Get ready for the random death on the battlefield, fragments from the Inner Sphere: Shrapnel.
So, before I delve into the stories, I’m gonna say, this book is gorgeous. It’s full-colour at a point when that was highly unusual in the gaming industry… Maybe not the first full-colour BattleTech book as Camo Specs came out the same year but still. According to the introduction by Jordan Weisman BattleTech was the first game line to use interior colour art at all, which is impressive in and of itself. While a lot of the work is repeated from other books, there’s quite a bit of original art to boot, from regular contributors like Liz Danforth, David Dietrick, and Jeff Laubenstein (some of his pieces are in Black and White, but to be clear there are colour elements on every page regardless of the art). You can see the throughline from this to 25 Years of Art and Fiction in particular.
Anyway, fiction. First up is Old MechWarriors Never by Ken St. Andre. It’s a fairly standard story where a grizzled veteran Solaris Warrior past his prime befriends a newbie and they end up having to fight in a rigged game. There’s a lot of generic SF bits in this story- human space is called “the galaxy” instead of the Inner Sphere, the Spirit of the Galaxy is a power of fate, there’s Cthonian Whiskey as a drink… like The Sword and the Dagger a lot of the elements just don’t feel like BattleTech, but it’s also a very early piece of work so it’s forgivable. I remain impressed by how much material from this story and Warrior: En Garde informed the Solaris VII box set and The Reaches sourcebook to the point I wonder how long the set had been in development and if Stackpole and St. Andre had been given early drafts as reference material. The suburb/satellite town of Xolara and the Oonthrax, Zelazni Tandrek and Blackstar stables all make their first appearances or mentions here. I don’t think Morte’s tavern makes an appearance in The Reaches, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is in there, I’m just not going to pull the book off the shelf to check for this review. The big glaring thing is that the arena here clearly isn’t Hartford Gardens, but that is a very minor flaw especially when you consider that Xolara has at least one more arena.
A lot of generic stories like this one are elevated by their writing, and sadly this isn’t the case here. The prose is quite perfunctory and a lot of time is spent essentially hammering home or otherwise repeating moments we’ve just seen. Ken St. Andre is a legendary game designer, and while he’s been writing fiction for quite some time now, this is his second published work according to Wikipedia, and it definitely feels like the work of someone who’s still finding their voice and becoming more confident. There’s a couple of nice twists along the way and overall it’s a decent, if uneven start to the anthology.
Next up is Black Cats Cross Your Path By Tara Gallgher and James Lanigan. This is a very short piece about a small unit of mercenary infantry who end up outwitting some ’Mechs pretending to be the Black Widow Company. It was reprinted in MechWarrior 2nd edition which is where I first came across it. There’s not a huge amount to this aside from the narrating character quoting Shakespeare and making a joke about enjoying hoisting enemy ’Mechs on their own petards - my first exposure to the saying as a young person, as it happens - which is unfortunately followed up with a pun on the word petard that has not aged well, but these things happen. A decent, mostly fun little piece.
Next up is Think Like a Liao by Susan Putney, in which Tormano Liao, still being spelled as “Tormana” here squanders his last chance to make amends with his father, instigating a Maskirova plot to kill him and replace him with a body double, which makes you wonder if Max Liao ever had a second idea. It’s enjoyable enough but nothing to write home about, much of the story has Tormano stuck in his Vindicator trying to bargain with his assassin/replacement and convince him that they’re caught in a Davion Raid, which is interesting enough as a core plot but there’s not a huge amount of bite to the story. The last line is a nice little moment, as is the depiction of courtly politicking on Sian at the start.
This is followed by Dance of Vengeance by William H. Keith Jr, a fun one about a MechWarrior in a Kuritan auxiliary who’s unit is goaded into an untenable situation so they’ll retreat, giving the noble commander of the line regiment they’re attached to an excuse to have them executed and steal their ’Mechs. He comes into Hassaid Ricol’s orbit and has to bide his time to gain revenge on the noble. This one really feels like a BattleTech story out of the original setting notes in the 2nd edition rulebook, with even a handful of ’Mechs belonging to your own side being a prize worth very underhanded tactics to secure for yourself. It also serves to further expand Ricol as someone who is willing to play a long game and work to his own benefit, but he has a clear moral code as well and appreciates skill and integrity. The story also drops hints that Verthandi either rejoined the Draconis Combine after winning their independence or was reconquered, which is interesting. The story jumps between the duel and the story of how the protagonist’s unit was ambushed and the aftermath, which is a fairly standard structure for this kind of tale but it helps keep things interesting. I certainly wouldn’t be averse to more similar stories set in the Third Succession War era, where ownership of BattleMechs was so important.
