OPREF Chpt 0

=Prologue=
==Opalescent Reflections==
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===An Unexpected Call to Arms===
Castrum Keep, Priori
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Homeworlds
12 June 3046
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The bite of cold air stung against Chris’ exposed face as he left the cabin, closing the door softly so as not to wake his mother or Dane. Not that the bottles that had accumulated on the table suggested that either was likely to wake, but it was important to calculate risks and only take those necessary.
When the latch caught, the young man trotted down the porch steps and onto the muddy path that served as a road for Castrum Keep. His breath froze every time he exhaled and he tucked the scarf around his throat more securely. If the books and lessons available to him were correct, summers were supposed to be warm and presumably were in the other hemisphere of Priori. Not that he was ever likely to find out.
The sky was full of gray clouds, dimming the morning light as he crossed the broader road that separated the residential district from the sturdier buildings that lurked behind thick, v-shaped berms. If anyone attacked Castrum, the idea was that the berms would channel attacks into killing zones between them. Chris’ mother didn’t think much of the notion - it was arguing over that which had driven off her previous astech. Dane was less argumentative, which might have endeared him to Chris more if the man wasn’t clearly the third best technician in their little household.
Then again, that didn’t endear Chris to him either, and Dane still had a head of height and several kilos of weight over him. It hadn’t come to a fight so far, but Chris had the suspicion that if they did fight then winning might cost him more than it was worth.
Glenda Castrum was a pragmatic sort, but she also knew that letting her followers kill each other could tear her little kingdom apart.
Fishing through his coat pocket, Chris found the key he needed for the padlock and fumbled it into place with gloved hands. Once through the door, he hung up the padlock from the hook inside and unzipped his coat. The hangar was a little warmer than outside, not to mention shielded from the wind. Two bays, essentially ripped out of a dropship and reassembled, held the entirety of the keep’s battlemech strength.
The young man gave his own ride a rueful look.
Gimpy would never walk again, at least not unless another right leg could be found for it. And for that matter, Glenda would have words if its reactor wasn’t kept powering what passed for the settlement’s power grid. Assigning it to Chris was partly a joke, but it gave him at least the status of apprentice mechwarrior.
Beside it, quieter and colder since its own reactor wasn’t active, Gimpy’s brother sat waiting for Chris. The second Griffin clutched a Star League era PPC in its right hand - taken from Chris ‘mech after its own was destroyed in a raid several years ago. Chris kept his gloves on as he scaled the gantry ladder - the metal would still be cold at this time in the morning.
He couldn’t help but glance left as he climbed, seeing where Dane had opened up the plating around Gimpy’s LRM launcher.
Today’s job would be to detach the missile launcher for transplanting over to the other Griffin. It had its own missile launcher - a much newer one, but it was driving his mother to distraction with problems so Dane had recommended stripping it for Gimpy’s, which would match the original.
Chris remembered angry words the night before. The bigger man confident in his decision, derisive of the notion that he’d be taking the only working weapon off Gimpy. What, he’d asked, had it mattered? Gimpy was going nowhere and would never fight again.
It didn’t matter to Dane that a weaponless ‘mech was barely a ‘mech at all. The only reason it hadn’t been done before was that Sophia was so sure that the new launcher would be a great upgrade over that damaged six months ago. Built in a proper factory, to the specifications of modern warmachines, it had twice as many tubes and could handle similarly current production missiles.
The problem, Chris thought as he opened up the hatch, was that it was also much bulkier. Even letting it rise up higher out of the shoulder as far as it could while still being structurally secure hadn’t allowed for enough space and that had left the three of them spending weeks rearranging the ammunition bin to scrape up the room. There was barely room for half as many missiles, which meant only a quarter the original endurance in theory.
In practice, the loading mechanism was still jamming, which meant that his mother would be going into battle with one salvo pre-loaded and then what reached the launcher for the second before it jammed. Not ideal at all.
Climbing inside, Chris took off his coat and rolled it up to fit behind the seat. Dane’s solution would work, he admitted. It’d mean all their work since obtaining the new launcher was for nothing - not to mention the effort to obtain missiles for it, or disarming Gimpy completely. But he was also sure that there was another way, one that Dane was ignoring simply because it extended beyond his limited grasp of the systems.
And between her son and the astech who shared her bed, his mother had made her decision.
The only way Chris would keep the thin grace of mechwarrior status would be if he solved the problem himself, before they arrived to start disarming Gimpy. Fortunately, the amount they’d had to drink meant several hours to himself.
