GblaRCS Chpt 54

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 54 -==
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"We who are about to die salute you."Many a mechwarrior with a sense of history to the crowd, while competing on Solaris VII.
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===Weapons Tests in Incognito===
Illyria III – Illyrian Palatinate – 2843
"All I'm saying is the last time I came to this planet I ended up on life support and missing my liver, my spleen and one of my kidneys fighting to defend it." Jacqueline Mroczkiewicz muttered. "And I just feel that should have entitled me to a free corndog." she complained, biting through the batter coating the sausage on a stick she was holding. She had just got back to the dropship being used as the headquarters of 'Team Niops' after going to watch a light mech match while off duty, finding her cousin Kristen sat on a box at the bottom of the loading ramp reading from her noteputer.
The Illyrians had been more than accommodating to requests from the Niops Association as to how they wanted to go about getting involved in the games for the first time, partially because of continued gratitude for the way Niops had intervened during the raid by the Black Warriors a few years earlier but mainly because they saw it as a great opportunity to draw in bigger crowds and higher-profile competitors and as a consequence a lot more money. 
Being permitted to set their CargoMaster dropship down so close to where the games were being held just outside Dalmatia, the capital city, had been convenient, although it had also necessitated some security precautions. A squad of SLDF marines prevented anyone authorized getting close to the dropship, and a number of short-range electronic jammers including White Noise Generators had been planted in a ring around the craft to prevent surveillance.
The marines took their job seriously too. Despite Jackie being in uniform, and the fact they recognized her, they had still checked her ID card before letting her past the cordon. Being relentlessly spied upon by the agents of Jason Karrige and Nicolas Kerensky back in the Clan Homeworlds had left the Wolverines security-conscious to the point of paranoia ever since, something that subsequently stood them in good stead while dealing with ComStar.
It was probably overkill when dealing with SAFE, who were considered the intelligence agency most likely to have agents embedded on Illyria, but if you let standards slide it was hard to get them back to par. 
"If I was you I'd be more concerned that hotdog you're eating might have the internal organs you left behind in it, Jackie." her cousin Kirsten Mroczkiewicz said, looking up from her noteputer and smirking. While Jacqueline had been assigned to this mission because she had gone back to working at the Skunk Works after her misadventure the last time she was on Illyria, Kirsten meanwhile had developed some contacts within the Illyrian government as part of the delegation from Niops which had attended the conference of Circinus. 
"If you weren't a higher rank than I was I'd tell you to bite me, Ma'am" the younger and lower-ranked of the two Mroczkiewicz's replied. Their grandfather had served in the 331st under General Frederick Hallis, both his sons, their respective fathers, joining the same unit and going on to serve under James McEvedy against Amaris staying on with him during Kerensky's Exodus.
"If I wanted to take a bite out of you I'd just eat one of those corndogs" Kirsten responded, clearly amused by her own wit.
"Better not, at your age you need to watch your cholesterol intake" Jackie advised sweetly.
"I'm not that much older than you Jackie" Kirsten defended herself.
Now it was Jackie Mroczkiewicz's turn to smirk. "Then why did that guy at the clothes store earlier assume you were my mom?" she asked. On a whim they had decided to go buy a couple of souvenir t-shirts in town, Jackie wanting one saying, 'I went to the Illyria games and all I got was this lousy shrapnel wound from a stray LRM', but the owner thinking her cousin was her mother was way funnier than the t-shirt. 
Kirsten scowled. "You promised you wouldn't mention that again ever" she protested. People meeting them had assumed for years they were sisters, they certainly resembled each other enough in terms of looks, both taking after their grandma Oliwia, but somebody thinking she was Jackie's mom had been pretty horrifying.
"I lied, it's too good not to throw in your face at every opportunity, Mom" Jackie replied. "I warned ya that you were spending too much time under a UV lamp and it would age your skin. The idea is to get enough to stop you getting depressed, or Rickets, not a tan" she reminded her cousin. That was one problem with living on Niops VII, a cold planet under a Red Dwarf star was not a home conducive to getting enough vitamin D.
"Meh" Kirsten responded unenthusiastically. Just because being a bit paler than normal in complexion was the Niops norm for those like her of Caucasian descent didn't mean she had to conform with the pasty masses.
Jackie took another bite out of her corndog, chewing then swallowing. "Meat's not very high grade" she said. "Seriously, they should start importing it from Francas, the junk food is much better quality back home."
"If it's a crappy corndog, then why are you still eating it?" Kirsten asked reasonably.
"Hey, it might not be the Solaris games but with a corndog to eat, and maybe some popcorn too later, I can pretend it is while I watch the fights" Jackie replied. "If I wasn't on duty later I'd grab one of those oversized beers too. My replacement liver's thirty years younger than the rest of me, if I don't put the extra mileage on it it'll live on after I die and be lonely."
"That is not remotely how biology works, Jackie." Kirsten Mroczkiewicz told her cousin flatly.
"Says you." Jackie replied dismissively, taking another bite from her corndog.
"Also, your new liver is closer to thirty-five years younger than you than it is thirty." Kirsten added. Her younger cousin wasn't that young.
Jackie grinned. "Hey, if you don't mind someone thinking you look old enough to have a daughter in her late thirties then you be you" she replied.
Kirsten Mroczkiewicz winced. "Okay, so that was just unnecessary and downright mean" she responded after a few moment's consideration of the implication there."
"You deserve it for saddling me with this" Jackie replied, pointing to the nametag on her duty uniform, the one that gave her name as 'Brzęczyszczykiewicz. J'.
