you in the tank there! Knock it off. Tyson’s Company here!”
The channel cicada buzzed for a few seconds. “Who the hell is this?” asked a voice.

“Private Calhoon—”

“Callahan,” Furey said softly.

“—yeah that’s right, Maeve Callahan from Tyson’s crew. We’ve captured this ’Mech.”

Another pause. “Come around the corner, stick to the middle of the road and move slow, weapons off. You go over 20 kph or point anything at us, we shoot you down.”

Phoebe acknowledged, and clicked off. “Friendly bunch. Starting to see where you get your sunny disposition from.”

Cutter lumbered forward, tracked by the watchful barrel of the gauss rifle. “By the steps,” said the voice.

Beside the shell where the Regulator lurked was a building that had once been a courthouse. A wide flight of steps led up to the main entrance, where half a dozen bullet-pockmarked pillars held up a kind of Parthenon roof. The building itself extended in three floors of dour-looking concrete to either side of the entrance, the glass missing from its tall windows and the brown bread loaf shapes of sandbags filling their bottom instead. The long snouts of recoilless rifles and semi-portable PPCs poked over the barricades. There was a cracked dome above the roof, its copper finish now dulled to the stagnant swamp green of oxidized copper.

Loops of electrified wiring skirted the bottom of the steps, with a narrow passage in the middle. An officer was waiting for them when they halted at the gap in the wire. He wore a grey flak jacket with the orange star-and-crown shoulder boards of a Hardcase Captain. An unshaven, hollow-cheeked man, with a high forehead and bristlingly short grey hair.

“Sergeant Leto Furey.” The Hardcases didn’t have a salute, so Furey didn’t offer one. “Captain Tyson’s Company. This is Private Maeve Callahan.” Phoebe followed Furey’s lead and just nodded.

The man nodded once, curtly. “Where’s Tyson?”

“Dead. We’re the last two survivors from the company.”

“Huh.” The man squinted past Furey, looked at the Mech, then back at his face. Extended a hand. “Captain Frazier Haven. Looks like you got one of their ’Mechs there, Furey. One with a bad rep. The pilots?”

“They objected to me taking their ride,” said Furey, shaking the proffered hand.

Haven grinned fiercely. Furey saw he had a narrow gap between the two front teeth. “I bet they did. Good to have you with us, Furey, Callahan.” He put an arm around Furey’s shoulder, steering him towards the building, up the steps, waving with the other arm at the sandbagged positions and grim-faced men. Phoebe trailed after. “Sissies have been probing us the last two days, mostly infantry, couple of tanks. I started with 140 men, now I’ve got 62 unwounded. Short on ammo, especially for the heavy weapons.”

“The rest of the unit?”

Haven waved a hand vaguely. “Fell back a few more klicks. Pretty much on our own here.”

“’Mechs?”

“There’s a Marian Bushwacker half a block away. Only problem is the pilot’s dead or run away and the gyro’s shot to hell. Nope, only heavy firepower we’ve got left is that one Regulator on the right flank, and its skirt fan took a hit so it isn’t going anywhere. It could tear their armor apart …” He halted in the shattered hole that had once been the building’s main doors. “… if they’d be kind enough to walk in front of it.”

Phoebe looked at Furey, made a face, looked at Haven. “What you’re saying is, you want someone to be bait.” Back at Furey, eyebrow arched. “Again.”

[mikecj]

Again.  its always time to be the bait...

[Dubble_g]

Aaaaaand we're back. Did you miss me? No? Too  bad. Gonna keep on with this anyhow.

* * *

Blantzville
Blantleff, Marian Hegemony
12 April, 3070

Furey awoke on the floor of an interior office room, the furniture shoved against one wall to make room for a thin foam mattress. Voices, low and indistinct, came from outside, along with the bitter smell of khav.

He felt something press against his back, rolled slightly and was unsurprised to find it was Phoebe, wedged firmly against his side. She felt him move and opened her amber-green eyes. So present, so fully inhabited and there, they pierced him, stung him with their intensity. He was uncomfortably aware he was staring.

“Come on,” he said to her. “Smells like breakfast.”

“One of these days,” she sighed, rolling away from him, onto her back to gaze up at the ceiling, “you’re going to learn how to say ‘good morning’ like a normal person.”

“I am hard-pressed to think of anything ‘normal’ about our situation.” Furey clambered to his feet, combed his fingers through his hair and felt the two-day growth of stubble on his chin. “If I irritate you so, why do you bother?”

“Because, Leto Furey, you’re hurt, angry and alone, and I’m hurt, angry and alone, and I’m desperately hoping that somehow, this time, this one time, two wrongs are gonna make a right.” She extended a blue-tattooed hand, and Furey helped to pull her to her feet.

“Well then: Good morning.”

“Doesn’t count if I have to ask you first,” she poked him in the ribs. “But it’s a start. Don’t go dyin’ before you gimmie a proper good morning either, ‘kay? You got your oath and all.”

There was a polite cough from the doorway. They both turned to find a private standing there, a knowing grin on his face. “Captain Haven wants you. Says sentries have spotted them coming.”

Haven was in a third-story room, peering through binoculars out the window. He lowered them and turned as they entered. “Three, maybe four BattleMechs, with infantry,” he said without preamble. “Coming at the left flank, so they know about the Regulator.” He held out the binoculars. “Take a look.”

Phoebe took them first, adjusted the sights a moment, then grunted and handed them to Furey. “Circinian militia ’Mechs, but I only see two.”

Furey adjusted the binoculars, clicking through the green-and-black ghost landscape of the low-light setting, then the blues, yellows and reds of thermographic vision. There: Two washed-out blobs of bright white light. As Phoebe had said, the two machines were trudging their way along one of the side roads. A red rash of more human-sized figures pimpled the road and buildings behind them.

The pair would have been a laughable, pathetic force if he’d had even the lightest and weakest of OmniMechs.

One was the four-legged AgroMech, spiny legs scuttling forward almost daintily, with a round bulbous body mounted on a swiveling base, and a short-barreled 40mm autocannon bolted to the chassis under the cockpit.

The second was a much-abused Locust, its legs lacking any armor whatsoever, leaving its myomer muscles, actuators and titanium bones exposed, what looked like a pair of flamethrowers in its chin turret and its machinegun-arms replaced with boxy, 15-tube rocket launchers.

Against that, all they had was a sharpened length of steel. The kind of weapon his clan would once have abhorred, Furey thought, though again, their utter annihilation suggested their thinking on such matters was not entirely to be trusted. More worrying was the fact that it would probably bend, break or shatter the microsecond it hit anything stiffer than human skin. There was a reason Cutter had been used in civilian pacification and terror—it was bloody useless at anything else.

“As we discussed then,” Furey said to Captain Haven. “Strike, fall back, then lead them into pursuit and into range of the gauss gun.”

“Putting your head into the noose is a hard thing to ask you to do,” Haven looked at them steadily. “You ready?”

Furey grinned and cracked his knuckles. “Absolutely.”

Phoebe, simultaneously, shook her head. “Amaris’s A-bombs no, I ain’t ready.” The two men looked at her. “Hey, don’t mean I won’t do it though.” She elbowed Furey. “Someone’s gotta keep you alive.”

“Give ‘em hell then,” Haven clapped them both on the shoulder, then returned to the window.

They dashed down the steps and out to Cutter. Already, they could hear the distant crack of gunfire as the Hardcase outer perimeter engaged the oncoming Circinians. Furey put out an arm just as they were about to climb up. “Not too late to back out, Phoebe. No shame,” he said softly. “These are your people. I do not know if I could fight my clan, were our positions reversed.”

She smiled and patted his cheek. “Told you Furey, they’re not my clan, just a gang of murderers and rapists. Just bein’ from the same place don’t make you family. Fact is, just by bein’ half-decent to me for a day, you’re about the closest thing I’ve got to a family now. Sweet providence save me.”

He watched her climb. What did make you a clan, or a family? He remembered the dream, remembered his Khan’s disgust with him. Would a Smoke Jaguar even consider him still a brother—using a stolen name, fighting as a footsoldier among freeborn mercenaries?

No time for that. He shook himself, scrambled up the side of the ’Mech. Slid past Phoebe in her seat—aware each time he brushed her, skin tingling like touching an electrical socket—and strapped himself into the seat. Pulled on the sensor gloves, smacking the right fist against the flat of the left hand. Picked up the cleaver and surged Cutter to its feet.

Soon the distant thunder of weapons fire became a steady roar. Violet and emerald beams flickered from the buildings on their side of the road as the infantry, avoiding the open killing ground of the street, fought house-to-house, room-to-room.

Occasional flashes of lightning filled the windows, which vomited sprays of dust and debris as one side or the other fired a grenade.

“Locust, right 30 degrees,” called Phoebe.

And there, advancing slowly down the street, came the Circinian Locust, hosing buildings with long tongues of flame. A flaming, writhing figure leapt from a window and tumbled to the ground. No sign of the AgroMech. The Locust halted, pivoted towards them.

Furey feinted left, stepped right, then charged forward.

The Locust was wreathed in smoke as its left-arm launcher fired, a hail of dumb-fire rockets streaking by Cutter to one side, detonating against the buildings behind them.

Furey swung with the blunt end of the blade, like a club, not trusting the blade to withstand the shock of contact with armor. The metal bar slammed down against the Locust’s right shoulder, causing the rocket launcher to sag and slew to one side.

The Locust tried to backpedal, and Furey followed, swinging again, this time at the unarmored legs. The first swing glances off the side of a titanium bone, but the second cracked against a reverse knee joint, crushing the actuators in a hail of sparks.
The leg froze and the Locust tottered, unable to arrest its rearward momentum, and crashed over onto its back.