He had the technician codes to boot up the reactor, but for this he’d need full access to the weapon systems. Chris pulled out a decoder he’d cobbled together using the electronics bench before Dane asserted sole right to the technician’s workshop and plugged it into the access ports. The battle computer spun up and started the security procedure before dropping into a loop as it found nothing to check against. The mechwarrior apprentice pulled the neurohelmet down from its shelf and secured it on his head, tightening the chinstrap.
As if relieved to have something to work with, the security locked in and opened the new user prompt. Chris mumbled something that would pass for a security phrase - it wasn’t as if he could leave the user ID active once he’d done this, his mother would kill him - and with a blink the screens lit up.
A recorded message reported the reactor going online, something he could feel as the vibrations reached him even through the padded seat. And more importantly, the weapons went live.
Chris set the individual safeties - he didn’t want to fire them! - before digging into the coding of the missile reload process. He’d noticed that it was always the nineteenth or twentieth missile in a salvo that jammed and that suggested a solution that would give his mother almost the full benefits of her new weapon, without the handicap of the current problem.
It took him over an hour, working from the manual, to find the loader’s control options. His mother had already amended them once, telling it to double the original missile load per salvo. The original code was backed up and Chris was able to compare the two. To be honest, he wasn’t sure why it wouldn’t work. But it didn’t matter: the fact was that it didn’t.
Opening the editor, Chris altered the salvo load. His mother’s amendment was for two sets of ten missiles to load. Rather than remove that, Chris changed it so that each set would be nine missiles. Doing so twice would only load eighteen missiles out of the potential twenty, but if it worked it was still much better than the original ten.
He doublechecked the code before saving his work and strapping himself into the seat. It was vanishingly unlikely it’d be necessary even if something went wrong, but his mother always told him that it was better to take a precaution and not need it than the reverse. At one time when running checks like this, he remembered his mother telling Dane that among the Clans technicians would have dummy missiles to work with for this - no propellant or warhead that could be set off if something went wrong. It would be nice to have something like that, but there were higher priorities in a raid, or when dealing with other groups. Still, live missiles were supposed to be safe until they were armed.
Checking the ammunition bin wasn’t full, Chris initiated a test cycle - drawing loaded missiles from the launcher back into the bins. He could hear the mechanism trying to work, before an error message reported there was nothing to be cycled back. Good, he’d thought it was empty but better to be sure.
Next he set it to cycle in a full load without arming the missiles, turning his head to listen for the sound of anything jamming as missiles were fed up from the storage into the launcher next to his mother’s cockpit. With the Griffin not moving it was quiet enough to hear each missile clunking into place. One, two, three… there was a brief pause after the ninth missile, just long enough to worry him but then they kept loading and reached eighteen.
Chris exhaled in relief. Now if they did the same when arming, this might be enough to convince his mother. He ordered the launcher cleared again and listened as the load cycled back into the magazine. “Right, here we go.” His thumb hit the key that ordered standard combat load, arming each missile as it entered the launcher.
One, two, three…
An explosion broke his count and for a second he thought he’d wrecked the launcher and perhaps the entire ‘Mech. The youth gripped the arms of the seat, bracing in case the Griffin fell as a result - the ejection system was safed because if it went off now he’d have been plastered against the hangar ceiling.
Nothing. Nothing but the scream of sirens outside.
The explosion had been from outside the hangar. There was a clunk of the LRM launcher accepting the load and Chris saw that it was showing as ready to fire.
Mouth dry, he reached for the comm, but before he could speak the tactical band went live. “All troops, this is Castrum,” Glenda grated. “We are under attack. Clanners. We fight or we die. Non-combatants, get to shelter.”
Chris had drilled this a thousand times in Gimpy’s cockpit, simulated only. But by reflex he slapped the switch to detach his mother’s Griffin from the gantries and then a second that would - hopefully - open the hangar’s massive doors.
He wasn’t wearing a cooling vest, he realized. That wouldn’t help, but there was no time to get one on. The Griffin rocked slightly as he took the first step, but the second was crisp and clean, the way his mother taught him.
She was going to beat his ass for this, but there might not be time to wait.
The main door was sliding open, everything working the way it should be. Chris turned the fifty-five ton ‘mech sharply and marched through them.