Another very short story is next in the book, And Then There Was The Time… by Mark O’Green. Not much to say here, it’s from the perspective of a bored courtesan listening to a fighter pilot tell her about a dogfight. It’s amusing, sort of that meme of the guy talking loudly into the ear of a girl who clearly doesn’t care, but in prose form. The byplay is a line of his story followed by her thoughts, which are mostly her complaining about how boring he is and how he’s more interested in his own story than her. The funniest joke is when he mentions Wolf’s Dragoons and she thinks “Wolfster Goons?”. It’s accompanied by a nice piece of art which I think is David Dietrick’s work, and I wonder if the story was inspired by the art or vice versa. It could very easily have been in one of the House books.
Another very short one follows, Dispatch by Elizabeth T Danforth and Michael A Stackpole. Formatted as a series of short communiques, a Marik battalion commander has set a trap for Cranston Snord’s Irregulars, baited with items stolen from their museum. It moves from the commander confidently telling his colonel he can’t lose to naturally explaining his failure and ends with one from Snord to Janos Marik to tweak his nose. There’s not much to this, it’s a cute little piece and the bit where the notes to the battalion commander suddenly change from referring to him as a captain instead of a force commander is amusing. Much of the two-page spread is taken up by a drawing of Rhonda and Cranston Snord and the plush dog she swears was owned by Elvis as a child which was part of the raid and counter-raid.
Legion Team is William H. Keith’s second contribution to the anthology, a direct sequel to the Saga of the Gray Death Legion. It focuses on Tracy Maxwell Kent and it’s broadly divided into two sections: In the first she’s fighting a Kuritan ’Mech solo after she was ordered not to, and subsequently getting chewed out about it by Grayson; and in the second it’s the next day and she’s assigned to lead a team of trainee MechWarriors on what should be a milk run as she wonders if she was assigned the job because Grayson now thinks she’s not enough of a team player to be trusted… and then they inadvertently run into a large concentration of enemy forces. It’s very much a meat and potatoes BattleTech story, ruminating on duty and balancing the personal motivation, in Tracy’s case getting revenge for her brother, with her desire to be a good MechWarrior and to live up to the Legion’s ideals. It’s also very much in the Gray Death’s wheelhouse as a large chunk of the book is a handful of 20-ton bug mechs and a single medium holding off at least a company of larger units for just long enough. The action is well-written, and Tracy’s internal monologue and emotional dilemma is handled decently.
Keith is back for a third story next in Where Lies the Honor? Which is our first decent look at civilian life in BattleTech fiction. Written in first person from the perspective of a Friendly Persuader on a Draconis Combine world, it paints something of a bleak picture of an industrialised society that is dedicated primarily to productivity for the corporations that serve the Combine. The people live in corporate housing, get paid in corporate scrip they spend on corporate products in corporate stores, and they almost all work for the corporation to boot. The narrator is beginning to chafe against the heavy-handed justice the noble in charge of their town metes out, which rapidly comes to a head. The story is another straightforward tale that fits well into BattleTech’s milieu, it paints a nicely vivid look at civilian life in the Draconis combine that would inform later material like Victor Milán’s Camacho’s Caballeros novels, and that elevates the story beyond its plot beats. Even though the people are in a corporate company town, the little details like the person who instigates the action being a street peddler with charms and snake-oil potions, and the brief depiction of the street market and the art accompanying the story help give it a techno-barbarism feel. This isn’t cyberpunk, it’s SF feudalism. And that’s BattleTech in a nutshell.
We’re back in very short fiction territory with Natasha Kerensky: Bio-Medical Report by Tara Gallagher and James Lanigan. This is quite in line with the modern Shrapnel’s article setup, where there’s a degree of narrative but it’s a collection of in-universe documents. In this case it’s a pair of reports about Natasha Kerensky - one a discussion of her physical when the Dragoons joined Lyran service, one talking about her history of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, and then finally an interview between her and Misha Auburn, Melissa Steiner’s best friend and trainee court historian at the time. For the most part it’s confirming that Natasha is a figure of mystery, and the interview feels to me like an attempt at a Barbara Walters-style “intimate chat”-style interview which goes off the rails rather than a more journalistic or academic one. It definitely tries to play up Natasha’s mystique, to the point of suggesting that Misha might be interviewing a double. It’s cute but doesn’t have a huge amount of substance.