Phoebe whooped. “One down!” Furey grinned. They wouldn’t even need the Regulator. He would take them all down himself.

Hardcase assault pioneers were dashing forward now, satchel-charge armed men crawling up the Locust’s sides.

The AgroMech stalked into the middle of the street and opened fire. The autocannon under the cockpit thudded, spewing flame, and the pioneers crawling on top of the Locust burst apart in gouts of flesh and bone.

Furey bared his teeth, plan forgotten. There was the enemy. Kill! He charged forward.

[Kidd]

Ah thank goodness you're back, the chaps from No Such Agency were getting bored.

Stolen? What, is Furey not actually Bloodnamed?

[Tegyrius]

Welcome back! We did miss you but the spotters tell us we need to drop 200 and fire for effect.

[DOC_Agren]

Welcome back Dubble_g

Bring on the other mechs, Leto (Furey)??? and Phoebe got this

[zephir]

"Just like I thought
They were in the same spot
In need of some desperate help"

Regulator, please?

[Dubble_g]

Stolen? What, is Furey not actually Bloodnamed?

My lips ... fingers, whatever, are sealed.

Welcome back! We did miss you but the spotters tell us we need to drop 200 and fire for effect.

When you come at the King (Crab), you best not miss.

Bring on the other mechs, Leto (Furey)??? and Phoebe got this

Nice poster.

"Just like I thought
They were in the same spot
In need of some desperate help"

Are we doing a rap battle? Because it's only fair to warn you: I am very, very bad at it.

* * *

The autocannon fired again, a burst of 50 shells kicking the ground around Cutter into plumes of dust, cracking against the leg and chest armor, and rattling Furey and Phoebe against their restraints.

“No, you idiot, stop!” Phoebe was yelling at him. “The plan, remember the plan!”

Furey ducked them under the next burst. Sidestep, lunge. Charge. Closing the gap. More shells whining by, some smacking off their armor.

Phoebe was kicking him in the shoulder now, “You’ll kill us both ayspiz de beit, son of a tin-can, idiot mad Fog Leopard. The plan! Your oath!”

That penetrated his battle lust. The Smoke Jaguar fatal flaw, the refusal to back down in the face of defeat. She was right. Furey swore, and twisted Cutter again, this time towards a side road, leading back towards the Regulator. The sudden shift threw off the AgroMech’s aim, its autocannon cratering the wall far behind them instead.

Cutter made a bone-shaking dash down the street, Phoebe twisting in the cupola to look out the back. “Faster, faster, faster,” she was muttering to herself. The AgroMech rounded the corner just as they reached the end of the street. “Here it comes!”

Furey ducked around the corner, chased by whistling autocannon rounds. Then slammed to a halt, spun around and raised the cleaver two-handed over the ’Mech’s head.

The AgroMech came scrabbling around the corner, saw Cutter, tried to stop, its forward claw-feet digging into the asphalt, gouging two long lines in the ground, but too late, too late.

The cleaver sliced down, cutting through the AgroMech’s dorsal armor, down into the cockpit beneath.

Then snapped.

Half the blade still lodged vertically just above the cockpit, a jagged spar still held in Cutter’s hand.

The AgroMech tottered back a step, then two. Shifted, brought the autocannon to bear on them.

And then the AgroMech was hurled sideways, lifted off its feet by the impact of a gauss slug, bouncing once and coming to rest on its side, a gaping hole blown clear through the torso. The spider legs twitched once, and were still.

In the cockpit, Furey fell back against his seat, sweating hard, letting out a long breath. Phoebe leaned forward and rested her forehead against the back of his shoulder. “Next time you wanna do the death in glorious battle thing, do it by yourself, okay?” she said.

“Sorry. Bit of a habit for us.” He switched on the tightbeam link to the Regulator. “Thank you for the assist.”

“Assist? Man, that one was all ours. Anyway, glad to be of service,” came the reply. “Don’t get too comfortable, though. I’m reading one more ’Mech out there, coming up fast. Get ready. Get—”

A blinding pulse of light touched the turret of the Regulator, and blew it into a thousand shattering pieces. Some ricocheted off the surrounding walls or arced high into the air, and came pelting down around them like steel rain.

“This looks bad, Furey,” Phoebe whispered. Furey turned the torso to look down the road.

Standing there, right arm PPC still glowing white-hot, was a black and white Falcon Hawk, a light raider with more energy weapons than a whole lance of Ostcouts, never mind one jury-rigged unarmed one.

“Possibly,” Furey allowed.

“That’s Moros, one of their aces.”

The radio link crackled. “There you are Cutter. Oriax is most displeased with you. I wonder, does it count as optimism or pessimism to feel sure your worst suspicions about someone will be proven true?”

“Please tell me you have a plan,” whispered Phoebe.

“Not really,” admitted Furey. Cratered armor, a broken sword. What chance did they have? “Unless you know how to make this thing play dead?”

The Falcon Hawk took two steps towards them, the muzzle of the PPC and twin lasers in the left arm both aiming toward them.

“Closer, closer,” Furey muttered to himself.

“Or perhaps those idiots in that machine finally got themselves killed?” asked the MechWarrior—Moros. He didn’t sound particularly concerned. “Small loss, either way.”

Blue-white energy glowed around the barrel of the PPC.

Furey slammed down the throttle pedal, charging straight toward the Falcon Hawk, like a runner off the blocks, one pace, two, going faster now, three—

At least four energy weapons cut loose, flooding the forward view slit with blinding light. Phoebe cried out, shielding her eyes. A blue bolt of energy hammered into the left shoulder, sending the arm pinwheeling away. Lasers savaged Cutter’s legs, melting the armor around the left hip and blowing the foot off at the ankle.

The impact rocked Cutter, unbalancing it, knocking its feet from under it and turtling it onto its back. The shattered blade clanged to the ground beside them.

Furey was rammed back against his seat, drawing a hissing gasp of pain, and Phoebe cried out. The forward viewport show the muted sky, while pebbly rain pinged off the armor as debris fell back to the ground around them.

They heard the steel press crunch of BattleMech footfalls, drawing closer.

“Get out,” Furey told Phoebe. “I will delay him here.”

Phoebe thought about saying something brave, then reached for the cupola handle instead. It wouldn’t turn. She tried with both hands. No luck. Bracing her feet against the side of the cockpit, putting her full weight against it. Didn’t budge.

The BattleMech footfalls were closer now, felt faintly through the backs of their seats.

“Shit,” she opined. “Shit, merd and shit. It’s jammed.”

Furey looked up at her, nodded once. “I am sorry,” he offered. “And I just promised I would not do this to you. Although, in the end, I find I am glad not to have to do this alone.”

Phoebe took deep breaths, trying to fight the rising tide of hysteria. “You ain’t gonna surrender?”

“No,” Furey smiled sadly. “I am afraid my people never quite got the knack for it.”

The sky was blotted out by the silhouette of the Falcon Hawk. “That wasn’t very smart, Cutter, or very grateful. But, pearls before swine and all that.”

Furey tore his left hand out of the sensor glove, reached out, and toggled the switch to open the channel. “This battle is not over. Face me in the Circle of Equals, MechWarrior.” His right hand shifted slightly.

Cutter’s right hand moved.

“Circle? Circle of Equals, is it? A clanner. Oh, this is too delectable,” the voice chuckled.

Cutter’s hand closed around the jagged haft of the cleaver.

“As though this day started out as April Fool’s and has turned out to be Christmas,” the man laughed again. “Circle of Equals? My poor deluded lab-rat freak, the Word of Blake has no equals, especially not among you heretics.”

The PPC barrel lined up with the forward view slit.

“Oriax wants us to bring any clanners in for questioning, but don’t worry, I’ll tell him you resisted to the last. Goodbye, filth.”

“Same to you,” said Furey.

And catapulted Cutter forward, off its feet, right into the chest of the Falcon Hawk, Shattered sword held like a dagger, stabbing forward, cracking through the ferroglass of the BattleMech’s head, plunging into the cockpit, punching straight through, out the back of the head unit, half a meter of bloodstained metal sticking clear out the back like a red claw.

The Falcon Hawk teetered and fell backwards, gone completely rigid, Cutter following, still locked in an embrace with the dagger buried up to the hand in the Falcon Hawk’s head.

Inside the face-down cockpit, Furey and Phoebe hung uncomfortably against their restraints. “The next time you ask me if I’m sure I want to do something,” Phoebe said slowly. “Remind me to say no. I’m not sure whether to hit you for being … you, or kiss you for saving our lives.”

So she did both.

“Now,” she said, “how the hell do we get out of here?”

Haven’s men found the Ostcout still lying atop the Falcon Hawk, apparently stabbing itself in the head with a jagged length of metal as Furey tried to pry off the top of the jammed cupola.

[mikecj]

Now there's an image...

[Dubble_g]

Now there's an image...

Why I put it in there!

* * *

Blantzville
Blantleff, Marian Hegemony
13 April, 3070

Phoebe found Furey on the roof, up in the shattered bell tower. He sat cross-legged, the stock, magazine, bolt, spring and other parts of a GZ assault rifle spread on the ground before him. On his shoulders were the freshly-painted double stars of a Hardcase Lieutenant.

“Congratulations,” Captain Haven had said. “Wish you better luck than the last field promotion I gave.”

“What happened to the last one?” Furey had asked.

Haven had nodded towards the blasted wreck of the Regulator. Then given a gap-toothed grin, smacked Furey encouragingly on the back.

Phoebe lowered herself, cross-legged, next to Furey, and held out a steaming tin cup.

“What is this?” he asked, looking up from his mechanical ministrations.

“S’posed to be khav,” Phoebe replied. Her own motley uniform now sported the single star of a Sergeant, much to her amusement. “Tastes about as good at it looks, honestly.”