The first thing he saw was fires descending, even as smoke columns began to rise from burning buildings. The tactical display pegged ‘mechs dropping from the sky, jump-jets or disposable packs flaring as they slowed them to survivable rates. There weren’t many… but it didn’t take many, not when they were dropping directly into the heart of the keep.
Planets were large and settlements small. Secrecy had been Castrum Keep’s main defense, but that had clearly failed and now one of the two Clans that currently shared control of Priori had decided to swat what they probably dismissed as bandits… or dark caste, as if the inhabitants were part of their culture.
For a moment, Chris wasn’t sure what was causing the existing fires but then an alarm warned him of both the answer and an immediate threat: a ton of metal and flesh had seized hold of one of the Griffin’s legs and was clambering up to where it could do more damage - an Elemental, one of the Clans’ elite battle armor infantry!
Training kicked in and Chris flicked the leg against the hangar door, catching the infantryman between the mass of the limb and the heavy panel. The elemental dropped to the ground, but looking down he could see that the warrior was already recovering.
With a cry that was as much terror as anger, Chris stamped the foot of the ‘mech down on the soldier, crushing the man (or woman) flat.Not even an elemental would survive that.
Chris felt his breath rasp in his throat. He’d just killed someone. As easily as stepping on a fly. His mother had told him that piloting a battlemech was a responsibility, one that had been shared by that elite fraternity back to before General Kerensky’s great war against Amaris, back even before the Star League. A responsibility to use the power of their war machines wisely.
Had he been wise? He wasn’t sure… but as warnings blazed out, he realized that one of the falling ‘mechs was descending almost directly upon him.
There was a crash as dozens of tons of metal struck the hangar roof and Chris pushed the Griffin away from the building as it collapsed around the new arrival.
The ‘mech that had brought it down was round-bodied, with two blocky shoulders that seemed disproportionate to the rest of it. About the size of his mother’s Griffin.
The mechwarrior inside it had keen reflexes - they’d landed with their back to Chris but the ‘Mech was turning towards him even before the legs had fully straightened from the landing.
If they’d completed the turn then they would have probably had a chance to tear into the Griffin before Chris even understood what was happening. But instead the ‘mech - a Hunchback, he realised suddenly - stopped and both the massive autocannon fired their full, massive might.
The Clans’ version of the Hunchback mounted not one but two of the most powerful autocannon mounted on a battlemech, weapons with limited range but awe-inspiring effectiveness. Point blank and against an immobile target, the streams of shells tore through the front of Gimpy with terrifying ease.
Chris’ empty, crippled mech slammed back against the rear of its bay, tearing through what was left of the wall behind it. Destroyed in an instant.
Enraged, he threw his mother’s Griffin forwards, slamming shoulder first into the Hunchback.
Caught off guard, perhaps having expected only one Griffin, the clan mechwarrior didn’t respond in time and the slightly smaller ‘mech crashed face first into the divider between the two mech bays.
Given a clear shot at the weak rear armor, Chris didn’t hesitate again. He triggered everything the Griffin had: the Extended Range PPC and the eighteen LRMs loaded into the launcher. At this range, the older LRMs would have been barely effective but the newer missiles didn’t have that problem.
With so much of its mass devoted to the heavy autocannon, the Hunchback’s armor was thin and what it had favored the front. Practically everything fired punched through the plating on the ‘mech’s back and the shells still in the ammo bins ignited. The explosions tore the sides of the Clan ‘mech apart, sending both arms spinning away, and there was a brief thermal spike before the reactor shut itself down.
That was a kill, Chris thought as sweat trickled down him. A second kill.
It didn’t bother him as much as the first.
And it had been fast. Nothing like the deliberate duels he’d fought in simulation. It had been over in seconds.
Turning, Chris brought the Griffin out of the hangar. There were other Clanners here, other… he glanced back at the wrecked Hunchback and saw a shark painted on one leg. Diamond Sharks. Other Diamond Sharks to fight.
He saw one as he scanned the settlement - another battlemech, this one smaller. The warbook called it a Piranha - the shape somewhat like an upright shark. It was fleet, fast, lethal… and as he watched an SRM explode against its chest, able to largely ignore infantry-carried weapons unless they were deployed en masse.
Two men with launchers on the back of a hover-truck hardly counted as a threat - but they did count as defiance and the Clans generally had little patience with that. The Piranha turned on one heel and the miniguns scattered across its chest sprayed fire back at the pair.
Small compared to the shells of the Hunchback, they were more than enough to tear through unarmoured people. Through thin plating and through wooden walls.
