Sykes Mountains
Cambelton
Marik-Stewart Commonwealth
15th April, 3036
The cockpit was his second home, and this one was one fire. Multiple warning lights and alarms were going off, an acrid smoke was coming out of one of the panels. A shadow appeared out of the snowstorm, with the targeting computer offline he couldn't be sure of a lock, but fired anyways. The sound of the autocannon firing was a small comfort, but if there was something out there, he had missed. He tried his coms again.
“Eagle One to all Chicks, how copy?”
Static.
Damn that bitch, he thought, I should have had her on Colfax. And on Galatea. And last week.
He looked at a flickering monitor. Nothing. He was supposed to have reinforcements, but where were they? He had fought them all to a standstill. Thomas, Cameron-Jones, all were now licking their wounds. He had outlasted them all, had brought them to the brink, was getting ready to launch his final assault when she made her announcement. Half his troops, the politicians he had bullied and cowed, the newscorps he had bought off...all for nothing. His allies, known and unknown, deserting him. He would have to rebuild from the start, all over again.
The Orion swung to the side, lasers hammering it. The gyro whined madly, another alarm screamed, and he turned to see a Warhammer, it's own armor battered and holed, moving towards him. He turned and fired a snapshot with his last autocannon round, wincing internally as it missed. The gale force winds tore his SRM and LRM's off course, they exploded against the rocks and crags. The Warhammer turned and raised one of its arms, firing. Duncan let loose with everything he had left at the same time.
The PPC bolt stabbed deep into his mechs chest. He did not notice it at first, until the heat bloomed in his cockpit,taking his breath away. He took one look at his panel, then at the enemy Warhammer, which was staggering under his own fire. He looked at his gauges, then kicked his engine to full throttle. The Warhammer saw him coming, fired of a snap shot, but missed. He did not fire, but instead ran his Orion as fast as he could towards the other mech. Forty meter's, twenty. At ten meters, he pulled his ejection handle.
It felt as if his hips were fighting with his ears for space on his head. He felt the rockets firing, the howling snowstorm drowned out the noise. There was a brief moment of weightlessness as the seat rockets cut out, then another brief pop. One second he was falling back to earth, the next minute he was whipsawing from side to side as the fierce winds dragged his canopy back and forth. He could not see the ground, the howling wind and snow created a whiteout condition. He braced for impact, swaying in his chair, but the expected impact did not happen. Just when he thought he might be landing in a nearby lake, the ground smacked him, hard.
He was only out for a few seconds. It was the explosion that woke him up. He looked through the blowing snow, a hundred meters away his Orion had hit the Warhammer, both had fallen to the ground. The Orion had fallen on top of the other mech, pinning it. Then the reactor had exploded, taking both mechs in a flare of yellow and blue plasma. Bits and pieces of armor pinged to the ground around him. One had bounced off his helmet, bringing him back to the present.
The heat was brief, quickly replaced by the biting cold. He realized he was shivering, the skimpy shorts and shirt he wore in the cockpit were completely inadequate for the weather. His fingers were shaking so much it took him three tries to rip the seals on the emergency kit open. The lightweight jumpsuit was better protection then he was wearing, and after fumbling it on, he felt a little warmer. Of course it could have been the shivering as well. He looked around, trying to get his bearing, then looked at the compass that came in the kit. Magnetic North was...that way.
So Gilverry Base was that way. He thumbed the powerswitch on his kits transponder, then stuck his hands under his armpits and struggled forward.
He didn't know how long he walked. He checked his bearing as best he could every few minutes, but the swirling snow prevented him from using any landmarks. Once, he dropped it into the snow, and spent a frantic few minutes trying digging through it before finding it. He couldn't feel his fingers when he found it.
As he walked, his mind went in several directions. He cursed Dame Catherine, who started it all. It was she who started this mess. He cursed Duke Halas and Thomas. What did that Comstar whelp know of power and rule? Thomas may have wanted to soft talk the Silver Hawks, Regulans and others back into the fold, but Selim Halas had undone all of that on Atreus. And I showed him what happens when you confront a Marik who knows how to wield power. Keep your enemies off balance, show them your left hand and smack them with your right. It had cost him, good men and women, loyal men and women, but
the best of Oriente had died on the Atrean Plains. He had almost died that day, almost. His thoughts turned to other things for a brief moment.
Carlos.
Part of him rationalized that he was doing
this for Carlos. He wanted to leave him a League that could stand up to Alexander Steiner-Davion when the time came. Now, the League was just pieces, waiting to be picked off one by one.