Furey took the cup, and eyed it critically. “It looks like muddy rainwater.”

“What I said,” nodded Phoebe, taking a swig, then grimacing.

Furey took a sip, and held it in his mouth suspiciously. Screwed up his eyes and swallowed. “Ah,” he said mock-appreciatively. “Just like mother used to make.”

“Your mom was an incubator.”

“What I said.”

Phoebe laughed and leaned against his shoulder. “So. What now?”

The sky remained unrepentantly grim, though a weak, stirring breeze corralled and harried the clouds across the sky, offering the hope, however slim, of a change in the weather.

“Now we wait,” Furey said at last, put down his cup and returned to cleaning the rifle. “If Captain Haven was smart, we would pull back and regroup with the rest of the regiment, or else pursue the militia and break them before reinforcements arrive. But Haven seems more stubborn than clever, so instead we sit here, and wait. I do not doubt the next attack will be rather more serious—not militia, but mercenaries, perhaps artillery or else the Blakists themselves. A pity we lost both our last tank and only BattleMech.”

Phoebe’s smile disappeared, but she left her cheek resting on his shoulder. “I wish you’d be a little less honest, sometimes,” she groused. “If you’d given me a couple of days and a crew, I might’ve refitted one the gyros into the scrapped Bushwacker. I trained as a tech, remember? Instead, looks like you might still get your glorious death in battle, after all.”

A day, two days ago, he would have welcomed another attack. There was the oath now and … he glanced at the woman … other things. Unclan things the Smoke Jaguars would have rejected, but for a society that prided itself on its ruthless social Darwinism, he had perspective enough to see they had been strangely bound to archaic rules and traditions.

What was war, total war, if not the ultimate Darwinist experiment, testing the survivability of whole societies? Many forgot that Darwinism was not survival of the ‘fittest,’ but of the most adaptable. The Inner Sphere had adapted, Clan Smoke Jaguar had not: so they lost. Maybe the only way for Smoke Jaguar to be reborn was to become something else. Embrace unclan things?

He was uncomfortable with such thoughts, leading his mind through endless mazes. The oath; the oath was simpler. “You were right, the other day. I must remember my oath, to return to Outreach.”

“Yeah, about that…”

“What about it?”

But maybe now was not the time to cut the one string that seemed to be keeping this man moored, she decided. Tell him about Outreach some other time—try a different tack. “It’s an oath to the dead, Leto. They ain’t gonna care if you keep it or not. There are other things, Leto,” Phoebe squeezed his hand as hard as she could. “Reasons to live other than chasing after death. There’s the future, instead of the past.”

The past: The Smoke Jaguars had been fools too blind to change when the time came. And yet, they had been the only family he had ever known. The future: An Inner Sphere that had erased his clan from history, and was now bent on destroying itself. How to explain to this woman? He hated his past but could not reject it. On the other hand, the future held no place for him either. What else was there, but blood, revenge, and an oath?

Furey looked down at his hand, at Phoebe holding him like an anchor, not really seeing.

He was saved from answering by the crackle of their radios. “Contact, contact, contact,” said a voice, quick and nervous. “Zero-six bravo mikes, medium weight, grid delta one-fiver, one-sixer.”

Furey withdrew his hand and began quickly reassembling his rifle. Six BattleMechs? The four dozen remaining men would have been hard-pressed to stop even just one. He picked up the rifle, turned to Phoebe to speak—

“If you tell me to go save myself or whatever one more fracking time, I swear Furey—” she said, her face grimly set. She had her own rifle loaded and ready now. “I’m here for you. Now be here. Be here for me.”

She was a freebirth woman, by tradition beneath him. Tradition was all he had. Tradition was what had orphaned him. “I am here,” he smiled instead. “Not looking for glorious death either, I promise.”

“That’s better.”

“In such cases, you can say: Seyla.”

“Say what?”

“Seyla.”

“Say what?”

He glanced over at her. She winked and blew him a kiss. Shaking his head, he slung his rifle over his back and began to crawl towards the edge of the roof.

They peered through a small loophole earlier fighting had blasted in the concrete crenellations. In the morning gloom they could just make out the BattleMechs, surfacing like whales among the sea of rooftops with each step before their flexing knees carried them sinking back down. Furey counted six BattleMechs, all of them pristine and factory-new. And in the lead, a familiar Raijin II.

“Well,” Furey muttered. He was looking at death: Cairn’s, and nearly his own. He smiled, feeling a desperate, savage kind of joy. There was still the oath, yes, that was good. There was also blood and vengeance. They were better. “Now that is just perfect. Perfect.”

“What is?” Phoebe asked. The BattleMechs were still over a kilometer away, but she spoke in hushed tones all the same, as though they might hear.

“Revenge,” he whispered. “Come on, let us find Captain Haven.” He rose to a crouch and crept back to the stairs, not seeing Phoebe roll her eyes before she followed him.

[mikecj]

Is a dish best served cold...

[Dubble_g]

Is a dish best served cold...

It is very cold in space... [very William Shatner face] MIIIIIIIIIIIIKE!

* * *

Haven and his two other lieutenants were gathered around the backpack-sized signals unit and the communications officer, in one of the third-floor rooms. Haven nodded as they entered, and held one finger to his lips for silence.

The comms officer pressed her ear against the headset. Nodding once, twice.

“It’s the enemy commander,” she said, holding the headset out to Haven. “Says she wants to parley.”

“She?” Haven took the set, adjusted it to his head, and brought the mic up to his mouth. “This is Captain Haven. That’s right. Huh. Oh? Uh-huh. You come to us. We go out there, too easy for you to shoot us down. How many? No, two maximum. Not negotiable—take it or leave it. All right. On foot, at the front door. We’ll be expecting you. Out.”

Haven handed back the headset, and looked about the room, hands on hips. “Well, says she wants to discuss terms, willing to offer us free passage,” he said. “Trust those fanatics about as far as I can shit, and after a month of c-rations that ain’t very damned far. We aren’t leaving. We’re the Hardcases dammit, we don’t give up that easy.”

Murmurs and nods of agreement, grimly determined.

“Still, talking gives us time. She’s coming here with two guards. I don’t like what she says, maybe we just kill the guards and get ourselves a hostage. This ain’t some fancy-pants line unit; we’re the Hardcases, and we git’er done.”

This time, there was a roar of approval.

“You two coming?” Haven asked Furey and Phoebe on the way out the room.

“I am not much of a diplomat. I do not even speak the dialect here.”

“Me neither, but …” Haven winked and patted the handle of the Nova laser pistol at his hip.

“Ah, now that is speaking my language.” Furey grabbed his rifle, looked to Phoebe. She nodded, resigned, made an after-you gesture.

The entrance to the courthouse formed a wide hallway, with Roman revival pillars marching down either side. A dozen men crouched behind the pillars and furniture, assault rifles trained on the entrance. Captain Haven stood in the middle of the hall, Furey and Phoebe behind the nearest pillar with two other men.

The two bodyguards were dressed in red short-sleeved tunics despite the cool, damp weather. They stood rigidly behind their commander, looking neither right nor left, but eyes boring only straight ahead, arms stiff at their sides. They’d been disarmed; empty holsters hung at their waists.

At first glance Furey could see nothing special about the woman. She was tall, yes, almost his height, but despite Phoebe’s talk of robot-men, she had neither steel talons nor diamond teeth, no more than the expected number of arms and her eyes looked slightly red and puffy rather than deadly.

This was the woman who had killed Cairn, he forced himself to remember, but the thought proved a slippery one, hard to hold onto. He had wanted revenge, hadn’t he? It seemed hard to square that thought against the … attractive woman in front of him. Attractive? Now where had that thought come from?

“I am Achlys,” she said simply.

Captain Haven regarded her, arms crossed against his chest. “Okay?”

Her eyes were pale, irises so blue they were almost white, as if all the pigment had been drained from them. She looked at the huddled bands of men each slowly in turn, unconcerned and dismissive, before settling on Haven. “I can crush your little band easily,” she said.

“So why are we talking?”

She took a step towards Haven. He drew himself up a little but did not back down. There was a metallic crackle of weapons being aimed, but she paid no notice. “One of your number, by chance or luck, has managed to kill our brother, Moros. It is a terrible thing to lose a brother, is it not?”

Some of the men glanced sidelong at Furey and Phoebe.

Haven blinked a little. Shook his head before replying: “Well. Yeah. Maybe. And?”

Achlys smiled slightly. “If you identify this person and hand them over to us, we will allow you to withdraw unharmed.” Another step forward, until she was just out of arm’s reach. “It is a generous offer.”

The men closest to Furey on either side shifted away slightly. “What is she doing?” Phoebe whispered to Furey. He shrugged—the woman didn’t seem so bad. Quite reasonable. And the way her lips parted when she smiled, like an invitation. Gave him goosebumps.

Haven coughed uncomfortably. “Hmm yeah it’s generous I guess … Wait. Give up one of my men?”

Achlys radiated sympathy. “One man, so that the others might live. Is that so much to ask? Think of them. Have they not suffered enough already? It is a hard choice I lay before you, Captain. Are you strong enough to make it? I think you are. I know you are.”

“One life for the rest of us…” Haven trailed off, looking lost. He twisted his neck, looking straight at Furey and Phoebe. “I barely know them…” Almost dreamily.

Furey nodded, and gave Haven a reassuring smile. It was okay. They could trust this woman. So beautiful. Desirable. He ignored Phoebe elbowing him fiercely.

The woman’s two bodyguards, perfectly immobile since the conversation began, turned their heads in perfect unison, following Haven’s gaze.

“It’s all right,” Achlys smiled. “You don’t have to say or do anything, Captain Haven. Just tell your men to step aside.”