Through the cabin that Chris had called home for almost two decades.
The Diamond Shark hadn’t even been aiming at it particularly, a part of him thought. The hovertruck had just been moving past it when the Piranha fired.
But whatever the intent, there was even less left of the cabin than there was of the now burning hovertruck and its passengers. And thus the other side of Chris howled in fury and he hurled the Griffin forwards, barely remembering not to fire the PPC until he’d cooled further. The LRMs fired though, scattering fire across the Piranha and drawing its attention away from the fleeing crowd.
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===Protective Custody===
Kathmandu Castle Brian
Asia, Terra
12 June 3046
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The door opened while Wei Rong’s head was pressed between her knees, which made it hard to see who had come inside.
“That looks painful,” a man’s voice observed, the bemusement suggesting that he’d not been watching her on cameras as she exercised. Wei assumed that there were cameras, anyway. She might be in protective custody, but it was still confinement.
She straightened out deliberately, arching her back gradually to work out any kinks remaining. “It takes practice.” Once she was past the halfway-point she saw a powerfully built ComGuards officer in the doorway, long white hair giving the impression of a uniform kepi despite his being bareheaded. The eyepatch suggested his identity, but it was hard to tell while inverted and looking up from the floor. Wei brought her feet up against her buttocks and then rolled forwards until she was crouched on them before standing.
Only when she turned around was she sure she was facing Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht, commander of all of the ComGuards. Wei had never met the man, but he did appear occasionally in official news items. “Precentor Focht?” She tried not to look worried, but she was in military detention so this probably wasn’t good. Compared to his dress uniform, she felt underdressed in the ComGuards issue exercise gear she’d been provided while her own clothes were being laundered. She’d been working out as best she could in the lounge for a while and built up a bit of sweat.
Focht dipped his head slightly. “Precentor Rong. I trust you’ve been kept comfortable.”
“I can’t complain.” She probably could have.
He nodded heavily and gestured towards the seats. “I assume you’ve watched the news.”
Acting as if it wasn’t trivial for the staff here to check what she’d watched on the holo-set. Wei hid derision as she took a seat on the couch, leaving the soft armchair facing her for him. “It’s not been very informative. It seemed censored.”
“It was.” Focht sat stiffly. “The Primus…”
“Whatever she said, they had adult IDs,” Wei blurted and then cursed herself for a blabbermouth.
The way the Precentor Martial’s eyebrows rose suggested this wasn’t what he’d expected. “Yes, I heard you were found in the Bangkok redlight district.” This was in fact true. “You may wish to refrain from that in the future.”
“You know I run the Canopus HPG station, right?” Or she had. Damn, had Waterly finally got around to reassigning her?
“I’m afraid you have other responsibilities now. Primus Waterly is dead.”
“...really?”
Focht frowned. “This isn’t a joke, Precentor.”
“We weren’t close.” To understate it. The bitch had accused Wei of doctoring her own medical records to hide having had work done. As if, Wei was 100% natural. “How did she die?”
“A sniper.”
“...oh.” That must sting. Most of the security around the Primus and other senior ComStar staff came from the ComGuards, albeit sharing the responsibility with ROM. An assassination reflected poorly on the ComGuards and by extension on Focht. “So… Mori is in charge?” Sharilar Mori, Precentor Dieron, had been Primus Myndo Waterly’s right-hand woman and was obviously being groomed as the successor. It was possible someone else would be voted in, but Wei wouldn’t have bet on it. Two-thirds of the First Circuit had been appointed by Waterly, leaving her faction in control.
But Focht shook his head. “A car-bomb, six hours before the Primus’ death.”
A chill went through Wei. Both the Primus and her successor? That suggested an outright coup, and the one in the best place to carry that out was sitting across from her. She leant forwards, absently noting that his eyes did not shift the way most men’s did when she moved her chest. “Could you start from the beginning.”
“That might be best,” he agreed. “Seventy four hours ago -” Twelve or so hours before Wei had been politely detained by a ComGuards patrol who’d seemed quite unprepared for where she’d been found. “- three Precentors were admitted to hospital in Brasilia for severe food poisoning. Precentors Weinberg and Laumer were declared dead on arrival.”
“What the hell did they eat?”
“Forensics suggest that some of the Caph Mussels served were a similar breed that is toxic, mis-identified at some stage of the harvesting. Precentor Behl, the one survivor, appeared to believe that the matter was a case of poisoning by political rivals.”
