Upon A Pale Horse (Tall Tales)

=A Upon Pale Horse - By JA Baker=
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Those of you who have been following me for a while know that rumor and hearsay are my stock and trade, but that I never publish anything that I haven't at least been able to independently verify with a secondary source, but, well, there are exceptions to every rule.
I think we all know the story of the original Royal Black Watch Regiment. They were, without a doubt, the single most elite unit in the old SLDF. They were the best trained, best equipped and best led soldiers in human history, each and every one a graduate of the almost legendary Gunslinger Program, unmatched in all of explored space. Even the Clans, with their centuries of selective breading and technology advancement have trouble coming close to same standards as the Black Watch. They were the Royal Bodyguards of House Cameron, tasked with defending the First Lord and their family against any and all who might seek to do them ill, and despite his best planning, they came close to ending the Usurpers coup even as it started.
Even after Fortress Cameron was hit by multiple nuclear weapons, two Lance's of the Black Watch held up the 4th Amaris Dragoons as they attempted to link up with the Usurper in Unity City, fighting so hard they he had to resort to sacrificing his own troops to hold them in place while a tactical nuclear device was used to finally wipe them out. And even then, survivors managed to escape and form the Ghost of the Black Watch Guerrilla movement that plagued Amaris until the day he died.
But I'd bet my last C-Bill that many of you don't know the legend of the Four Horseman.
Nobody knows just who the Horseman were. It's not even known if they were members of the Black Watch, but they certainly seem to have had access to highly advanced Star League technology, including the Chameleon Light Polarization Shield and the Null Signature System, effectively rendering their BattleMechs invisible. And they used this advantage to cut a bloody swathe through Amaris' forces, both on Terra and across the Hegemony.
The first recorded action by the Horseman took place on Terra, when the depleted 4th Amaris Dragoons were trying to rebuild their strength after their battle with the Black Watch. They'd taken over a SLDF training range on Baffin Island, and had spread out by battalion to engage a variety of holographic targets. Two days into the exercise, a snowstorm cut off the command company, forcing them into the Baffin Mountains. It was there that they came under attack by an unknown enemy that quickly dispatched the bodyguard lance before hunting down and destroying the other 'Mech's one by one. The radio waves were filled with desperate calls for help, confused voices trying to identify the attackers or even just where they were. The rest of the 4th Dragoons rushed to the last reported location of the command company. But by the time they get there, all they find is the broken, burning remains of twelve heavy and assault class BattleMechs, each one the funeral pyre of its pilot. A massive land, air, sea and space search was launched to try and find the attackers, but they don't find so much as a spent shell casing or drop of coolant.
Assuming that it must have been local partisans, a company from the Greenhaven Gestapo was sent in to "make an example" of a small town.
They never arrived. The same mysterious force ambushed them within sight of the town, taking down each of the Mercenaries with a single shot to the cockpit. It was this battle, if you could call it that, the only one known to leave living witnesses, that gave birth to the legend of the Four Horsemen, as the witnesses claimed that the ambush had been carried out by just four assault class BattleMechs.
A snow white Highlander, a blood red Cyclops, a jet-black Thug and a bone white Atlas II.
Stories soon began to spread, first across Terra, then to the rest of the Hegemony. Convoys ambushed, fire bases while out senior field commanders were killed. It got so bad than many of Amaris's senior advisors refused to leave the apparent safety of Unity City or stayed in orbit turtles up on board DropShip. People were actively mocking the Usurper. The harder he tried to crack down, the worse things got. Units sent out to commit reprisals were slaughtered wholesale, carefully laid traps turned into bloodbaths for the units laying in wait. Nothing he did could uncover the identity of the Four Horsemen, let alone locate their base of operations or how they managed to move around seemingly at random.
Then they struck Luna, destroying a number of DropShip loading Helium-3 followed by attacks on Mars and Titan. Everywhere the Horsemen went, the story was the same: They appeared out of nowhere, attacked a specific target, then vanished into nothingness. They became the boogieman for the occupation forces, the monsters hidden under your bunk, ready to strike in the middle of the night.
There's no way that every attack accredited to the Horseman was actually them: in just one day, they supposedly hit New Earth, Outreach, Epsilon Indi and Ko. A feat physically impossible assuming that you believe that they were actually physical BattleMechs, and not the vengeful wraiths that many started to believe. Over the fourteen years of the Star League Civil War, the Horsemen were accredited with over two thousand confirmed kills on planets all across the Terran Hegemony. And not a single confirmed recording of one of their attacks survived, with less than one hundred people living to tell of one of their attacks, none of them intended targets.
The last confirmed sighting of the Four Horsemen was on Terra during Operation Liberation. The Second Legion of Fire had taken up position inside one of the Arcologys that made up the Greater Tokyo Area. They used the civilian population as human shields, while snipping at SLDF forces as they attempted to re-take the city. Unwilling to risk the massive collateral damage of a direct assault, the SLDF commander on the ground was looking over options when reports started to come in of weapons fire being heard coming from within the Arcology.
Fearing that the mercenaries had started killing their hostages, the SLDF troops prepared to launch a full on assault. Then only to be shocked when a Legion of Fire's Phoenix Hawk emerged from the underground parking complex, running full speed towards the Star League lines. The pilot screamed over every frequency that they surrendered, only for a single gauss rifle round to emerge from within the smoke-filled Arcology, decapitating the fleeing BattleMech, killing its pilot instantly. For the merest of moments, the smoke cleared enough to show the right arm, upper torso and head of a stark white Highlander, before it vanished from sight.
The single gun-camera recording of this incident remains the only direct evidence that the Four Horsemen ever existed.
Upon entering the Arcology, the SLDF forces found the Second Legion of Fire slaughtered, yet no sign of just who, or what, had almost effortlessly killed two battalions of battle-hardened troops. Officially, it was put down to infighting between those who wanted to surrender and those who wanted to go down fighting, but there were few who believed this version of events.
Since that day, there has never been a recorded sighting of the Horsemen or their distinctive 'Mechs. Nor is there any indication that they rejoined the victorious SLDF.
At least, that's the official story.
-Starling
The End
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