Haven bobbled and turned around, his back to Achlys, moving like a sleepwalker. “Now lads she’s—”

“—she’s a messing with your heads!” yelled Phoebe, stepping out from behind the pillar, raising her rifle and firing a single shot. At the floor, directly at Achlys’s feet. The woman’s face twisted in rage as she leapt back, unharmed.

Haven blinked. “What?” Held a hand to his temple, eyes unfocused. “What did I—what did she do to my head—”

Furey found himself suddenly staring down at his gun. What had he been thinking?

“Treachery!” cried Haven clawing for his pistol. The mercenaries looked from Furey, to Haven, to Achlys in confusion.

“Those two. Kill them.” Achlys nodded towards Furey, then spun and sprinted for the doorway, a blur of movement, inhumanly fast.

The bodyguards gripped their right elbow with their left arm, and held their right arms out straight. Their hands hinged impossibly backwards at the wrists, revealing black round holes instead of flesh and bone.

“Down!” Furey lunging forward towards Phoebe, catching her around the waist, knocking her sideways.

Blasts of white light carving through the air the two had just occupied, fired from the arms of the two bodyguards, punching fist-sized chunks from the walls.

Furey fired from the hip, no need to aim at this range, full auto, GZ rifle just screaming like a buzzsaw.

One of the bodyguards jackknifing at the waist as he was blown back, the other staggering, snarling in pain, raising his arm again. Furey reaching for another magazine, knowing it was too late.

The other men were firing now, bursts from a dozen rifles converging on the still-standing bodyguard, jerking him like a marionette. He slumped against the wall, and was still.

Furey lowered his rifle, and offered his arm to Phoebe. “You seem to be getting distressingly good at saving my life,” he said. “But why did you not simply shoot her?”

Phoebe grimaced as she stood. “You didn’t see your faces,” she said. “You’d all have killed me if I’d hurt her.”

Gunfire from outside. Chasing Achlys as she fled, Furey guessed.

“What the hell did she do?” Haven asked, still standing in the middle of the hall. “A sonic weapon? Something airborne, chemical?”

“Hormonal,” Phoebe muttered.

There was a stabbing flash of scarlet light outside and a shattering boom. The walls shook and dust fell in a thin rain.

Furey ducked instinctively. “Truce seems to be over.”

Haven nodded, then rounded on his men. “Don’t stand there you slack-jawed idiots! Move! Give those bastards hell!” In twos and threes, then soldiers scattered for their positions, leaving only Haven, Furey and Phoebe in the hall.

“Captain we cannot hold here—” Furey said, guiding Phoebe back, away from the front of the building. A series of explosions rocked the floor. From somewhere above, a man screamed for a medic. “—against six BattleMechs. They can simply sit back and pound this building to rubble.”

A nova of light erupted from the steps outside the building entrance, and a split second later the shockwave staggered them, choked them with a blast of hot air.

“The hell we can’t!” Haven shouted back when he could breathe. “We’re the Hardcases. We’ll hold!” Heedless of the showering plaster and dust, he began striding towards the rear of the building, where windows looked out over the building parking lot and three pairs of men huddled around the long, angled tubes of mortars. “Comms! Get me a fire mission! Mortaaaars!”

Just before he turned to follow, Furey spared one last glance out the front of the building. And saw the first bodyguard, the one he’d gunned down at point-blank range, slowly stand back up. He—it—looked down at its body, up at Furey, and grinned.

“Captain!” Furey shouted a warning, raising his rifle.

Another explosion outside the building sent a blast wave ripping through the hall, whipping the bodyguard’s tattered tunic around it. It flexed its hands—and from each fingertip grew silvered steel talons.

It charged forward, leaped and threw itself into a forward roll as Furey and Phoebe fired at it, bullets passing harmlessly over its head, then sprang up, lashing out, slicing its claws through the barrel of Phoebe’s gun, tracing four lines of agony across Furey’s side even through his boron-carbide body armor.

He dropped his rifle, fell to the floor, clutching his side.

Haven drew his pistol—a hulking Sunbeam Nova, designed for fighting Clan Elementals—but the thing smashed it out of his grip and sent it spinning away. With its left hand, it grabbed Haven by the neck and lifted him easily off the ground. Haven kicked and hammered at it, but it only smiled wider.

A titanic roar shook the hall, something snapped over their heads and a two-meter square section of the ceiling came loose, plummeting down to the ground in an avalanche of plaster and concrete. A fist-sized chunk struck the thing’s arm just above the elbow, forcing it to let the Captain go.

Haven fell to the ground, gasping for breath, one hand going to his throat.

Furey saw the Nova lying on the ground in front of him, gritted his teeth and reached for it.

The thing ostentatiously brushed the dust from its shoulder with a flick of its wrist, and gave Haven a wide grin again. It walked slowly towards Haven, even as he scrambled desperately backwards on the ground. It pounced forward a step, easily grabbing Haven by the front of his armor.

Haven’s knife was in his hand, and he stabbed it into the thing’s forearm. It looked at the blade, buried to the hilt in its own skin, tutted and shook its head. Naughty-naughty. It drew back its right claw for the killing blow.

Furey, from his prone position on the ground, held the Nova in both hands and squeezed the trigger. The pistol was connected to the thing’s head for an instant by a line of brilliant white fire. The head exploded in a blinding flash and sharp boom.

The headless body swayed a moment, then keeled over sideways.

The hall was eerily silent.

No explosions, no hum of laser or crackle of particle cannon fire. A few loose pieces of plaster fell loose from the ceiling, and twirled down.

“BattleMechs!”

They heard the cry from the upper floors. One or two voices at first.

“BattleMechs! BattleMechs!” More voices now, growing in volume.

Furey looked up, as though his vision could pierce the concrete. “Yeah, we noticed,” he told the ceiling.

Phoebe knelt beside him, put her arm under his shoulder, helping him up into a sitting position. She nodded towards the back of the building.

Furey turned, and through the windows saw what was easily one of the most beautiful sights he’d laid eyes on in ten years of warring across the Inner Sphere: BattleMechs, eight striding BattleMechs, led by a 70-ton Hercules.

In the light blue and deep purple of the Marian Hegemony.

[zephir]

Trying this gambit shows a lot of guts in "Achlys", in addition to the glands.  *If* the 'Mechs are really Marian ...

[mikecj]

Those darn cyborgs... whatever happened to friendly cyborgs like the Bionic Man or the Bionic Woman

[Kidd]

Yknow, I saw Klaw's arm weapon in Black Panther, and I was like, ah, so he's a Manei Domini, who would've thought :D

Always nice to see more MD assassins and honeytraps.

[Dubble_g]

Trying this gambit shows a lot of guts in "Achlys", in addition to the glands.  *If* the 'Mechs are really Marian ...

Oh, new tagline for BattleTech: No Glands No Galaxy.
OK, needs work.

Those darn cyborgs... whatever happened to friendly cyborgs like the Bionic Man or the Bionic Woman

Oooh man, if they do the sound effect when they activate? Long live the Word of Steve Austin!

Always nice to see more MD assassins and honeytraps.

Guys, I think we found the wobbie sympathizer. Alert Herb.

* * *

Blantzville
Blantleff, Marian Hegemony
13 April, 3070

“Principes Beatriz Adelaar, Sextus Legio, Secunda Cohors. Ave,” the short, powerfully-built woman saluted, right arm held out, palm up.

They stood in the shadow of the blasted courthouse, amid the forlorn ground cars abandoned by the fleeing population, and at the foot of the towering Hercules.

Captain Haven was pale, his throat still bruised from where the Blakist bodyguard had grabbed him. Furey’s side was wrapped in a thick layer of dermaplast and antiseptic gel. He leaned against the front bumper of a red Avanti, where Phoebe sat, knees drawn up against her chest.

The other survivors of Haven’s Company, Hardy’s Hardcases sat or lay in ragtag groups around the abandoned parking lot while the Marian BattleMechs formed a loose perimeter. They were an odd assortment, the Marians: medium to heavyweight war machines, escorting a single, solitary mobile MASH unit, a double handful of techs and a couple of ammunition carriers.

The courthouse itself was half in ruins—almost the entire west wing reduced to rubble, the remaining half of the bell tower shot away, one of the front pillars smashed to fragments.

Yet as soon as the Marian Hegemony force had appeared on sensors, the Word of Blake forces had fallen back, apparently unwilling to risk their six machines against the Marian’s eight.

“Captain Haven, Lieutenant Furey, Sergeant Callahan.” Haven’s voice came out as a rough whisper. He cleared his throat, and winced. “Great timing, prin, prinki, prinkip—Miss Adelaar.”

“You are fighting well,” the woman returned the compliment, her Standard slightly stilted. “But we are not a rescue, we are not knowing you are here. We are having a different mission.”

Haven exchanged glances with Furey and Phoebe. His shoulders fell a little. “Shoulda figured,” he nodded.

“This is being good, though. Maybe you are helping us.”

Haven rubbed at his throat a moment. “Principal Adelaar—”

“Principes.”

“Yeah. What-you-said Adelaar, I’ve got maybe 30 men left who can fight. Not much we can do that eight BattleMechs can’t.”

The woman leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping. “Please be listening carefully. Legatus Joachim Boal is being captured by the enemy.” Furey mentally translated ‘is being’ to ‘has been.’ “A prisoner-of-war camp is being in one of the nomad parks about 20 kilometers from here. I am attacking that site and freeing the Legatus.”

Haven frowned deeply, and Furey jumped in: “I think I see. Your BattleMechs will be good at destroying the defences, not so good at finding a prisoner inside a building, nor helping one escape, right?” Adelaar nodded. “So your forces engage the defenders, then we sweep the buildings, find this Legatus, and then bundle him out in your MASH unit.”