Wei winced. She’d met Behl once. He was Precentor at New Earth, the first world ever colonized outside the solar system, a post that in theory put him on the First Circuit. Unfortunately for Behl, it had been fifty years since anyone but a Precentor-Advocate mattered in that regard. Grame Behl had made no secret that he resented that, and with the paranoia invoked by Primus Waterly summoning a full conclave of every Precentor of a Class-A station… “What did he do?”
“Do you know how many Precentors have subverted members of ComStar, including elements of ROM, to act as their personal agents?”
Other than ‘more than zero’, Wei did not. There were reasons she enjoyed her posting to HPG stations hundreds of light years from Terra. She shook her head. “So, who’s the Primus now?”
Focht gave her a tired look. “You are.” He refrained from ‘Blake help us’.
“Are you absolutely sure,” Wei said slowly, “That this is not an elaborate practical joke?”
The Precentor Martial slapped his hands down on the arms of his chair. “Precentor, three days ago there were over two hundred Precentors on Terra. We are now down to single digits.”
“You can’t be serious!” Wei came to her feet. “How…”
“Behl targeted fourteen senior Precentors, five of them survived and acted on the basis that this was a coup attempt. While she wasn’t a target herself, Primus Waterly drew the same conclusion from Precentor Mori’s death and ordered a counter-coup purge, which led to those uninvolved but now under threat lashing out.” Focht was easily twice Wei’s age and he sounded furious. “Two hundred Precentors are dead, and close to a hundred times that many civilians and junior personnel who were either executing the attacks or collateral damage.”
Wei considered the fact that she’d been unescorted in the notoriously wicked city of Bangkok while all this had started. She sat down again, heavily. “Then I…”
“Of the surviving Precentors called for the conclave, you are the only one I am sure had no part in this bloodbath. And we must have a clear chain of command before this is made public. We cannot afford for this to spread beyond Terra.”
Wei’s mind raced. Being Primus would essentially trap her here on Terra. Even if she retired, she’d know too much by then to be allowed to leave. “Why me? Why don’t you take the lead? You’re a Precentor and you have seniority over me.” She could see the rank pins he wore marked him as a Precentor with twelve years’ seniority, twice her own six years.
But Focht shook his head. “I have no aptitude for political leadership, whereas you did well for three years at Scarborough.” Wei’s posting before Canopus IV had only been a Class-B station, but it was one of the border systems where it had become necessary early in the Third Succession War to establish a wide perimeter around it. Refugees had settled inside that perimeter for security and by the time Wei took over, there was a thriving city administered by ComStar and secured by the fact that neither the CCAF, FWLM or any reputable mercenary would take their forces within a hundred kilometers of the HPG. “And besides that, if I become Primus, this will have the appearance of a military coup.”
She opened her mouth to disagree and then closed it again as she realized he was right.
“The five Precentors who have been involved in this cannot be trusted with the authority of Primus.” Now the white-haired soldier leant forwards, his one eye seizing Wei’s attention. “You are the only viable candidate. And you took an oath when you joined the Order.”
Wei rubbed her eyes. “Have you even buried Waterly yet?”
“Not yet.” In a moment of levity she hadn’t expected, Focht continued: “Given her personal appraisal of you, I imagine we’ll need her to stop spinning before we put her in her grave. She used the word apostate three times.”
“There is nothing irreconcilable between the word of Jerome Blake and the New Hedonist philosophy,” she protested reflexively.
“That would be an ecumenical matter I don’t consider myself qualified to comment upon,” the Precentor Martial observed drily. “In any event, we have your new robes of office being prepared and I have a small provisional staff ready to help you prepare your first public statement.” He raised one hand. “And I only mean help. I am even less qualified to govern from behind the scenes than I would be to serve as Primus myself.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then my honest appraisal is that ComStar will be torn apart and I will be left defending Terra and over two thousand enclaves from the Successor Lords,” Anastasius Focht told her bluntly. “If you’re the woman I think you are, that isn’t a choice.”
Wei Rong, Precentor-VI and holder of two doctorates, one of them on the history of the Second Succession War, searched deep within herself before concluding - with the alternative of dying in a second and far more overt power struggle within ComStar - that Focht was right.
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===A Gamble for Survival===
Castrum Keep, Priori
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Homeworlds
12 June 3046
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By the time the Piranha stopped fighting back, Chris was panting in the cockpit. It was blisteringly hot and sweat was soaking his clothes, making them stick to him in uncomfortable ways.