Painting the Town by Mark O’Green is next, an action piece about a squad of Kuritan infantry caught up in a raid to try and capture Theodore Kurita… when he’s nowhere near the area. It’s very similar to Black Cats Cross Your Path, but has the benefit of a much longer word count and a heightened sense of drama as the characters aren’t trained and confident anti-’Mech infantry. There’s a lot of interpersonal conflict on display, moving from gentle ribbing (and outright bullying) to threats to morale as the characters realise the predicament they’re in. It’s a defense borne out of desperation as the characters use paint, acid, cooling and heating chemicals to slowly erode the attacking ’Mechs while trying to use the wrecked facility they’re in to stay safe. It works very well and has some nice character moments, it’s the first place Theodore Kurita is referred to by the nickname “Teddy”, there’s a great bit where one of the characters quails at taking on mechs but the squad leader asks each person in turn how many pillars are there, how many virtues and other elements of Combine society, ending with there being five of them, just like each element. And in a less enjoyable but true to the setting in the Combine element, one of the characters constantly berates their female squadmate for having dreams of becoming a MechWarrior, which is distasteful to modern sensibilities but fits the misogyny of pre-reform Kuritan culture.
Next is The Race is Not to the Swift by Bear Peters, another ’Mech action story, this time from the perspective of the commander of a Marik Milita company involved in an attack on Solaris. It’s very much bound up in the depiction of the action as it directly impacts the main character - the fighting he takes part in personally and the orders he gives to the rest of his unit. The fog of war features heavily as he’s relying on reports from his troopers on what they’re seeing and doing and can’t get through to regimental command for much of the story. Their advance becomes a near-rout as they try to rush back in time to get off-world and they hope that the mercenaries holding their flank will hold. It’s another enjoyable piece and well outside the standard BattleTech wheelhouse. The instances of direct ’Mech combat in here don’t fully line up with other fiction but that’s a minor complaint, and it’s nice to see the Free Worlds Legue get some headline time.
Speaking of both the Free Worlds League and Bear Peters, his second entry in the book is Final Exam, another very short piece in which Willis Crawford, still an academy cadet with Anton Marik makes an audacious move during a simulator exam which wins but was more exploiting the predictable nature of the computer, and he’s admonished by his professor that it would likely end with disaster if he tried this in battle. This is a very deep cut, possibly the deepest in the book as Willis Crawford would go on to be a general in the FWLM, overextend badly during an assault on Solaris which would lead to disaster and Crawford’s execution, despite Anton’s attempts to get his brother Janos to display clemency. This incident was one of the instigating acts of the Marik Civil War (3014-3015 edition), but if you don’t know that, this is a bit of an odd story, like the first scene in something bigger that just isn’t here.
And the final entry is The Judas Blind by Michael A Stackpole. Written in first-person perspective from Patrick Kell’s point of view, he’s arrived on the planet Murchinson on a covert mission from Michael Hasek-Davion, some six weeks after the Hounds retreated from the world in the face of a Kuritan assault. He’s snuck onto the planet ostensibly to rescue the partner and child of a member of the Hounds left behind, but as always, there’s more going on than it initially seems.
So Stackpole has a lot of strengths as a writer, and most of them are technical. He’s good at balancing a plot, keeping things moving, balancing a large cast and having exciting twists, but the weaknesses in his writing are more evident the tighter the cast and focus. It’s not always an issue in his BattleTech writing… but oh boy, when it hits, it hits and I’ll be talking about some egregious examples in time, but this is the first time these issues rear their head. Kell becomes a level of witty action hero here, putting up with an impressive level of physical and emotional abuse with aplomb, and like, it’s OK that he’s more than just a MechWarrior, but there’s only so much weight the repeated line “why does everyone think MechWarriors are useless out of the cockpit?” can bear. The overall plot, in which Kell and a Kuritan fixer/sex worker/spy kinda work together while constantly betraying each other is decent enough if a bit over the top towards the end, it feels like Stackpole was trying to do one of those madcap adventure stories but it didn’t fully work.
At the same time though, I didn’t dislike the story, it’s just sorta there, a serviceable enough bit of fiction that doesn’t play to the author’s strengths. As an interesting continuity note, this is Christian Kell’s secret origin, but that’s more of an interesting sidenote than a reason to seek the story out.
And that was Shrapnel. A decent enough start to BattleTech array of short fiction, but sadly not a huge amount that stands out as an endearing classic. Worth tracking down if you can get a copy, if only for curiosity value and the art. Next up is more Stackpole as he introduces the next generation of MechWarriors… and some techno-barbarians from the Deep Periphery. It’s the start of the Blood of Kerensky trilogy: Lethal Heritage.