Haven looked thoughtful, and scratched at his neck again. “Chain of command goes through Colonel Hardy and Major Claymore,” he said. “Yer asking me to ignore that and risk my command for no reward.”

Adelaar was about to object, before Furey interrupted again. “Some advice: The key word there was ‘reward,’ Principes.”

The Principes’ mouth twisted a little, and her foot tapped the ground in irritation. “What reward?”

“We have a number of wounded and no armored vehicles,” Furey pointed out, thinking fast. Captain Haven nodded in support. “If we try to retreat, we will be slaughtered. After we rescue the Legatus, your unit could cover our withdrawal to friendly lines.”

Adelaar tapped her chin. “Maybe some are staying. Not all…”

Phoebe piped up: “There’s a wrecked Bushwacker, just back there. All’s it needs is a new gyro, and we’ve got a Falcon Hawk donor lined up on the road out front. Get your techs to help us jury-rig the repair, and we’ll cover our own retreat.”

Furey squeezed her knee in gratitude. If they could rig a replacement in time, get him back in the game. Then he might see about revenge on Achlys, and returning to Outreach.

“You are having a MechWarrior?”

Furey grinned. “We are having me.”

“Well, maybe later,” Phoebe whispered next to his ear.

“You are accepting this idea?” Adelaar asked Captain Haven, who nodded. “Very well then. My technicians are remaining here, and helping the repair. If the Bushwacker is operating when we return from the camp, it is your unit’s to use.”

Haven watched her go, then turned to Furey and Phoebe. “You’ve been here two days and already you’re calling the shots?” Furey grinned apologetically. “I mean, it was a good idea, but,” Haven held out a warning finger. “Run your next good idea by me first before you talk to anyone, okay?”

“Aye sir.”

“None of that ‘sir’ nonsense in the Hardcases, lad.” Haven looked thoughtfully after Adelaar. “What do you make of it? Seems like a waste of resources—Marians must have only 30-40 ’Mechs left on-planet. Sending eight of them just for one guy? Don’t care who he is. Waste of resources.”

“Perhaps it is a diversion,” suggested Furey. “Principes Adelaar’s mission, I mean.”

“How do you do that?” asked Phoebe.

“Do what?”

“Pronounce ‘Principes’ right the first try?”

“Got an agile tongue I guess.” Furey ignored her arched eyebrow, and turned his attention back to Haven. “I think the Marians want to draw attention here because the rest of their force will be withdrawing to Dersidatz. If Adelaar can free the Legatus, she will, but that is not her main goal. That is why she did not bring any infantry, and why she is so willing to help repair the Bushwacker.”

Haven grunted. “Dersidatz is 8,000 kilometers away. It’ll take a month of non-stop humping just to get there.” He squinted at Furey. “Your side okay? Up for a fight?”

Furey patted the dermaplast. “Aye s—I think so.”

“Good, then you have command of the raid. Consider it a little reward for that great idea of yours. Callahan, want you working with the techs. Furey, you take, lessee, two squads, you pick who. Rest’ll stay here and guard the wounded and the techs. You’ll need to find transportation—see if you can rassle up a couple of civvie jeeps or buses to get you in and out of the camp.”

While Adelaar, in her Hercules, first did a laser-Caesarian on the Falcon Hawk and then carried the gyro to the wreck of the Bushwacker, Furey picked out fourteen men as his strike force, including two men with combat harnesses for David light gauss cannon. They found two fast, open-top hover skimmers abandoned in the parking lot of a nearby school.

Weapons were stripped, checked and cleaned: a dozen GZ rifles, and a laser pistol for each man to cut through any doors or locks. Grenades and explosives sorted and stored. Comms gear interlinked with the Marians’, and that too had to be checked.

When it was finally done, Furey stumbled his way back to the office with its foam mattress, exhausted, and almost immediately fell asleep.

[Kidd]

Guys, I think we found the wobbie sympathizer. Alert Herb.

No need to call names.

It's not the way of Blake.

[zephir]

A Marian Hercules performing a laser C-section -- missing is only the little-known LosTech Juno 'Mech trying to prevent it.

[Dubble_g]

It's not the way of Blake.

Quite right, I do apologize. The way of Blake. Of course, coming right up. (Drops an anthrax-coated nerve gas-laced atomic bomb made of 50% plutonium and 50% dead puppy dogs). That better?

A Marian Hercules performing a laser C-section -- missing is only the little-known LosTech Juno 'Mech trying to prevent it.

Okay, from now on whenever anyone mentions Victor Steiner-Davion, I'm going to picture Michael Cera.

Content warning: Don't read today's episode if you think girls are gross. I find the romances in BT very tepid, so wanted to try writing sexy, sexy banter. If that's not your sexy cup of sexy tea, come back tomorrow when we're back to killing things.

* * *

He dreamed of the destruction of the training center on Huntress, the hungry fires crawling up the walls and across the ceiling, the smoke and confusion as he crawled, pushed by trainer Cole, coughing and choking, shirt over his mouth, down the corridor, past the blackened, laser-burned body of one of the other trainers, through a hole blown or knocked in one of the walls, scraping his back as he squeezed through it, out into the blessed cool air. Staggering to a waiting hover transport, turning back to see Cole silhouetted against the roaring inferno consuming his home, his siblings, his certainties.

Cole gave Furey a reassuring smile, flashed a thumbs up. They’d made it, they would be okay. And then Cole was illuminated from shoulder to hip by stuttering laser fire, blown in half as Furey watched in horror.

Hands were holding him, lifting him, pulling him into the transport as he kicked and screamed and swore terrible revenge.

In his dream, the driver of the transport was Phoebe. Let’s get you out of here, she said.

Phoebe was curled next to him when he awoke, still in darkness. There was a small, battery-powered light in one corner of the room that threw monster shadows against the walls. It seemed to him that she glowed in this predawn glimmer, like she had her own source of light, her own fusion reactor, giving off energy he could almost feel through her skin. A lighthouse, a beacon.

Her amber eyes fluttered open, and she smiled and traced the line of his jaw with one finger.

“Good morning,” he said to her, and then her mouth was on his, and there was little need for words—or at least, not terribly coherent ones—for a long while.

“See?” she said at last, languid, eyes half-closed. “Tol’you you shoulda learned to say good morning earlier.”

“You also threatened castration. But despite your earlier threats, I appear to be intact.” He touched his back gingerly. “More or less.”

“Naw, never had no knife down there. You crazy? I jes’ say that to keep anyone from trying to force things. Speaking of force, I thought you people believed in using the minimum. Not that I’m complaining.”

“Whereas I see your people’s reputation for barbarity is entirely justified. I am bleeding.”

“Show me. I’ll kiss them better.”

“I sense a trap,” he said, but rolled over onto his stomach. He sighed and smiled until her kisses grew less playful, her caresses more insistent.

Sex among the clans was a purely physical thing, disconnected from intimacy or procreation, a release from what might otherwise be a distraction. ‘Coupling’ they even called it, reducing the act of affection to biomechanics and animal instinct. After all, they believed sex did nothing to help you become stronger, tougher or a better fighter.

He would have been mechanical, but Phoebe burned through every attempt at clinical distance, poured the molten sun down his throat with each kiss, kindled a fire with each touch, until he was ranting, promising, pleading as readily as her. He felt he had been a zombie, until then, a mindless revenant, quite literally one of Kerensky’s ghosts. She raised him from the dead.

“Your tattoo,” he said when he could think straight again. “It has meaning?”

“Hmm?” She murmured from his chest. “I get a new line each year. Like growth rings on a tree, you know?”

“It is like a map to your past,” Furey said, tracing an azure line under his thumb, from shoulder bade down her side. “I want to chart every bend and curve, navigate every hill and valley.”

“Fearless explorer.”

“Plant my flag and claim this territory for my own.”

“Flag? Is that what they call it where you’re from?”

“I only regret we did not do this sooner.”

“Sooner? It’s been all of what, four days?”

“One was too long.”

And then, too soon, it was time to go. Furey fit the armored vest over his shoulders, fastened it in place, holstered Haven’s borrowed Nova pistol at his waist. “Back before you know it,” he said with a confidence he did not feel. Before he had nothing to lose. Now, he felt vulnerable.

She wrapped her discarded shirt around the back of his neck and pulled him down for one last kiss. “Come back to me,” she said simply.

“You take care of yourself, too.” He grinned, reassuring. “Nothing to worry about. Things will change when we get back. It will all be different. You will see.”

[Dubble_g]

Now returning you to your regularly scheduled mayhem. Mayhem: brought to you by Human Nature^TM.

* * *

Blantzville
Blantleff, Marian Hegemony
14 April, 3070

They gathered in darkness, an hour before dawn, the omnipresent clouds hiding even the stars. The BattleMechs set off first, deeper shadows moving against the mournful sky, presences more felt than seen, as a trembling under the soles of the feet as they passed by.

Furey peered upwards into the stygian gloom, trying to see them go, wishing he were one of them. Soon, with luck, if Phoebe’s team could repair the Bushwacker, soon. The engines of the two skimmers began to whine, moving up an octave to a keen as they slowly lifted off the ground.

The fourteen men gathered before him in a loose semicircle.

Furey cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles. “When we hit the camp, we will make for the headquarters building. Sergeant Bor, Cheng, Bulldog, Patel, Switchblade, Irons and Tranh, you are Tiger Squad, you form a cordon around the skimmers and the building entrance. Sergeant Bor, you are the squad leader. Everyone else, you will be with me in Panther Squad. We go room by room, sweeping for guards, looking for the Marian, the Legatus. You have all seen the image, you know what he looks like. On my signal, we regroup at the skimmers and high-tail it back here. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” said Irons, a scarred veteran with a face that looked like he’d been hit with a shovel. “Wha’d I do to piss you off so much you volunteered me for this op?”