The mangled Clan Diamond Shark battlemech was lying across the wreckage of another cabin. Scorched wreckage - the fusion reactor’s containment had failed, probably killing the pilot since Chris hadn’t seen an ejection. The fireball caused by air entering the incandescent core of the reactor and expanding violently hadn’t wrecked the light ‘mech beyond repair - combat vehicles were designed to be repairable from such events - but it was in no shape to resume fighting.
If Glenda’s forces won, there would be a new ‘mech for them to use. But as he looked around, Chris didn’t think that was going to happen.
The keep didn’t have the sort of integrated sensor network that the Griffin’s battle computer could connect to, but he could hear over the radio that Hover APCs were coming up the slope from the river, and the voices reporting that didn’t sound confident in their ability to repel the new attack.
Looking at his status display, Chris could barely see a part of his mother’s mech that didn’t need armor repairs. Even the rear armor was status yellow as a result of his falling flat on his back - he’d been successful in avoiding shots from the Piranha’s lasers, which had worked but only at a cost. His front was a mess of orange and red - hit by so much machine gun fire that solid hits from heavier weapons would probably penetrate. He was lucky nothing had yet.
The Hover APCs would only have machine guns, so if he went to face them he could probably take them down, but there were more ‘mechs as well. And that was another matter.
Defeating two ‘mechs - one much smaller, the other caught totally off guard - had left the Griffin in need of dozens of man-hours of repairs. And reloading - he’d fired off almost every LRM in the magazine. Chris saw that the current ammunition load was down to single-digits and the launcher hadn’t reloaded yet. When he cycled what was left in, there were only five missiles left.
“This is Bullhead,” he reported on the comm-lines, using his mother’s callsign. “I’ve taken out a Hunchback and a Piranha, but I have maybe one fight left at best.”
There was a pause and then Glenda’s familiar grating voice came through. “Junior, what happened to our actual mechwarrior?”
“She did not make it out of the cabin.”
“Fuck.” That was all the grief Chris’ mother got from the leader of the settlement after more than twenty years. “You heard they have APCs coming up the hill at us?”
“Yes.”
Glenda sounded confident as she said: “We can handle them as long as you can keep the Shark ‘Mechs busy. Can you do that?”
Chris clenched his teeth, a chill in his guts. If he fought one more ‘mech he’d probably be destroyed. More than one? “What are we dealing with?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. He hoped her confidence was real, not a pose to keep everyone else on the comms from panicking.
“Two of them. About your size - we think one of them’s a Thunderbolt or similar. Not sure about the other,” Glenda admitted. “Before we lost the sensor tower, we were getting magscans suggesting a pair of fifty to seventy tons each.”
“Don’t the Clans usually run in fives?”
“There is a Piranha up the hill, our tanks have it handled.” Chris wasn’t so sure of that - tanks conjured up the idea of tracked and turret behemoths, but the Castrum tank force was three Thumper self-propelled guns, their artillery pieces replaced with autocannon after the ammunition stocks for the field guns ran out. They didn’t have the armor for extended engagements and the Piranha would run rings around them.
On the other hand, if he tried to run then the Piranha was fast enough to keep tags on him, the teenager thought. It wouldn’t need to kill him - although it might manage anyway - as long as it could keep him from evading the other two.
“I’m on my way.” He began to march the Griffin towards the slope that led down to the river.
A Thunderbolt wouldn’t be good news - heavier and far better armed than his mother’s Griffin, not to mention being legendarily tough. But the old SLDF design was mostly distinctive for the off-set cockpit and Chris was fairly sure that there was an Omnimech that had the same feature - even heavier than a Thunderbolt, and capable of matching his own ‘mech’s mobility.
And unlike the second-rate machines he’d fought before, such an Omnimech would be in the hands of a frontline warrior, someone bred in a laboratory to have the potential to be a supreme combatant - then trained their whole life for that purpose. The way his mother had been.
She had failed the training, but now Chris would probably be facing someone who had not only passed it, but likely excelled enough to hold a command position. The clamminess of his sweat-soaked clothes against his skin was an uncomfortable reminder of how unprepared he was.
But there was no time to stop and remove some layers, every second could count and -
An alarm blared!
- Chris twisted the Griffin and ducked instinctively.
