(reading from the pdf) => very, very nice and head and shoulders above a lot of the canon fiction.
Getting comments like this is what I imagine heroin feels like. :P
Also, that PDF was fun to make. Apologies to anyone trying to print it off, but the page size is designed to mimic the "trade paperback" large-format paperback size. Couple of other little details there also, like the page headers, drop caps at the start of each chapter, etc. also done to make it look like a 'real' published book. Props also to the artist, Marco Mazzoni (
https://marcomazzoni.dunked.com/battletech) for the fantastic cover image, which I've taken from the Alpha Strike Commander's Edition.
***
TWENTY-FOUR
No SurrenderThe pencil beam of the torch outlined a shape, dully reflective, waiting in the cellar beneath the parliament buildings. As Streicher ran the torch along its edges, almost lovingly, Sebastian saw it was a rectangular steel box, just over two meters long and about a meter wide. Black-on-yellow nuclear hazard labels were affixed to the top and sides.
‘What is this?’ Already knowing the answer.
‘A little souvenir from the Capellan arsenal on our old home on Bernardo,’ Streicher said. ‘A Peacekeeper warhead. Keeps the peace by detonating with a force equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT, instantly annihilating everything within a 500-meter radius. Lethal radiation and probable destruction of everything two kilometers away and gives everything up to about five kilometers away a seriously bad day.’ Streicher patted the box affectionately. ‘You heard our late friend, Esposito. All we need to do is take this up to Friendship Bridge and we can instantly wipe out around 200 Jabos.’
The light swung and revealed a low, electric cart near the box. ‘Help me lift it up, damn thing weighs half a ton,’ said Streicher. ‘We’ll take it out to the Mechs. I’ll need to carry it, so you cover me. We get there, set the detonator, and get out. Then sit back and watch the flash.’
Sebastian didn’t move.
‘You’re dead if they win, Gordon.’
He nodded, half-listening.
Streicher sighed, and clicked off the light, plunging them both into darkness. ‘Unity, Gordon, what else are you going to do? No family, no pretty lady, no friends … this is it. This is all there is for you.’
Sebastian thought he could still see an outline of the box, glowing faintly in the pitch black, and felt his skin itch at the thought of what it contained. Death, not just for 200 enemy MechWarriors, but for tens of thousands still hiding in the city. A BattleMech was shielded against radiation, but not the civilian shelters. Death on a scale not seen for hundreds of years—at a stroke, they would undo the one good thing to come out of 300 years of senseless slaughter: the banishment of the specter of nuclear annihilation.
Did that matter? They executed you for one murder. He had at least three, if not four, on his conscience. What more could they do for ten thousand? It was just one more obscenity.
‘You, of all people, would understand revenge, I thought,’ Streicher said, with a hint of exasperation. ‘You remember Julie Maupin? Armand’s commander? I hear she’s with the Eighteenth now. So. Time’s wasting. Move.’
Sebastian moved. He couldn’t say why. One last gesture, a spit in the face of the galaxy before it crushed him completely.
Streicher reignited the torch and set it on the cart. Sebastian bent, helped lever the crate onto the cart, and sat on the crate as they trundled out the storage room, down the hall, up a freight elevator and out into the blasted and burning city.
The Mjolnir stood over them, armor hanging in ragged sheets now, exposing bare bones and musculature, more mechanical zombie now than Frankenstein.
‘
Reactor online, sensors online ... LRM offline, SRM offline, autocannon offline, actuator damage, life support damage …’
Sebastian listened patiently as the system listed all its woes and aches. ‘Just a little more,’ he reassured it.
Streicher had climbed aboard Gerald Marik’s BattleMaster, while the Colonel himself stayed hidden in the headquarters.
‘It’s only two kilometers from here to Friendship Bridge,’ Sebastian said to Streicher on the taccom. ‘They’ll be killed in the detonation.’
Streicher bent his machine and picked the warhead crate up in the left hand. ‘I have the detonator rigged here, in the cockpit. I’ll send a signal, when we’re in position,’ he replied. ‘Give them time to evacuate.’
Evacuate to where? Sebastian wondered idly. But, ah, it made no difference. Who cared?
‘Lead on,’ said Streicher, and so Sebastian turned his ’Mech away, turned its back on Gerald and the headquarters, and began to limp towards the distant bridge, actuators whining painfully with each clunking step, and the BattleMaster followed behind.
The sounds of battle were all around now. Explosions mushroomed skywards in every direction, to the sound of screaming missiles, howling particle fire and keening laser beams.
‘I don’t know why you’re so reluctant. In a way, you should be grateful. I made you, Gordon,’ Streicher was saying. His voice was odd now, infected with an almost religious fervor. ‘Without me, you’d have been a nobody, of no importance to anyone. I made your reputation. I made you famous.’