Furey grinned along with the rough laughter. “I just could not bear to be separated from your beauty, Irons. Any others?”

“Where do I put in for a transfer?”

“When we get back, I would be glad to show any of you where you can stick your transfer requests. Last chance for a serious question. Jokers volunteer to be on point. No? Remember, you are Hardcases. You get it done.”

Bulldog and Switchblade, the two light gauss rifle gunners, grinned and fist-bumped. The others grabbed their weapons and hauled themselves into the waiting skimmers. Furey was last, hesitating a moment, sudden visions of another hover transport, another night—one filled with smoke and fire—before he shook himself, and vaulted into the back.

The camp guards were a mercenary unit called the Hellions of Gates, an infantry battalion of much the same competence, equipment and motivation level as Hardy’s Hardcases. Which was to say: moderately, poorly and only until the next payday, respectively.

Against eight BattleMechs, they hadn’t stood a chance.

Furey could see flames illuminating the underside of the clouds as the skimmers approached, as though the ancients had been right and the sky above was a great stone vault. The cymbal-crash of laser fire and the rolling drums of autocannon drowned out the tinny, feeble piccolo of small arms.

A wide swath of the perimeter fence had already been flattened when they arrived, allowing the skimmers to drive straight into the prison camp. Great blackened fans of scorched earth marked where lasers had blasted, shallow craters where missiles had detonated. Crumpled bodies lay scattered about the field, escaping civilian prisoners streamed by in mad, heedless groups.

The Marian BattleMechs had established a perimeter around the edge of the camp, looming giants of even darker shadow faintly limned in silver from half a dozen fires burning across the camp. The camp itself was composed of rows of long, prefabricated steel housing, dotted with more permanent-looking concrete barracks, command and supply depot buildings.

The skimmers slewed to a stop in front of the command building, the men leaping from the sides and dropping into combat crouches. There was a rattle of gunfire from one of the warehouses, bullets singing off the side of one of the skimmers. Bulldog and Switchblade whirled, their combat harnesses keeping the gauss rifles steady, and fired a double burst of magnetic slugs, whooshing through the night and disintegrating the front of the warehouse in a haze of pulverized concrete and steel. There was no further gunfire from that direction.

“Move, move, move!” Furey shouted to his squad, dashing for the building doorway. He threw himself against the side of the wall, waved to Corporal Arman, armed with a combat shotgun. “Breach!”

As Arman moved forward, the door swung back. Furey heard a click and looked down, and saw a small olive-green canister rolling out the doorway. He kicked frantically at it, sending it spinning back through the still-open door, then flattened himself on the ground and covered his ears.

There was a flash of lightning from beyond the doorway, and a sudden exhalation of dust and smoke. Someone was screaming on the other side. Arman kicked open the door then ducked back, as Furey came low around the other side, already firing.

Something like a hospital waiting room was on the other side, rows of chairs now scattered in bedlam, a reception desk in shambles, a wide corridor lined with doors leading into darkness. Two men lying on the ground, one of them clutching his face, another still standing, but dazed, bleeding. Furey’s burst took him in the chest and he crumpled.

“Go, go, go!” Furey was up and running, moving down the corridor, the rest of the squad pounding through the doorway behind him.

Two men burst out of one of the doors in the corridor, guns barking. Furey threw himself into a running slide, under their fire, took each down with a burst, watched them fall slackly back into the room they’d been hiding in.

Inside, they saw what the Word of Blake had done with its prisoners.

It was a charnel house. An abattoir.

The first room was a morgue, with a double row of bodies on bare metal tables. Some were missing limbs, others had their skins peeled back and pinned in place like dissected animals. One man had a metal jaw, another had had his eyes removed and telescopic lenses inserted. A few were swollen and misshapen, covered in tumorous growths that had twisted their faces into something alien. It reeked of formaldehyde and rot.

In the room labeled ‘Dermal Armor Testing’ was a shooting range, only instead of targets people had been chained to the far walls. The skin on their chests, grey and hard, like that of a Terran rhino or Huntress Kirinotherium. Crude stitches down the sides of the bodies marked the lines where this new skin had been grafted over the old.

There were airtight chambers with thick metals walls and small round viewports, filled with dozens of bodies, faces frozen in agony. Large black-and-yellow biohazard warning labels had been pasted on the doorways. Liquid-filled tanks with bodies floating against their ceilings. The maternity ward was … indescribable.

This was the end, Furey realized, this was where the path that started with the death of his clan had led the Spheroids. Victory, victory at any cost, subsuming everything, all morality, all reason, everything to that single task—this was its purest expression. People became nothing but bodies, meat, a resource to be used and discarded. This was what ‘might makes right’ meant for a world, a civilization: It became a monstrous hell because becoming monsters made you strong, so the only way to be the strongest was to be the most monstrous.

Inner Sphere historians were already saying the Smoke Jaguars’ mistake had been in applying the rules too rigidly: they hadn’t accepted freebirth warriors, they hadn’t armed their non-warrior castes, whatever. They hadn’t used viral weapons or nerve gas, either, Furey thought bitterly. They hadn’t vivisected prisoners or used them in medical experiments.

His clan had been wrong—being strong wasn’t the goal, but the means to one—but they’d been right, too—there had to be limits, otherwise the fight for victory became the worship of death.

The rest of the squad looked green, nauseated, or else dark and brooding, knuckles tight on their weapons. Furey spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, but the putrid scent remained. “Pair up, search each level. Permission to not take prisoners,” he ordered. “Drake and Arman, with me. We will take the basement.”

They found the semi-conscious Legatus in a subterranean block of cells, each one closed by a steel-barred door. Drake and Arman were each taking an arm when Furey’s radio crackled.

“Panther Leader, this is Tiger Leader.” It was Bor, the man he’d left in charge of the cordon outside the building. “Counterattack. Blakists are here. Marians are engaging. Suggest you move quickly.” Over the radio, Furey could hear the pulse of laser fire.

“Acknowledged,” he responded. “We have the prize. Panther squad, regroup at the entrance. We are leaving.”

He was about to go when a voice called out to him from one of the other cells.

“Wait … you there … I recognize that … voice.”

[Kidd]

Sweet mayhem.

[mikecj]

That was a good description of the WoB plan.  Reminds me of the first Hybrid in Razor.

[Dubble_g]

Sweet mayhem.

Oh yeah. This is the Inner Sphere. Don't catch you slippin' now, look what I'm whippin' now, etc.

That was a good description of the WoB plan.  Reminds me of the first Hybrid in Razor.

Didn't get the reference but I'll take the compliment on the WoB """"plan"""".

* * *

“Go on, I will catch up,” Furey ordered Drake and Arman, then approach the cell, peering through the bars. A figure lay on the cot at the far end of the cell, a ramshackle smoke-shape in the weak light. Dressed in a tattered blood-red uniform.
 
As he approached the figure slowly sat upright on its cot, bringing its head into the light. A compact face, puffy and bruised, with dried blood around one nostril and a twisting line of a scar from hairline to just above the right eye. Black hair touched with grey.

“Who are you?” Furey asked.

The man braced against the wall of his cell, and painfully drew himself to his full height. “I am … Star Captain Morton … Showers,” he coughed, steadied himself, tried to speak but fell to coughing again. Finally, wheezingly, he said: “.. of Clan … Smoke Jaguar.”

He shuffled forward a few steps, still clinging to the wall, until he was directly opposite Furey.

“And you … one who speaks like a memory: Who are you?” he croaked.

Furey felt a wave of pity. He had met other Smoke Jaguars, from time to time, adrift, like Furey was, on the tides of war and battle, scrabbling in the dirt of Astrokaszy for lost relics, or building their own tin-pot despotates in the Periphery, searching for some talisman, some secret that would restore their pride, their Clan, their sense of place.

And largely, failing, falling into despair, hatred, self-loathing, and violence. Usually violence. Ending up in a grave, in a gutter, or else in a stinking, lightless prison.

“I am … My name is Leto,” he said. “My genefather was Aris Furey, my genemother Isabel McCaig.”

“Furey,” Showers repeated. “Furey?” He lurched forward, gripping the cell bars, eyes feverish. “Only Clan Smoke Jaguar claims the Furey bloodname. Which gene center? Which sibko? On Huntress? Never mind. It is here. The last one. You must help me.”

A distant rumble echoed through the prison.

“Perhaps we can chat about this some other time,” Furey suggested. “Step back.” He shouldered his rifle, pulled out the Nova pistol and aimed it at the door lock. The beam sliced away the mechanism, allowing him to kick the door inwards. “Come. Enemy BattleMechs are attacking outside. We do not want to miss our ride.” He offered Showers his arm.

Showers staggered against him. The man’s skin was burning hot, sticky with sweat. “BattleMechs?” he smiled. “At last—our rebirth is at hand?”

Furey pulled the man’s arm around his shoulder, started walking him towards the entrance, face forward so he would not have to look the other in the eyes. “Not quite,” he allowed. “I will explain. Later.”

Rumble turned to thunder as they approached the entrance. The scene outside was like a volcanic eruption at night as Marian BattleMechs engaged the attacking Blakists. Gouts of flame flickered back and forth, while crackling white lines burned the sky and missiles fell like meteors. The ground shuddered with each detonation.

Sergeant Bor, flanked by the gauss riflemen Bulldog and Switchblade, was waiting outside the entrance as Furey emerged with Showers still propped against him. Bulldog and Switchblade were firing at something out there in the dark, vague, blurry shapes that twisted away from the killer slugs.

“Battle armor!” Bor shouted. “They’ve got battle armor! Can barely see the damn things. Lost Cheng, lost Patel. We gotta move now, LT!”

Furey nodded. “No argument there, Sergeant,” he yelled back over another crescendo of explosions. “Drake, Arman, put the Legatus in the first skimmer. Bor, Bulldog, you go with them. Switchblade, with me in the second. Go!”