Kirsten Mroczkiewicz, AKA Christine Brzęczyszczykiewicz, shrugged. "It's a good Polish name, and on the plus side you finally get to have guys stare at your chest. Maybe the real reason that guy thought I was your mom is that you're still wearing a training bra so he thought you were closer to thirteen than thirty?" she suggested. Okay so that was pretty bitchy and verging on juvenile she inwardly chided herself, but Jackie had repeatedly crossed the line earlier with the 'mom' thing, so it wasn't an entirely unwarranted escalation.
"I'd be offended, but mine aren't going to need to be in freefall not to hang down to my knees in a few years unless someone invents bras with endo-steel support." Jackie retorted.
"Jesus Christ. Can't you two just settle this in a Circle of Equals?" one of the dropship crew interjected, appearing at the top of the ramp. "It would be a lot more civilized." he opined, grinning.
"Mind your own business and get back to work, swabbie." Jackie curtly replied to the navy crewman who kept grinning as he disappeared from view into the ship again. 
"You know we probably could borrow a couple of mechs and an arena and then charge admission." Kirsten suggested, finding it all too funny not to laugh. It was amazing how the two of them could so easily regress back to how they were with each other as kids. 
Kirsten could still remember Jackie's reaction to being told that because Nicholas Kerensky had appointed the older of the two cousins as one of the forty warriors belonging to Clan Wolverine, Mroczkiewicz now becoming a clan bloodname, that she could no longer use her own surname until she effectively won back the right to do so in a Trial. Jackie, then still basically a kid, had not been pleased.
"So how are the games anyway?" Kirsten asked. "I haven't had the chance to watch any matches yet." 
"Mostly it's just junkers with rookies at the helm fighting it out to try and win spare parts or some fleeting glory" Jackie replied. "Of course that was just the light division, once you get into the heavy and assault categories you'd likely get to see some better matches" she said. "I caught a repeat of a fight earlier between a Crusader and an Orion being shown up on one of the big screens while I was queuing for the corndog, that one looked pretty exciting."
"All seems like a bad waste of good mechs to me, but I guess if it wasn't drawing the competitors and the spectators here the Palatinate wouldn't keep holding the games" Kirsten observed. The annual mechwarrior games on Illyria brought in a lot of money and tourism to a relatively poor and underpopulated periphery nation, one that a lot of people in the Inner Sphere had only even heard of because of the games. Like Jackie said, it wasn't exactly Solaris but just because the gladiatorial games held in the amphitheatre at Capua weren't as impressive as the ones in the Colosseum in Rome that didn't mean they didn't still attract large crowds baying for blood.
Being financially savvy and frugal the Palatinate didn't waste money building gigantic stadiums for all the games, they didn't need to, disused open-cast mines more than sufficed and were actually considerably larger than most of the arenas on Solaris itself. Spectators watched the action down below from seating set up for them on the rim edge of the old mines, and because of the scale long-range weaponry like LRM's and ERPPC's were actually useful at the start of a match before the opposing mechs closed on each other.
A couple of the huge open-cast-mines turned amphitheaters were even replete with old mining equipment as features and obstacles to fight around, gigantic mechanical diggers dwarfing even hundred-ton assault battlemechs. Some connoisseurs of the fights maintained that the action there was as good, if not better, than that to be seen in the Scrapyard arena in Solaris City because combat tended to be more varied, less turning a corner and suddenly being blasted at close range.
It wasn't nearly as safe being a spectator at the games on Illyria as it was on Solaris of course. Even the Steiner Stadium in Solaris City which did allow people to come and watch the fights live protected them from stray fire through the use of advanced technology, including the famous 'Blue Shield' that somehow absorbed PPC fire. On Illyria you just had to rely upon the competitors being careful about where their guns were pointing and be grateful that they were shooting at each other down in a deep pit with the audience not being in the line-of-fire to start with. 
The hint of personal danger and peril for the audience did always make it a tad more exciting to go watch the games on Illyria than Solaris though, some argued, even if was generally regarded as very much Reno, or even Primm, to Solaris's Las Vegas.
The prize money to be won at the Illyria games was only a fraction of that you could potentially earn on Solaris too of course, and the salvage to be had nowhere near as valuable either, so it never usually attracted any of the famous 'big name' competitive mechwarriors or the advertising revenue and press coverage that went along with them.
That was different this year. The Niops Association was running an exhibition match at the games with the prize for beating the Association's own champion being several million c-bills worth of rare or entirely lostech equipment, including an assault mech's weight in both double-heat-sinks and ferro-fibrous armour.
Double-Heat-Sinks were getting expensive these days, they were only still made in a handful of places and with the Second Succession War raging what stockpiles that still existed were being used up faster than they could be replaced. Ferro-Fibrous armor meanwhile was literally lostech, the last plant able to produce it having been destroyed all the way back in 2810, and even the extremely well-funded elite mechwarrior stables on Solaris had largely run out of the stuff decades ago.
The revelation that the Niops Association could still make it though had caused a few ripples, though understandably not nearly as much as their warships had. According to rumors flying around the Inner Sphere they had upgraded all their mechs and tanks with indigenously produced Ferro-Fibrous some time ago, which along with their fancy Terran Hegemony weaponry was the reason why they why were increasingly perceived as being a power that could punch far above their weight-class in galactic affairs.
Some of the wiser, better-informed pundits had observed that it was actually their electronic warfare gear which was the real force-multiplier however, not their fancy armor plate or ERPPC's. In the Inner Sphere battlefields of the sensor-blind the man that still had a working Beagle Active Probe was king. The fog-of-war killed a lot more mechwarriors than particle-projector-cannon ever did after all.