Suddenly lowering his profile saw more than half the SRMs aimed at him fly harmlessly overhead. A pair went astray, crashing into the wall of a warehouse inside the bastion Chris was moving to support. The wall was breached almost immediately, while the handful that hit the Griffin blew divots into the shield-like shoulder-plate of the ‘mech’s left arm.
If it wasn’t for that plating, some of them might have struck his cockpit.
Turning full circle Chris saw the heat signatures of more Elementals, like the one he’d kicked earlier. But this wasn’t a single warrior - it was a full point of five trying to get back into cover after their ambush failed.
Acting on instinct, he clenched his triggers.
The PPC shot missed wildly - he’d not compensated correctly for such a small target - but the LRMs managed to lock and his five remaining missiles spiraled into the little squad, knocking two of them to the ground.
It wasn’t a kill though. Battle armor was too tough and they were both getting up, trying to follow their companions - none of whom stopped to try to save them. It was a ruthless decision but it meant three of them were back behind cover and able to keep fighting.
Both the stragglers fired their jump-jets, trying to catch up with their squad. One barely lifted off the ground before the jets spluttered and failed, probably damaged by the missile hit.
Chris coldly swung the PPC up and calculated the shot carefully. Better to go for the kill he could be sure of.
The stream of charged particles tore through the backplate and then the chest plate of the Elemental, cutting the warrior in twain. His companion reached the safety of another building, escaping the ability of the Griffin’s ancient sensors to track him.
One more kill.
That made it four he’d defeated, Chris thought bitterly. Out of how many? Dozens. Scores. Probably hundreds, if the APCs were packed with unarmored infantry to finish securing Castrum Keep for Clan Diamond Shark. They’d need that many to keep the ‘dreadful dark caste’ under control until they could be properly brought into submission. Or killed. Sometimes that happened, if the stories were right. Entire Clans had been erased by Kerensky’s fanatics for ‘breaking the unity’. They wouldn’t worry much about the lives of those who had never embraced their Way from the beginning.
Rather than making himself an immediate target by jumping over the bastion’s berm, Chris moved up to the gap separating it from the next fortification and ‘peeked’ with the Griffin’s head and sensors, hoping to get a better idea of what he was dealing with than the defenders on the wall could with little more than their Mk I eyeballs.
The slope wasn’t bare of cover - like Castrum itself it was dotted with trees to obscure the settlement from satellites. It wasn’t perfect of course, anyone who spotted the keep would be able to quickly work out what it was. The idea was to look innocuous enough that no one gave the site a second look.
Obviously that had failed, and the current situation was the result.
At first he didn’t see anything, but fifty plus tons of warm metal wasn’t all that easy to hide. Infra-red, magscans, seismics… there were a lot of tools to use, and Chris’ mech had the advantage of being tucked behind cover and not moving.
After less than a minute, a red marker highlighted something on Chris’ HUD. Zooming in, he saw what one of the infantry on the berm must have spotted: a blocky torso with an off-set cockpit and a rounded missile launcher. It could be a Thunderbolt, he thought. But the warbook was less sure, and it could be a Summoner - the omnimech he feared.
Then as it moved, a second missile launcher appeared. Both mechwarrior and warbook agreed in an instant: that was a Thresher - one of the Diamond Shark’s favored garrison battlemechs. Larger than his Griffin but not by much - no jumpjets, but more firepower. Very much not ideal in the condition of Chris’ mech but not as bad as he’d feared.
He was about to move out but then a second marker popped up and all Chris’ confidence drained away.
The ancient computers of the Griffin had probably never seen a Clan OmniMech before, the warbook’s data had had to be programmed into it by Chris’ mother and her predecessors. But some shapes were clear enough to recognise it.
The bird-like legs, angled missile launchers and skeletal arms of a Clan Mad Dog came into view. The same size as the Thresher, but superior in almost every way.
The warbook gave up on working out the configuration - it didn’t know enough about the ‘mech to make that determination. Chris didn’t care much - he wasn’t worried about the weapons. He was outgunned whatever the answer. What worried him was the man or woman inside it.
“Dammit, kid. Get out there and fight them!” Glenda’s voice crackled over the radio. “They are almost on us.”
“I am looking before I leap,” Chris replied, trying to sound calm. One on one… he honestly did not like his chances but it might work. If both fought him at once…
Then again, the Clans’ custom was to avoid that against honorable foes. Of course, in their eyes he would be nothing but a bandit.