They ran to the side of the skimmer, stumbling over the shaking, uneven ground. Just as they reached the side of the skimmer Furey staggered as Showers caught his foot on something, dragging him off balance. Furey lost his grip and Showers fell to the ground. Swearing, Furey bent down.

Wind shrieked just over his head as something scythed through the sky, then there was a thumping crash as a great black shape landed in front of him. Sticky rain splattered him, and Switchblade’s headless body smacked against the side of the skimmer and slowly slid down, combat harness keeping his gauss rifle almost serenely level.

The shape rose from a crouch. Illuminated by the demonic flashes of BattleMech laser fire, it was a nightmare shape Furey had never seen before, like an Elemental crossbred with a Tarantula Wasp, sharp angles where the Elemental armor was rounded, the sharp V of metal wings jutting from its shoulders where the Elemental had missiles. A machinegun was strapped to the right arm, and both arms ended in long, cruel claws.

The thing turned towards him, and its left claw held something up and disdainfully let it fall to the ground: Switchblade’s head.

Furey’s Nova pistol was in his hands, the last of its energy pack funneled into a single blast that punched into the demonic shape’s visor plate, blasting armor away in a cloud of millimeter fragments. The thing rocked back a step. Then straightened.

His encounter with the bodyguard had already taught Furey the Blakists didn’t die easy. He threw the Nova aside, lunged for Switchblade’s gauss rifle, not bothering to try disengaging it from the harness, just swiveling it round until it was pointed at the Blakist power armor.

The thing charged towards Furey, one step, two, claws reaching for him.

The gauss rifle slammed back against Furey’s shoulder, nearly knocking him down. With an ear-shattering whoomp, a four-round burst of hypervelocity kinetic-kill rounds smashed into the power armor, blowing the right arm off at the shoulder and the right leg below the knee, punching two fist-sized holes in the chest. It went flying backwards, tumbling across the ground, and lay still.

Assault rifles were crackling all around him, as the other soldiers fired into the air, aiming at half-seen angels of death that swooped down and loosed bursts of machinegun fire. Furey heard Drake shout, then saw one of the power armor suits land on the front hood of the other skimmer, and then grab and lift Drake easily into the air before tearing the man in half with its claws. Bor and Arman were firing at point blank range, trying to cover the Legatus, but their bullets just bounced away in yellow sparks.

Furey slid out the pin securing the gauss rifle to the harness, teeth clenched against the weight of it, and braced it against the top of his own skimmer. Sighted and fired, blowing the power armor off the front of the other skimmer with another titanic whoomp.

Sergeant Bor grabbed the wheel, and the skimmer roared out of the prison camp.

Furey watched them go a moment, dropped the gauss, and scooped Showers—moaning, trying feebly to move—under the armpits, up onto his shoulders, and then half-pushed, half-shoved the man into the skimmer. He knocked the pilot on the back of the helmet, the signal to go.

The skimmer lurched forward and then metal screeched and howled, and they suddenly slowed. Furey looked back. The first armor, the one he’d shot the arm and half a leg off, was clinging to the back of the skimmer, one claw sunk into the side, trying to haul itself up.

With a cry of disgust Furey unslung his GZ assault rifle, pressed the barrel right against one of the holes he’d blown in the chest, and emptied the rifle into the space inside until the thing jammed. The claw spasmed, let go, and the power armor slid down the side of the skimmer as the skimmer leaped away.

Furey grabbed another GZ and kept it trained on the fallen figure until it was out of sight.

Beside him, he felt Showers clutch feebly at his leg. “The last one,” the man kept saying, over and over. “The last one.”

“I wish,” Furey muttered. “I somehow doubt that was the last of anything.”

The Marian BattleMechs came thundering after the skimmers, reduced to six now, covering their retreat.

They sped through empty streets as a faint white spike of light of a false dawn illuminated the sky.

The skimmers slewed to a halt in the Hardcase camp behind the ruins of the courthouse. There were whoops and cheers as the survivors dismounted, medics in red armbands rushing forward to take the Legatus to the MASH unit. “Medic!” Furey yelled, trying to maneuver Showers out of the carrier. “Medic!”

Arms reached out, helping lower the man’s body, then the medics were there, bustling around Showers like bees in a hive, and Furey was pushed to the periphery of the circle. Sergeant Bor was there, Bulldog, Corporal Arman, pounding him on the shoulder and clasping him with triumph, exhilaration of having survived, but Furey barely heard them.

When he turned, he found Phoebe standing behind him. She engulfed him in a hug, burying her face against his chest. He patted her back, absently. The reality only now sinking in. Star Captain? Showers might be the highest-ranking Smoke Jaguar to escape the Annihilation.

“Bushwacker is up and ready to rock, Leto,” Phoebe pulled back and grinned up at him.

“Ah. Good.” What had the man meant by ‘it’? What could ‘it’ be, that Showers felt sure the revival of the clan was at hand?

“We may not have the fancy toys the inner planet kids have, but we know how to keep stuff running out here in the Periphery. Give us sawdust and we’ll give you cheese soufflé.”

“Mm. Well done.”

“Hey, Furey, hello?” She followed his gaze. “So. Who is he?” she asked.

“He is. Family.”

“Whoah, whoah there Furey. Don’t think I’m quite ready to meet your in-laws just yet.”

“Ah.”

“You okay?”

“Mm.”

[Kasaga]

again loving how you are telling this story.  Nice twist with Showers.

[mikecj]

<Yoda voice>  No, there is another...

[Kidd]

Those Djinn BA went down fast.

[Dubble_g]

again loving how you are telling this story.  Nice twist with Showers.

High praise from a fellow writer!

<Yoda voice>  No, there is another...

At least. If not...ah nevermind.

Those Djinn BA went down fast.

Two points. #1, good on you for reading through the description to guess what design it was. #2 Alas, "went down fast" wasn't the intended impression.

* * *

Somewhere on the Great Eastern Plain/Große Steppe
Blantleff, Marian Hegemony
Late April, 3070

Steppes were often compared to seas or oceans, but Furey thought they must be few oceans in the galaxy that were so placid. The gentle swells and dips in the yellowing, white-tufted grass were nearly invisible until you actually stood on or in one, so that he felt the whole landscape was more an optical illusion, an apparently two-dimensional painting that revealed itself to be a sculpture only when you touched it.

The odd landmarks—an upthrust rock, a lone tree, a thin brook—were a welcome sight, if only because they proved you were moving and not just standing still.

Everything on the planet had two names, two faces, he learned, one given by the Lothian settlers, the other by the Circinians, long before the Marians had conquered this world. The planet’s single continent was either called Landmass or Urkontinent, depending on who you talked to (30th century settlers had evidently run out of ideas by the time they reached Blantleff: some of the planet’s features included the Bigwater Ocean/Äquatorial Ozean and the Great Eastern Plain/Große Steppe that they were now crossing).

Just like the planet’s names, the steppe also had two faces, Furey thought, two aspects that were the one and the same thing: On the one hand, the nearly-featureless flats gave a clear view right to the horizon, perhaps 10 kilometers away from where he sat in the cockpit of the Bushwacker, which made it essentially impossible for the Circinicans and Word of Blake to surprise them. By the same token, there was nowhere to hide, and if their pursuers were fast enough, they were sure to catch them. Light BattleMechs could do it, certainly, or else VTOLs or aircraft.

There was a lesson there, he mused, something about taking the good with the bad. One’s past. One’s family.

He watched the convoy of Hardcase vehicles bounce across the plain. A handful of Regulator tanks, like the one that had defended the courthouse, a long string of Badger APCs, a mobile headquarters. They’d had to abandon anything without a fusion engine for lack of fuel, had only what ammunition they carried, and had to supplement their rations with hunting or ‘liberating’ food from isolated villages or nomads.

It would be a long retreat, almost halfway across the planet to the city of Dersidatz, almost all of it across the featureless steppe. Unable to see where he’d come from, unsure of where he was going. Geography that lacked any geography, a blank slate that was something passed through rather than reached.

Haven’s company had regrouped with the survivors of the regiment when the Marians finally pulled out of Blantzville. Somewhere down there were Colonel Evan Hardy and Major Zack Claymore, the ones who’d sent Cairn and Maeve to their deaths for a useless objective. Who he’d sworn to ruin. His eyes drifted a little, to the MASH unit behind the headquarters truck. Things had changed though. Old promises and priorities carried less weight.

From one of the supply trucks a face watched the Bushwacker striding at the rear of the column, a face framed in orange-red hair. Furey didn’t notice.

They circled the vehicles in a laager at night, like ancient American pioneers in another millennium. Tents were pitched beside vehicles, food warmed over carefully-tended grass fires. C-Rations and roast Giant Ratite, which tasted to Furey a bit like ostrich. The men gathered around the fires, traded stories, played cards, or counted the stars. Out here, with no city lights or buildings to interfere, the night sky was coldly beautiful, the geyser plume of the Milky Way clearly visible across the sky.

Furey watched the sky from the side of Showers’ bed. The bed was inside the MASH units, a 10-wheeled truck packed from front to back with operating rooms and recovery beds. At night, the sides of the unit were opened to admit the cool night air.

At first, Furey had been worried Showers would not survive. He’d seen the man’s medical records: two broken ribs, malnutrition, dehydration, a lung infection and the local strain of dysentery.

Ah, but tough to kill, he thought with a touch of pride. That was us.

At first the man—Star Captain Morton Showers, he reminded himself—had rambled incoherently, thrashing in his sleep, insisting that ‘it’ was here, that ‘it’ was the last one, that he must find ‘it.’ Other times he warned of ‘her’, ‘she’ had betrayed him, ‘she’ must not find it. One time, he had sat suddenly upright, and demanded to know where they were going—then relaxed and smiled when Furey told him ‘Dersidatz.’