All that super tech was no substitute for battlefield experience though, naysayers maintained when ranking where to place Niops in the order of which star-nation was the most formidable. Beating the snot out of pirates, even ones as vaunted and feared as the Blood Rain, was one thing but the mechwarriors of the Successor States had honed their skills against each other and the combat veterans of the 295th were old.
Case in point, as Kirsten and Jackie Mroczkiewicz got into another argument about whether or not they should go watch a medium mech match later, or a couple of slow heavies duking it out, up on the dropship's command deck nonagenarian Major Claire Donovan was bemoaning the fact that her 'fame' had landed her with this gig so soon after getting back from Terra.
"All you have to do is smile for the cameras, answer a few questions, and maybe shake some hands while spouting a few meaningless platitudes Major" Colonel Fallstaff told her. "Just standard public-relations crap. Nothing you couldn't do standing on your head in low gee."
"If it's so easy then why don't you do it then?" Donovan replied. "Sir" she added after a pause. She was old enough to be his mother, maybe even his grandmother at a stretch, something that occasionally still caused a little friction between the younger clanner-types of the 331st and the veteran soldiers of the 295th when the kids often outranked the oldsters. At least Rory Fallstaff himself was middle-aged, it wasn't as bad as when you had some captain still in their early twenties pulling rank on an ninety-year old lieutenant.
The truly irritating thing of course was that a lot of those kids weren't just better mechwarriors than the 295th were now, they were objectively better than most of the 295th had ever been. That genetic engineering had definitely worked for them, even if some of them were cursed to having to stay tee-total for their entire lives as a result. 
"Because I'm not the one that's famous" Colonel Fallstaff replied. "And it wouldn't be a good idea for my photograph to be sent whizzing around the Inner Sphere in case the clans see it. The beard and the colored contacts aren't exactly a perfect disguise" he added, scratching the unaccustomed facial hair he had grown out for this mission.
Donovan sighed. "Okay, but I'm missing my son growing up." she said sadly.
"One of mine is about the same age and you have my sympathy but at least this deployment isn't going to last remotely as long as your mission to Terra did." Fallstaff noted. "You'll be back on Niops in less than two months. Just think about all those poor bastards on Operation Shamrock, they left Niops before we did and we'll all be home before they even get to where they're going" he pointed out.
That was true enough, Donovan knew. It said a lot that they actually had enough volunteers for that mission that nobody had to be voluntold like she had been for the Illyrian deployment. "You got deployed to the Folly twice didn't you? How did your family take it?" she asked curiously. McEvedy's Folly was a ten jump journey from Niops and she knew it wasn't a quick easy job at the other end. There was a lot of valuable SLDoME tech to salvage there and the local wildlife was not to be take lightly.
"My wife was understanding, but not understanding enough that I'm not pretty certain that if I was to do something stupid like accept an assignment to command the Frobisher garrison for a year or two I'd be getting a divorce" Colonel Fallstaff replied honestly before grinning. "Not that I expect that the governor of Frobisher would accept me. I tried, but I just couldn't keep a straight face when we delivered their garrison's new aerospace fighters on our way to the Folly the first time and he saw they were all Trident lights."
Claire laughed. "Yeah, it could be a while before they really see the funny side, if ever" she agreed. The SLDF only ever had a small number of the Trident ASF in the inventory, just enough for a single garrison, and upgraded to Royal standards with an extralight engine, double-heat-sinks and pulse lasers they were actually pretty formidable, but the people on Frobisher weren't nearly stupid enough to buy the official reasons why they got them all.
"So, are you okay with subjecting yourself to the PR bullshit later?" Fallstaff asked. He certainly didn't want to have to order her to do it, she reminded him a little of his mom.
"I'll plaster on a fake smile for the photographers and answer a few dumb questions but please don't read that as me being happy about it, Sir" Claire replied before something occurred to her. "I might be a little more enthusiastic if I didn't have to wear that stupid, gaudy medal in front of the press" she suggested hopefully. 
"You know, if I had the Order of the Golden Militia I'd never want to take it off" Falstaff responded. "I'd wear it in the shower."
"No, you wouldn't" Claire Donovan replied flatly.
"You're right, I wouldn't, too ostentatious for me, but you're still wearing it in front of the press Major because it's all part of our PR offensive" Fallstaff told her. "You can consider that a command from on high, by which I don't mean the Pope, I mean General Romanov."
Claire groaned. "Why couldn't I get the fun job and fight in the arena?" she asked rhetorically.
"Because we want to win and, annoying though it is, and as annoying as he is, Sampson represents our best chance of doing that" Fallstaff replied. "Which reminds me, I've got to go remind Billy the Kid again that just because he can kick all our asses in a mech fight that being the biggest fish in a small pond doesn't make him a Thraxa Devourer in the wider ocean. He's up against one of the demonstrably best tournament mechwarriors alive and we're not allowed to use all of our tricks."
"Frankly getting his own ass kicked for once would probably be good for him, if not us" Claire suggested. "You know he was in the same lance as my husband during the fight on Algenib, Douglas said afterwards he was one of the best he'd ever seen, maybe the best, although he also said that it was really annoying that the cocky little jerkoff actually could back up his bullshit."
"Yeah" Fallstaff reluctantly agreed. Despite the nickname Sampson was no longer a 'kid' by any means, but any hopes anyone had that the more abrasive elements of his personality would mellow with age were dashed years ago. Even the genetically-enhanced kits from Clan Wolverine's warrior breeding program had been unable to match Sampson's scores in the Gunslinger program which only boosted his already oversized ego and made him even more brash. He was inordinately smug too, especially after he was asked to contribute his genes to the clan's genetic repository so they could be used in future generations of super-soldiers.