He heard it first. The metal on metal sounds of a mech moving, and fast, being carried on the wind, which was blowing towards him. It was getting louder. There was little cover, but between two rocks, if he huddled down just so, he was hidden, and thankfully out of the wind. He turned his transponder off, it was possible to track those things if you had the right equipment. Yes, it was a mech, maybe more than one. Light mechs. He risked a glance towards the sound of the noise, and saw the birdlike form of a Locust making it's way across the snow. It stopped, it's torso sweeping back and forth, before moving on again, this time in a line that was going to take it near him. As it got closer he could see the 10th Marik crest on its torso.
His breath, which he did not realize he was holding, came out of him a huff. Behind the Locust he could see another shadow,which became a Hermes. Both mechs tried staying within visual range of each other. He stood up, waving his arms, jumping up and down, yelling at the top of his lungs. Just when he thought the Locust was going to disappear into the swirling white, it turned, paused, and then came back at him in an easy, loping stride. Once it stood over him, the hatch opened. A rope ladder was thrown down, and a helmeted mechwarriors face appeared.
“Compliments of General Garibaldi sir. Hurry up please, there's enemy mechs about.”
The first time he tried climb the ladder, he found his fingers wouldn't grip the rope properly, and he slipped off before he was three rungs up. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to grip the rope, ignoring the needles of pain shooting up his arms.
He was about halfway up, when he heard thunder, then a wall of heat and flame threw him off the ladder and back into the snow below. Duncan didn't realize he had blacked out until he woke up with a start. He could not hear anything, and when he touched his head the hand came back bloody. He realized he was shivering again, and looked down. The jumpsuit was mostly charred fabric, there were real burns on his arms and legs. Groaning with effort, gasping with pain, he sat up.
He was maybe ten meters away from what remained of the Locust. The mechs torso had been devastated by something big and powerful, there was not much of it left. The hip mechanism that held the mechs left leg to the torso gave way with a crack he felt more than heard, and the remains of light mech toppled backwards. Through the swirling white he could see the Hermes retreating, lasers stabbing out at the Victor that had appeared out of the swirl. Right arm thrust forward, the huge Pontiac Autocannon roared, and the Hermes folded in on itself, then fell backwards into a huge snow drift. Duncan shook his head, the ringing in his ears had not gone away. As he watched, the Victor disappeared into the snow. He stood up, turned around, and froze. Thirty meters away a Thunderbolt stood, left arm pointed at him.
He knew it was over. It's not supposed to end like this!
He though, as he painfully raised his arms. Victory should be his,could be his.
“My name is Captain-General Duncan Marik.” he yelled.
His voice was hoarse, but the wind carried it. “I surrender myself to the forces of Kristen Marik!” His body swayed in the wind, and he waited for a response.
After a few seconds, the Thunderbolts arm moved, just a little bit. Duncans eyes grew wide as he realized what was about to happen.
Carlos he thought.
The machine guns fired.
* * * * *
"The Marik Civil War didn't exactly end. With the death of Duncan Marik on Cambelton, a few of his hard core supporters proposed his young son Carlos be names as Captain-General, with several vying to be Regent in his name. Those proposals quickly dies though when Carlos and his mother went into hiding. Most talk of the military continuing the fight against Kristen Marik ended when General Garibraldi surrendered the militia loyal to Duncan to her. Yes, the following pardons for most of the soldiers in the militia, absolving them of the crimes of unlawful insurrection, mutiny and the like, may have been political theater, but it was effective political theater.
"As one of the main proponents to the Rule of Law within the commonwealth, Kirsten Mariks call for a vote of the issue of Captain General fell on a mostly empty parliament. Without a quroum, and the extreme unlikeliness of one occurring, the Schism looked to be permanent. A proposal for a new version of the commonwealth, one where each state had its own rulers but contributed to a Federal government that would be responsible for most Interstellar trade, military and political agreements gained some traction early on, but soon fell apart when it became aware to its most ardent supporters that it wouldn't go anywhere without the support of the Regulans and Tomas Marik. The Prince had made it clear he would rather be Prince of the Independent Principality of Regulus, and Thomas would not agree to anything until he was confirmed as Captain-General.
"In the end, as most things politcal do, it became a matter of numbers. Kristen Marik had the support of the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth, and maybe Tamarind. Thomas Marik had the support of the Oriente. The Regulans were their own politcal entity. The Kendall Compact was growing in size, but economically was still trying to grow. The Periphery was ablaze in pirate attacks, and in the Andurien-Canopian Alliance, Dame Humphries seemed content to sit and watch the League fall apart.
"Janos Marik was certainly no Alexander the Great of Old Earth, but his death left a similar result, a series of small Successor States, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, each powerful in their own right but not strong enough to do much without the cooperation of a neighbor,cooperation that was not forthcoming.
For all his and his families faults, Janos had held the League together, and his family had proven incapable of the same thing. It would be decades before anything similar to it would appear again."
Excerpted from "All the King's Horses - A Brief overview of the Marik Schism, 3030-3035" by Professor Gerald Perry, University of Marik Press, 3091.