A JagerMech appeared around a cluster of demolished office towers and peppered them with cannon fire, walking a line of divots in the BattleMaster’s armor up the chest and cracking into the cockpit ferroglass. Streicher swore, twisted the torso to the side to shield the warhead and fired his PPC back, Sebastian adding his own fire, sending the JagerMech scuttling back to cover.
‘When you joined our regiment, you were weak. Like Vanra. You remember him? He was weak, too. I knew he wouldn’t have the courage to stand with Duke Anton. That’s why Bhandari and I put the bomb in his ’Mech.’
The Mjolnir staggered a little as Sebastian’s concentration broke. ‘You what?’ The ground felt like it was shifting beneath his feet.
‘Oh, don’t give me that, Gordon. A little late for regrets now, isn’t it? We wanted him out of the way, and then luckily for us you went berserk and drew all the attention away. So you see, it was all thanks to me. Ah, here we are.’
Friendship Bridge was wide and sturdy, supporting four lanes in either direction on short, stout pillar legs. It ran table-flat across the kilometer-wide river, its only ornamentation being a pair of criss-crossing arches in the center, forming a kind of aerial X over the midpoint of the bridge.
Sebastian couldn’t move. Everything over the last year, everything he’d thought had happened was based on a lie. Anthony Sarloveze hadn’t tried to kill anyone. Sebastian had murdered an innocent man, and begun the whole cascade. But he’d been wrong, they’d all been wrong.
‘Move it, Gordon. Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts now.’
Sebastian obediently shuffled out onto the span, moving on automatic now as his mind raced. If that day on Bernardo had been a lie, then how much more was built on an illusion?
‘Unity, that woman really got to you, didn’t see? I knew that Regulan bitch was trouble. Should have told Moreno to get rid of her sooner.’
They were nearly two-thirds of the way there now, three hundred meters out from the shore. The opaque, blue-green waters of the river curled lazily in foamy strands about the bridge supports beneath their feet. Bits of burnt timber, household debris and a body or two floated past.
‘You ordered her death?’
‘It’s too late, Gordon. We’ll plant the bomb there, beneath the arches. The Jabos won’t be able to resist the photo op of having their two regiments meet in the center.’
‘What about the assassin on Bernardo. Was that you as well?’
‘Oh, no. Well, not directly. It was clear you still weren’t one of us, not really, so I had Moreno let slip where you’d be going to the familia. But none of this matters, Gordon. What’s done is done. There’s one task left.’
There was. One task. One small wall he could maybe salvage something from the wreck. One way he could stop this hole from getting any deeper.
‘I don’t think so, Streicher.’ Sebastian halted his ’Mech.
A blast of lightning hit the Mjolnir from behind. Arcs of electricity and sparks flew from the controls. Sebastian had to jerk his hands away, every hair on his arms standing up, every nerve tingling. The HUD and 360-degree vision strip flickered and went dark. The Mjolnir slumped forward without falling over, like a sleeper dead on his feet.
Streicher’s voice boomed over external speakers. ‘I won’t let you stop me now, Gordon,’ he said. ‘Janos and his lackeys have to pay, for what they did to me on Solaris.’
Sebastian gingerly reached for the right control yoke. A spark leaped the distance to his fingers and delivered another shock. He shook his hand, swearing fiercely.
‘I thought there might be hope for you, after Anthony and your duel with Armand, but it was clear you weren’t really one of us. I let Moreno try to get rid of you, with the tip to the familia, and on Sophie’s World. Even gave you a chance to get yourself killed on Berenson, but here you still are.’
The displays came stuttering back to life. ‘
Reactor sensors … clkx wbmnnnn … damaged, damaged, damaged’ The voice feedback system was glitched. Sebastian looked at the readouts instead, but the news was not good. The gyroscope was damaged, so he’d barely be able to walk. The right knee and left hip were slag, in any case. The three chest lasers were all offline.
The BattleMaster stood directly behind him on the bridge.
All he had was the left-arm Harmon laser, in its bulging turret mated to the shoulder.
‘Janos has to pay. I swore I’d make him pay.’
It was funny, in a way, these Russian nestling doll cycles of revenge: Anton taking revenge on his brother for the death of his childhood friend, and within that Streicher’s revenge for his lost eye, and within that Sarloveze’s vendetta and his own.
Sebastian thought of Thaddeus, whose death had put his own cycle in motion. The Rifleman pilot would have appreciated what Sebastian was about to try to do.
‘Goodbye, Gordon.’
Sebastian spun the left-arm turret around, so that the laser pointed directly behind him. And squeezed the trigger.
A pillar of ruby light slammed into the BattleMaster’s cockpit canopy. Ferroglass bubbled, buckled and melted in a split second. The laser bored a hole through, into the cockpit, through the other side, and painted the inside of the ferroglass a thick, bright red. The BattleMaster stood still a moment, then sagged. The right knee snapped, and the 85-ton ‘Mech keeled to the side, over the edge of the bridge, and slammed into the river below, taking the nuclear warhead and its detonator down into the depths.