Given that he had been taken as a Bondsman by Clan Wolverine, originally being a mechwarrior of the Rasmussen Elite on Circe, and had started out his life in the clan as a lowly member of the Laborer Caste, Wilhelm Sampson's smugness was perhaps a little justified.
Objectively Sampson's eyesight, reaction times, hand-eye-coordination and ability to stay calm under pressure were all right at the top of the human scale so on that basis his DNA was well worth preserving. Naturally nobody in the lab told him that any genes relating to his personality would be ruthlessly weeded out, one of him was more than enough.
----
===Cooling Suits and New Tech Talk===
With Major Donovan properly squared away and with her head back in the game for the press interviews later Colonel Rory Fallstaff then sought out Mechwarrior Wilhelm Sampson, assuming he would find him in the custom mech bay which had been specially installed in the dropship for this mission by some engineers and technicians from the Skunk Works.
Arriving on Illyria in the first production CargoMaster to come out of the dropship yard on Niops was itself actually part of the Public Relations campaign. The unusual looks of the craft made it stand out from the crowd, prompting questions from anyone that saw it and giving Niops the chance to flex their technical sophistication a little more. Standing upright a hundred and-seventy-five metres tall on its thrusters and landing gear the CargoMaster towered over even a Mule, let alone the smaller cargo dropships like the Danais which were more typically seen in the periphery, and with a distinctive profile that meant you couldn't mistake it for anything else the big dropship painted SLDF olive green and with the Red Cameron Star emblazoned on the side looked suitably imposing. 
As the military version of the CargoKing, if history had gone slightly differently the CargoMaster would have been the standard cargo hauler of the Star League Defense Force by now, with thousands of the things flying around the Inner Sphere. The fall of the Star League had prevented that of course, and the advanced designs were too expensive for the war-torn Successor States to put it into production themselves, but thanks to its high-tech manufacturing base and getting the blueprints and a license to produce both versions from Federated-Boeing-Interstellar cheap, the Niops Association was now gradually starting to field the new dropship types, although production rates were admittedly very low.
The gawkers who had come to see the CargoMaster when it first arrived were treated to the sight of the ramps coming down and after the marines secured a perimeter the dropship started to unload some ammunition boxes onto an open-bed truck that had rolled up at the bottom of the ramp.
Literally, the dropship itself unloaded the cargo, not a bunch of guys with forklifts. Robot arms and a conveyor belt unfolded themselves from inside the CargoMaster and started automatically stacking crates on the back of the truck while one of the marines chatted with the very surprised driver who was there to pick up a load of J-U water filters the Palatinate had ordered.
Apparently there wasn't even some technician operating the machinery from inside the dropship. A computer did all the work, with the only human intervention being that someone had to press a button to confirm that it was unloading the right boxes onto the right truck before it started.
Having one of the robot arms give the driver a thumbs up when the truck had finished being loaded was a nice touch. The technician responsible had also given it the ability to give anyone in the vicinity that complained about losing their job as a cargo handler to creeping automation the middle finger, but that particular action was something else that required human intervention to initiate. The cargo computer wasn't quite smart enough to get defensive when accused of being scab labor by union agitators.
Whoever it was that had programmed one of the arms to high-five the single assault battlemech the dropship was currently carrying when it had been loaded aboard the vessel back at Niops V was still refusing to fess up, but Colonel Fallstaff had his suspicions.
As expected Rory Fallstaff found Wilhelm Sampson in the mech bay along with one of the guys from the Skunk Works who had accompanied them to Illyria, the best mechwarrior on Niops looking up at the Nightstar assault he would be piloting in the arena.
What Sampson was wearing caught Fallstaff a little by surprise though. "What the hell have you got on?" he asked, staring at the all-white, form-fitting and slightly shiny outfit.
"It's one of our prototypes of the next-general cooling suit." the technician from the Skunk Works said happily. "Sampson here just agreed to try it out." 
"You look like a pimp from a Canopian Pleasure Circus." Fallstaff opined disparagingly.
"Yeah, bitchin ain't it?" Sampson replied, holding out his arms and spinning around to give the colonel a better look.
Given Sampson's dubious personal tastes in music him actually liking the suit seemed oddly par for the course, Fallstaff considered. 
"I'm glad you like it." the technician responded brightly. "Jackie Mroczkiewicz didn't much like the other suit we got her to test."
"Probably because if it was as tight it would have made her look like she was working for the pimp in the Canopian Pleasure Circus." Fallstaff suggested.
"She did say it was a little snug in the rear." the technician admitted.
Probably less so in the front, Sampson thought to himself, visualizing her wearing the suit. The other Mroczkiewicz girl would have had the opposite problem of course.
"Jackie was very helpful to the team when we were putting the machine together, it's useful having a mechwarrior's input into these things" the technician said, smiling. "If you have any last-minute piloting questions regarding the Nightstar just ask her" he suggested to Sampson. "That's partially why we asked her to tag along with the team."
Sampson made a non-committal sound that probably meant there was zero chance of him doing so, he probably thought that asking for anybody else's advice like that would ruin his image, Colonel Fallstaff rightly surmised. The other reason why Jackie Mroczkiewicz was assigned to the mission was her having been badly wounded fighting to defend Illyria from the Black Warriors the last time she was there, it made for good press locally. 
The technician was smiling as he looked up at the machine he had helped build. "Because the Nightstar runs cooler than a lot of mechs we've slightly reduced coolant flow in this particular prototype in favour of weaving in some more ballistic fibers" he noted. "In conjunction with the additional ton of armor we've placed around the cockpit, pilot survivability should be markedly higher than on a regular NSR-9J with the mechwarrior wearing a standard suit. Our attempt to meet General Romanov's design requirement that we 'don't get a man killed for a stupid PR stunt'."