After that, Showers had regained strength quickly, and as he did, these manic episodes grew less, then halted altogether. The man was awake now, more coherent, though Furey was finding this a mixed blessing.

“They call you Furey.”

Ah. Tough to kill and tough to reason with, as well.

“They do. Star Captain, what were you doing on Blantleff?”

“Do not try to distract me. They call you Furey, but you are not bloodnamed.”

“No one objected.” He did not say, ‘because almost all of those who might object are long dead.’ He didn’t have to.

“I object.”

“How surprising.”

“You dishonor your sibkin, your geneparents. Your clan. Our entire way of life.”

“Would this be the way of life that saw our clan Annihilated?”

“Better Annihilation than to sink to the level of these … stravag. And I hear you have taken a lover from among them, taken some freeborn filth into your bed?”

Furey sighed. “I do not wish us to be enemies. You may call me Leto.”

“May? May, is it?” Showers weakly pounded the bed. “I will call you Leto because that is your only name!”

Furey stood. “You should get some rest.”

He walked out.

Phoebe was waiting in his tent when he entered, sitting up, sleeping bag drawn up to her chin. “Ah, the fearless explorer,” she said.

Furey smiled at her tiredly. “At least the natives here seem friendly. Is there room for two under there?”

“Not dressed like that, there isn’t,” she smirked. “Where’ve you been?”

“The man I rescued.” He couldn’t keep the disappointment from his voice.

“Went well?”

“Being born from an incubator should make our families easier to deal with than yours,” Furey mused, pulling his shirt up over his head.

“No such luck, huh?”

“Evidently not.”

“Why d’you care?”

“Because, as thick-skulled as he appears to be, he is a … link I suppose, a connection. A reminder, maybe.” Kicking off one boot, then the other.

“Don’t seem the feeling is mutual.”

“In his own way he cares, perhaps. Part and parcel of the thick-headedness. We do not express affection as you do. If a child dies in training, it is because they were weak. If a warrior loses a battle, it is because they fought badly. Hard love is the only type of love we know. The clans celebrate only victory; failure is shown no mercy.”

“He thinks you’re a failure?”

He nodded.

“Why? Because of me? Because of us? Listen, Leto, don’t let him get to you. Don’t let him mess with your head. I know this history with your people still tears you up, but let the dead lie, Furey. Listen: The past is a prison, and its bars are memory and tradition. You have the chance now to build your own future.”

“What does the future hold for me, other than revenge and death?” Furey asked. “All I have is my oath, to return to Outreach and carry word of Colonel Hardy and Major Claymore’s indifference and incompetence.”

Phoebe’s face twisted at his words. “That’s all you have?” Her voice was angry, bitter. “All right. If that’s all you have left, then. Fine. How long since you’ve been to Outreach, Furey?”

He frowned. “Several years. I have been in the Concordat, the Magistracy and on Astrokaszy. Why?”

“The Word of Blake took Outreach, Leto. Rumor is they glassed the planet, nuked it down to bedrock. Only things we hear about Outreach now are … like the screams from inside an insane asylum. Your oath is pointless and stupid, Leto. Give it up. Pay attention to what’s in front of you.”

Furey stared at her. “Ah,” he said. Of course. The Blakists would hate the Dragoons, for their Clan origins, for rearming the Inner Sphere and reducing their influence. He felt his scarred palm, felt the red line that had tethered him to purpose snap. “Then how can you say I should turn my back on this man?”

Phoebe’s face softened. “You did fine without him before. You’ll do fine without him again.”

“Did I? Will I?”

“You will, if you don’t try to do it alone,” she said, and cupped his chin and kissed him, hard, as though trying to convince him of something.

Even as he returned the kiss, he was aware this was a kind of retreat from words, an acknowledgement that no, he was not fine, that he was still alone, that he was fleeing from conversation into a physical act that obliterated thought. His own touch felt to him like a betrayal. She felt it too. Phoebe rolled away from him before he fell asleep, and in the morning she was gone.

[Dubble_g]

He felt lost again, his fate slipping from his grip. Better to focus on things he could control. The BattleMech, for example.

The Bushwacker had a low, narrow profile, a bit like an Ebon Jaguar or Black Hawk, with a fighter jet nose above two backwards-canting legs and between two widely-splayed arms. The field repair on the gyro by Phoebe’s team was good, but not perfect. The machine was unstable whenever the torso was twisted to one side, but Furey had learned long ago to accept the individual personality and temperament of ancient, rebuilt Inner Sphere ’Mechs. More worrying was the lack of munitions: the two long-range missile launchers shared a supply of just 14 reloads, while the autocannon was down to 50%. Once those were gone he’d be down to a single laser and a pair of machineguns, barely more armament than a 20-ton scout.

So he watched and waited, and guarded the rear of the mercenaries’ retreat, waiting for the pursuit that never came.

The Marians and mercenaries had divided into columns like a three-tined fork—a cohors of Marians in each of the northern and southern prongs, the mercenaries in the center. Far enough apart that a single ambush could not wipe the whole force out, close enough that they could come to one another’s aid.

In the meantime, if the Blakists would not attack, Showers was more than happy to fill the gap.

“How old were you, Leto?”

Furey could still feel Showers’ disdain. Today, the man had found a new target to latch onto. “I was 19, when they came.”

“Aha. Then you were too young to take your Trial of Position.”

“Under the circumstances one was difficult to arrange,” he tried to say it lightly. Without much success. Remembering a night filled with searing flame, choking smoke. Trainer Cole. “Perhaps we might discuss what you are doing on this planet, and what you are searching for.”

“You did not face a Trial of Position.”

Showers would never concede the point, he knew. Stubborn ass, he though. But then, clan was clan. “I did not.”

“By what right do you pilot that BattleMech?”

If nothing else, these exchanges were teaching him to hold his temper. “By what right? The galaxy is a Circle of Equals, Star Captain, and every day is a Trial of Position. Without a clan, everything tests us, because everything wants to kill us. I pilot it by right of survival, Star Captain. I have nothing that I have not earned for myself.”

“You did not face a Trial of Position, quineg?”

“Good night, Star Captain.”

His tent and bed were empty that night.

They passed small columns of civilian refugees from time to time, either on foot or with horse-drawn wagons. The mercenaries passed them without stopping; there was no food or fuel to share, and they would only slow the column down.

There would be no escape for them if the Circinians came. They were laborer caste, perhaps technician caste at best, so the thought came as a surprise to Furey. Surely, he argued with himself, you had to harden your heart to these things.

“Leto. Leto, we began on the wrong foot.” Showers was more conciliatory the next night, keeping his voice level and calm. “Let us start again. I know it must have been hard, being alone, without your people. I will try to understand. Perhaps this use of your genefather’s name is your way of laying claim to your people’s legacy? Quiaff?”

“Something like that.”

“Leto, Leto, you are 29 but still a boy. This is vanity. To a true Smoke Jaguar, the self is nothing. The clan is all. Your personal wishes for identity count for nothing next to the needs of the clan. It must be thus. Can you not see that? Otherwise, each warrior fights only for themselves and their own glory, and chaos ensues. Look at the Inner Sphere, if you need any proof.”

“The Inner Sphere which defeated us.” He wondered why he was being so difficult with the man. He despised Victor Steiner-Davion and all his like, the ones who had crushed his people into the ground and wiped their feet on the clan’s legacy. That didn’t mean his own people hadn’t been blind, stubborn and stupid, though. Why else would they have lost?

“Yes, for a time, perhaps. Only because we were betrayed, from both within the clan and from those who once called us brothers. But now they tear themselves apart like animals, blood-crazed bears, rabid wolves. Do you not wish to build something that lasts, Leto? A new Star League which will endure for millennia? Ours is the redemption of the Universe, Ours is the paradise of Terra, Ours is the war of liberation.”

Furey recognized the quote, from the Clan Smoke Jaguar Remembrance, the record of his clan and people. While those words, heard for the first time in a decade, stirred him, the rest of Showers’ speech was more troubling.

The warrior caste studied little history, but even to Furey the ‘stabbed in the back’ excuse rang hollow, a drearily tired excuse trotted out by every people or nation that had ever lost a war. If they’d been betrayed, it was because there had been something rotten within them. More likely, they’d lost because the other side had been stronger.

As for the future, he had not thought beyond his own death in years. “Build something? I do not know. Perhaps.”

“You do not know? Listen to yourself, Leto. Are you an animal, scratching for survival? Or a MechWarrior, building the future through your strength and sacrifice? As the wolf feeds the smoke jaguar, So all give life to the warrior, Who sheds his blood for their glory.”

Furey thought of the young man he’d executed, the pilot of Cutter, the executioner BattleMech. Hearing Showers and the Remembrance echo the words he’d said to that man and throw them back in his own face.

“Traditions like the bloodnames exist for a reason, Leto. They are not mere whims or archaic pantomimes. They are what defines the warrior. Sacrifice, not selfishness. Remember Leo Showers, Great Khan of Khans, He showed us the way to destiny, And gave his life to achieve it. Sacrifice. You must harden yourself to these realities.”

Furey had no answer to that. Harden yourself. To sacrifices, to giving up your wants in service to the people. He shrugged and nodded, conceding the point.

“Listen, Furey, you feel lost because you know the ‘what’ of our people, but not the ‘why.’ There is something on this world, something in Dersidatz that I will find and I will show you. Something that will help you understand.”

Despite Furey’s probing, he would say nothing more.

Furey had little time to brood on what Showers had said. The next morning, BattleMechs appeared on the horizon.

[Kidd]

Verrrryyy nice. So Furey now has a living embodiment of his dead Clan to spur him along eh?