Fallstaff frowned. "Related to that are you absolutely certain that the additional cockpit armor doesn't interfere with the ejector seat?" he asked.
"We are." the technician confirmed.
"And the fancy new CASE does what it's supposed to?" Fallstaff checked.
"Tested to destruction, literally. We exploded charges inside test units fitted with the stuff and the armor and blow-out panels worked just as well as the old model CASE system, despite being lighter and less bulky" the technician confirmed. "It may have taken us a while to perfect the second-generation Ferro-Fibrous armour that made it possible but we're pleased with the result."
"And it's been added to the capacitor bank of the gauss rifles in the arms too, because if those get hit when they're holding a full charge they go up like an Arrow IV warhead?" Fallstaff cautioned. He had once seen the gauss rifle on a Highlander explode after being hit by an ER PPC and the sudden release of stored energy had blown the mechs whole arm off.
"Naturally" the technician replied smiling. "That was actually easier than adding the blow-out panels to the torso where we put the armored ammunition bins for the autocannon. The Nightstar wasn't designed to ever have that kind of stowage there so it took quite some work to modify the internal structure."
"I would have preferred to just swap out the original Star League ER PPC for one of the new ones rather than an LB-10X" Sampson said regretfully. "Yeah, yeah, I know that we can't go showing off an ieERPPC or even an old eERPPC in front of the rubes" he added before Fallstaff could say it.
Fallstaff nodded. "Just remember to switch from regular HEAP to cluster rounds once you've stripped off his armor or you might as well have just kept the original ER PPC." he advised.
"I'm frankly insulted that you felt the need to say that to me, Sir" Sampson replied. "Insulted."
"Like I care." Fallstaff responded, unmoved. Sampson was a notorious pain-in-the-ass and was so deliberately, relishing every opportunity that presented itself to annoy his superiors. "And while I'm stating the obvious, don't fire your medium pulse lasers until he's inside range for the ones they know exist. The chances anyone notices that our new ones hit slightly harder are slim enough to risk using the things, but they'll definitely notice if you open up with them twice as far out as anything they've seen before."
That was the trick of course, use as much advanced technology as possible to give Sampson an edge but without the audience ever finding out.
The mechs internal metal endoskeleton was the easiest part of that to achieve as it was hidden from view, although the upgrade had necessitated taking the Nightstar completely to pieces and then reassembling it around a brand new one made of superior materials. The latest alloy being used didn't require quite as much beryllium as the one which the Bull Shark had been built around, but it was still very expensive and therefore not yet economically viable for mass production, but for this one-off upgrade package it got the job done very well.
Similarly the second-generation Ferro-Fibrous armor plate worked, but the manufacturing process needed refinement to get the cost per ton down to acceptable levels. That annoyed a few people in authority as the stuff had been at the prototype stage over twenty-years ago and the materials-science were still working on it, but at least it was available, if again too expensive for widespread use.
Using both overpriced endo-steel and ferro-fibrous made the custom Nightstar a prime example of overpriced bleeding-edge technology in some ways, although weirdly the replacement powerplant meant the thing was no more expensive as a whole than it had been as built. The mech's original Star League era XL Fusion Engine had been swapped out for a much cheaper Pitban 285 SFE pulled from an old Puma tank in storage, an engine that was heavier that what it replaced but was also considerably less fragile. They wanted a mech that could take a licking and keep on ticking and thanks to the new endoskeleton, improved gauss rifles and a prototype LB-X autocannon all being lighter than Star League models there was enough spare tonnage to use a standard fusion engine without skimping on firepower.
There was even some weight available for a couple of extra surprises for Sampson's opponent on top of that, which everyone involved hoped would be enough to get him the win.
If he was facing a less formidable opponent, they would be more certain, but the man Sampson would be up against was a legend, albeit one who had been resting on his laurels for a few years.
"Son, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you've not arrogant enough not to have watched all those recordings we scraped together of Grigg competing in Solaris." Falstaff addressed Sampson seriously. "I hope you've got a game-plan beyond hoping he'll mess up because he's not been competing in the big leagues for the last decade or so."
"I watched his matches, he's pretty good." Sampson replied.
"Pretty good?" Fallstaff repeated, rolling his eyes. "Peter Grigg was the Grand Champion on Solaris two years in a row."
"Yeah, but that was fourteen years ago. Man's middle-aged now, he won't be quite as quick as he used to be." Sampson replied confidently. "Now, if I was up against say, Oliver Two-Horse, I'd want to swap out this white cooling suit for a brown one but I'm not." he joked.
"Got to admit, I'm surprised to hear you admit that about anybody, which is weirdly encouraging because it means you're not completely delusional, but I really hope you're not thinking that just because he's got a few years on you that Grigg isn't still one of the best mechwarriors in the Inner Sphere."
"Oh hell, he'd still beat most anyone else back home without breaking a sweat, and he might still be better than I am now, but that custom Atlas he rides isn't custom enough to beat me in this thing" Sampson replied, pointing up at the Nightstar. "Not in that big arena anyway, if I had to take him on at knife-fight ranges it would be a different matter entirely, but I should be able to soften him up before he gets close enough to bring that big autocannon he's packing to bear."
"You'd better because all the new-fangled ferro-fibrous in the Inner Sphere isn't going to stand up to an AC/20 putting bursts of 155mm HEAP into you for very long" Fallstaff cautioned. "Once it's stripped away you're only a single shell from being deader than disco."
Sampson narrowed his eyes looking aggrieved. "Mark my words, Sir, tomorrow night in the arena you're going to get to watch my Nightstar there rip Grigg's Atlas a new one" he vowed. "I've bet two grand of my own money on it."
"And your life" Colonel Falstaff reminded him. Sampson had volunteered for the mission of course, his ego wouldn't have allowed him to do otherwise, but it was only right to remind him what the stakes were here to him personally. "Out of interest, what odds did you get?" Fallstaff asked curiously.
"Really good ones" Sampson replied. "The bookies have all heard of Peter Grigg but who the hell is Henry McCarty?" he asked rhetorically, grinning as he tapped the fake name stenciled on his cooling suit.
"Hopefully a lot more will know after Saturday night, and not just because he got turned into a smear in a battlemech cockpit by an AC/20 in front of a large crowd." Rory Falstaff replied flatly, wondering whether or not to put a few bucks on the kid himself.
----
===Let Get ready to RUMBLE!===
The following evening, sat as a spectator on the rim of the old open-cast mine being used as an arena for the special exhibition fight, Fallstaff fought back the urge to go get some popcorn from the vendor nearby and hoped that Sampson, AKA 'Henry McCarty', was actually going to listen to Jackie Mroczkiewicz, AKA Jackie Brzęczyszczykiewicz, who would be coaching him via radio once the match started.
Jackie's cousin was sat behind him on the stadium bench seating provided, herself eating a corndog, muttering confusingly that it tasted like it might actually be related to her, as they waited for the announcer to start the event. Tens of thousands of spectators were sat in rows right along the edge of the pit, a fair percentage of the planet's entire population usually attending the games, as well as tourists from elsewhere.
Large screens of bullet-proof glass set up in front of the seating offered the crowd of spectators some protection from stray shrapnel, though it wouldn't stop anything more than that so you had to trust the mechwarriors that would be fighting down below were careful with their aim, and a number of massive video screens were currently displaying images of the two mechs that were about to enter the arena from opposite ends to fight each other along, with pictures taken of their pilots just before they climbed aboard their machines.
Kirsten put down her corndog. "Did I tell you the cocky little bastard asked me and Jackie if there was any chance of a threesome as a special reward if he won?" she asked as an image of Sampson wearing his cooling suit appeared up on the screens.
Fallstaff groaned. "Going to put him up on a charge?" he asked. Both cousins outranked him, nobody was ever going to even promote Sampson to lieutenant, let alone any higher. 
"Nah, I just advised he stick to banging high school girls and college freshmen that were dumb and inexperienced enough to be impressed by him because actual women weren't" Kirsten replied.
"You realize he'll just take that as a challenge right?" Fallstaff checked.
"Yeah" Kirsten replied with a sigh. "The worst of it is, much as I hate that man right now you've gotta love that cooling suit" she said looking up at the image.
Concluding that Kirsten Mroczkiewicz had no taste in fashion, and hoping that she didn't pass on that defect to the multitudes of future Mroczkiewicz's that would emerge from the Iron Wombs in coming years, Rory Fallstaff wisely opted not to pass comment. "They flipped a coin to see which one would enter the arena first" he said as searchlights started to play through the air indicating the match was about to start.
"My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. Good evening and welcome to a special, one-night only exhibition match here at the Grand Arena on Illyria" a booming voice emerged from loudspeakers, their local Scandinavian accent a little softer than most. "It's the weekend Illyrian Games fans, and this is Dagfin Fjellner bringing you the play by play. It should be an exciting match tonight, but before we begin let me thank our sponsor for this evening, NHCOMNET, the Niops Hegemony Communication Network" the announcer continued. "NHCOMNET" he said grandly. "Interstellar Communication without kooky superstition."
Both Fallstaff and Mroczkiewicz burst out laughing. "And with that some poor ComStar precentor somewhere just suffered a stroke" Fallstaff said grinning.
"Our first competitor tonight needs no introduction" the announcer continued, though he immediately went on to introduce him anyway, presumably because that was what they paid him for, "Competing for the first time ever at the Illyria Games. The man, the mechwarrior, the legend. Two-time, back-to-back Solaris Grand Champion Peter Griggs!" the announcer practically thundered the name for emphasis as near-deafening music began to play from the speakers causing a few of the spectators to cover their ears, though that may have been as much because they didn't like Grigg's choice of music to herald his entrance into the arena than just the excessive volume.
Rasalhague Death Metal was not to everyone's tastes, although it did have something of a following in the Illyrian Palatinate so that might have been why Grigg's chose it. As the hundred-ton Atlas assault battlemech he was piloting stomped into the arena accompanied by fireworks its custom paintjob certainly suited the bombastic, thrashing music, black and red highlights accentuating the machine's already imposing appearance. The skull-like head of the mech made it look suitably monstrous to start with, sheer intimidation being one of the design specifications Aleksandr Kerensky had given for the thing when ordering the thing to be created, so making the twelve-meter tall machine look even more terrifying to behold was something a lot of Atlas pilots went for.
Upon reaching his start position for the match Peter Grigg halted his battlemech and ran through the game-plan in his head one more time. He knew his opponent was riding a Nightstar, an advanced machine undoubtedly tricked out with Niops lostech, and one he had also rarely encountered before because both the factories that had made them had been destroyed during the First Succession War.
The Nightstar was a long-range sniper, even if the one he was facing had apparently swapped it's original ERPPC for an LB-10X autocannon, which meant he would want to close the distance as fast as possible because otherwise his Atlas would just get battered to pieces by gauss rifle slugs.
Close up however his Atlas would eat the thing alive. The Nightstar used a high-tech XL engine which meant it couldn't absorb the punishment his own machine could, and having the ammo for that autocannon in their alongside the lightweight engine was a really bad idea. Chances were that Niops had installed CASE on the ammo bins, they still had all the fancy SLDF gear that was gradually becoming extinct in the Inner Sphere, but CASE only limited the damage caused by an internal ammunition explosion it didn't eliminate it entirely.
A few good AC/20 hits into the torso of the Nightstar and not only would it's XL engine be destroyed, crippling the mech, the ammo might even go up sending pieces of assault mech hurtling up into the stratosphere.
You could kill a mech with a single headshot from an AC/20 but that wasn't easy to do. Aiming center-mass was more reliable, the torso was much larger than the head, and with both an XL engine and ammo in there the Nightstar would go down almost as fast from putting rounds into its gut as it would from a lucky strike on its cockpit. 
Griggs smiled, this wasn't exactly Solaris but it was nice to get back into the game, he thought to himself as music ended and announcer started speaking again.
"Our challenger tonight, hailing from the Niops Association, graduate of their Gunslinger program, the pride of the SLDF, Henry McCarty!" the announcer roared as very different music began to play and more fireworks reached for the skies.
What started out seeming like easy-listening elevator music played softly with a funky beat a falsetto male voice began to sing as the Nightstar stomped into the arena. 
"Listen to the ground
There is movement all around
There is something goin' down
And I can feel it"
"On the waves of the air
There is dancin' out there
It's somethin' we can't share
We can't steal it"
In the cockpit of his machine Wilhelm Sampson grinned. "Saturday Nightstar fever baby" he said, knowing Jackie Mroczkiewicz was listening in on a secured channel as the ninety-five ton assault mech strutted in to the beat of the music.
As yet nobody else in the SLDF had figured out how he managed to get a battlemech to walk quite like that, although many others had tried, and failed, to emulate the weird bouncy stride. Apparently it had something to timing the electrical triggering of the myomers in the leg and foot exactly at the right moment, and also having good rhythm Sampson maintained. 
"That sweet city woman
She moved through the light
Controlling my mind and my soul
When you reach out for me, yeah
And the feelin' is right"
"Then I get night fever, night fever
We know how to do it
Gimme that night fever, night fever
We know how to show it"
As the music faded away Sampson reached his start-point facing his opponent, a couple of hundred meters short of gauss rifle range as he switched on his targeting system. The Nightstar was a late Star League design with very advanced computer-assisted aiming and he switched it over to long-range mode as he selected the Atlas over yonder for the computer's attention.
All the bulky mining equipment in the open-cast-mine turned mechwarrior arena would give both mechs the opportunity to use cover, but Sampson knew if he chose his path carefully, maximising line-of-sight contact with his opponent, it would give him the best chance of getting in a few good hits before Grigg's in the Atlas could properly retaliate.
"Can I get a round of applause for both these brave gladiators out here to entertain us tonight" the announcer requested over the tannoy system. The crowd doing so and cheering as well.
"OKAY MECHWARRIORS. LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!" the announcer exclaimed. "THREE, TWO, ONE, GAME ON!"
Sampson started to move forward as did Grigg's, although the former only wanted to get into gauss rifle range as soon as possible and once he did so planned to try and keep his distance as long as possible while the man at the controls of the Atlas would be trying to close down the range as quickly as he could.
Reaching effective range for his twin gauss rifles Sampson opened fire with the first shots of the match and the audience started to cheer once again as the crack of large-bore steel slugs accelerated to ludicrous velocities echoed off the walls of the mine.
In the Atlas, Peter Grigg's knew his machine wasn't the sniper that the Nightstar was, those first two shots barely missed him, but that didn't mean he was incapable of firing back as one of the second salvo of gauss rifle slugs whizzed past his machine close enough to leave a mark on the paint.
Battlemechs used for the tournaments on Solaris were often better equipped than those used by the Great Houses, customized machines with weaponry that was lostech in many places, and the LRM 20 missile launcher installed on Grigg's Atlas was fitted with an Artemis IV Fire-Control-System. This gave the missiles considerably better accuracy and as Grigg's got into range he locked onto the Nightstar in preparation for unleashing a barrage.
Or rather he tried to lock onto the Nightstar but as soon as the Artemis IV attempted to do so the Nightstar instantly broke the lock.
"Dammit, he's got a Guardian ECM system fitted" Grigg's said aloud so his pit-crew listening in could hear him. "Probably swapped out some gauss-rifle rounds to find the tonnage" he reasoned. As designed the NSR-9J Nightstar typically carried a whopping seven tons worth of gauss rifle slugs into action, which was frankly excessive for a battle, let alone a one-on-one tournament, so losing some to fit an ECM unit wasn't the worst choice.
You could still fire the launcher without an Artemis IV lock so Grigg's did so, knowing that he wouldn't get as many hits as he would have wanted but it was better than just letting the ****** in the Nightstar plink away at him without response.
The volley of twenty LRM's launched by the Atlas sailed in an arc through the air, putting on a good show for the spectators as they left a smoke trail behind them.
The audience got an even more exciting show just as the first missiles in the volley neared the Nightstar because a concealed hatch on the thing snapped open and a tiny computer-controlled turret with its own targeting system popped out and began shooting at the inbound LRM's, those that wee hit exploding.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, what you are seeing in action is an Anti-Missile-System" the announcer eventually commented in obvious surprise as the small-calibre multi-barrelled machine gun shot down a proportion of the LRM's before they struck the Nightstar, minimising the damage the barrage could inflict. "Niops lostech not seen in the battlefields of the Inner Sphere for nearly a decade" he added.
The loud 'clang' of a gauss rifle slug making contact with the Atlas indicated that the Nightstar had made its first hit on the Atlas, that single impact stripping away nearly three times the armour off it than its handful of LRM's which got through the AMS fire had inflicted on its opponent.
Cackling maniacally at the control of his Nightstar as the Atlas continued to bear down on him Sampson keyed up his LB-10X which was now in effective range, selecting standard HEAP rounds for his first burst of autocannon fire.
Both gauss rifles mounted in his arms fired, their slugs along with the autocannon rounds hurtled through the space between the mechs, the faster magnetically propelled slugs reaching the target first, one making contact with another loud 'clang' just before the HEAP rounds exploded on impact near to where the slug had hit, tearing off more armour.
Grigg's was getting annoyed now, at least the Nightstar couldn't run away. It was no faster than the Atlas and they were penned in by the walls of the mine anyway. Fortunately, the Atlas could soak up punishment like almost no other machine, and once he got close he could dish it out a lot harder than the damn Nightstar could.
Managing to get in a couple more good hits with his own longer-range guns before the Atlas got close enough to shoot back with its gigantic AC/20, Sampson was satisfied with how things were going so far. The Atlas had continued to throw LRM's at him all this time, and enough had gotten through the AMS fire that his Nightstar was far from pristine but the Atlas looked a lot worse.
Finally close enough for his AC/20, SRM launcher and his two medium lasers, Grigg's custom Atlas also had a pair of medium-pulse-lasers that he would have to be even closer to use, the former Solaris Grand Champion opened up with nearly everything he had causing the crowd to start cheering again.
Unable to deal with quite so many inbound missiles, the Atlas was just the range where both LRM's and SRM's were effective and was firing both its launchers, the AMS on the Nightstar, already running red hot and running out of ammunition, struggled to cope with such a target rich environment only stopping some of them from getting through. 
Inside the Nightstar, Sampson could feel his machine taking an absolute battering but he ignored it as he continued to put round-after-round into the torso of the Atlas.
Just as an AC/20 burst tore a big chunk of armour off the Nightstar a gauss rifle slug from the Nightstar itself did likewise to the slightly heavier machine, an already damaged section of its torso now stripped bare of ablative armour plate revealing the internals behind.
Sampson switched his LB-X autocannon over from standard shells to cluster rounds, essentially making it into a huge shotgun giving it a better chance of hitting something important as the Atlas continued to close to medium-pulse-laser range for the end-game.
At least this close up the Atlas couldn't use its LRM launcher as well, Sampson considered although that was scant comfort as the AMS ran dry, barrels glowing red after taking out it's last few SRM targets. Adding his arm-mounted medium pulse lasers to the fire he was pouring into the Atlas trying to shred its internals Sampson noted that the Atlas had a couple of those two which wasn't good at this range even though his own were better.
Eventually one of those big AC/20 shells was bound to get lucky and one triggered an ammunition explosion in the Nightstar, what was left of the rounds for the LB-X autocannon going up in a rippling explosion that rocked the ninety-five ton machine to the side and would have destroyed it entirely if not for the CASE protection system, blow-out panels directing much of the explosion away from vital systems.
The Nightstar appeared to stumble, arms dropping as it stopped firing, a puppet with the strings cut. Peter Grigg's yelled in triumph, that explosion right next to the mechs fragile XL engine would have crippled it, fancy CASE protection or not.
Grigg's brought his Atlas around to face the cheering crowd, raising the arms of his mech in triumph.
When the cheering abruptly stopped and with his pit crew screaming in his ear Grigg's realized the enormous magnitude of his mistake.
The Nightstar had smoothly straightened back up and was aiming its gauss rifles and medium pulse lasers at him where the Atlas had no armour left, one arm aimed just above the magazine for the AC/20, the other centred on his gyro.
"I can't believe I got suckered like that" Grigg's muttered to himself, deciding that he didn't want to risk dying on this ****** rock in the periphery and hitting eject just as the Nightstar fired.
Sampson whooped in triumph as the Atlas exploded and collapsed to the ground. Switching on the external speakers on the Nightstar and cranking the volume up as far as it would go he collected himself again before speaking. "Disco is not dead" he declared to the crowd, voice booming around the arena. "Disco is life!"
Kirsten Mroczkiewicz and Rory Fallstaff, officers of the SLDF and bloodnamed warriors of Clan Wolverine, looked at each other. "If he wants to try and find and nightclub later, don't let him wear the cooling suit." Mroczkiewicz said eventually.
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==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : The only reason why most people in the Inner Sphere might have even heard of the Illyrian Palatinate is the annual mechwarrior games held there. It's not exactly the Solaris Games but they have enough of a following to attract competitors from pretty far away, all hoping for a chance to earn money, salvage and maybe even a little fleeting fame and glory. Illyria using big open-cast mines as makeshift arenas just seems like something they would do (their economy is based on mining after all).You wouldn't usually expect to see a competitor of the likes of Peter Grigg on Illyria but dangle enough money (or lostech) in front of him and you can get him to travel.Wilhelm Sampson, AKA 'Billy the Kid', AKA Henry McCarty (cookie if you get the reference), is using a customised Nightstar that uses an Standard Fusion Engine and an LB-10X autocannon instead of a Star League era XL Engine and and ERPPC, Grigg has a somewhat less customised Atlas. 
The Nightstar also has CASE protection, AMS and a Guardian ECM suite. It's lostech fever baby!
And yes, the all-white prototype cooling suit is indeed a direct reference to a certain movie.
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Chapter 54