Perhaps he could snipe one of them… no, he wasn’t confident of the PPC’s accuracy at this range. And ambushing them like that would just cement that he was beneath them. So perhaps the reverse…
He had no better ideas.
Raising the Griffin to its full height, Chris moved it out into view. “Warriors of Clan Diamond Shark!” he signaled on the general channel - one his mother had told him was commonly used between rival Clans for communication. “I challenge you!”
The Thresher surged forwards and his sensors picked up targeting systems. Chris side-stepped and was about to chalk the idea up as a failure when the Mad Dog stepped forwards, the arm-mounted weapons held out to the sides, non-threateningly.
“You challenge us? You get above yourself, quiaff?” an amused voice asked. A man, confident and feeling unthreatened. The enemy… the Diamond Shark commander.
Chris leant forwards against his restraints. “I have measured myself against four of your warriors and none have been my equal,” he boasted, not letting little details get in the way of the image he wanted to present. “Perhaps you, their leader are superior… quineg?”
The implication that he was expected to admit inferiority must have stung, because the other man snapped the arms of his Mad Dog up, almost but not quite aiming them. “I would wish to see evidence of this before counting you as skilled!” he snapped. “But I will recognise your courage. My orders though, do not allow me to spare this settlement.”
“I am not challenging you for the freedom of this settlement.”
“Neg? Then what do you find so great a prize as to challenge me?”
Chris swallowed. Looked at the two pristine mechs, clearly not needing to be maintained on a shoestring. At their proud livery, at their confidence. “I want to be a Diamond Shark!”
He had a feeling Glenda was screaming imprecations at him over the radio and he was glad he wasn’t on her channel. But the two Clan mechwarriors also seemed startled.
After a moment, the leader laughed. “My name is Blake Hawker, bandit. Very well, impress me in battle and I will make you my bondsman.”
“You misunderstand me.” Chris started circling to the right, screening his PPC from them with the bulk of his ‘Mech. “A bondsman is the property of the bondholder, I believe? Not truly one of the Clan until the cord is cut?”
“Aff…”
“I hear that warriors join their caste through a Trial of Position - a trial of battle. Let us fight one: here and now.”
Blake Hawker growled deep in his throat. “You overrate yourself.”
“How old are you?” a second voice asked. Someone older, Chris thought. The other mechwarrior?
He considered lying and decided against it. What did it matter? “Nineteen. Why?”
“Our warriors take their Trial of Position for the first time when they are twenty,” the other Diamond Shark explained. “You are too young… but perhaps we can strike bargain…”
“Neg!” snapped Blake. “I will fight him, not you Julian.” The Mad Dog marched forwards. “If you can defeat me, I will send you to one of our warrior sibkos and give you the same chance as any of them to become a warrior. But it will rest on your skills - assuming that you survive to try.”
On my skills. I can live with that, Chris thought. Or die… “I accept. Bargained well and done.”
“Seyla,” Julian murmured, but then broke off and the Thresher moved back and away, while the Mad Dog wheeled and opened fire with both arms!
Chris had not expected such a sudden attack, but he’d been maneuvering for position already and ducked the Griffin away from both shots, then fired his jumpjets to leap back and away from the Mad Dog - landing side on with his right arm pointing towards the oncoming omnimech.
An autocannon of some kind and a PPC, he thought. And those missiles… was he holding them back to spare heat or didn’t they have the reach? He knew he’d been within LRM range but he wasn’t close enough to count the missile tubes or guess at their size. SRMs had a larger diameter than LRMs, but it was hard to tell unless you were close - or could compare one to the other.
His PPC fired in the same instant as Blake Hawkers’, the two particle beams almost completely parallel and barely a meter separating them as they passed each other.
Perhaps Chris’ eye deceived him, but the two beams seemed to converge to their nearest point as they passed each other and then diverge. It was too quick to be sure. If so, it was fortunate, because Hawker’s PPC crackled past Chris’ cockpit so close that his instruments flickered under the electromagnetic charge of the shot, before tearing what remained of the left shoulder guard off.
Chris’ own shot slammed into the Mad Dog’s right shoulder, burning into the joint but as the ‘Mech kept advancing, it was clearly unimpaired - no penetration!
He still isn’t using his missiles, the young mechwarrior thought as he raced the Griffin away through the trees, trying to keep the distance open. He had only one eye on his path, the other on the charge meter for the PPC’s capacitors that seemed to crawl as his only weapon readied itself to fire again. Perhaps because I’m not using mine?
Why didn’t matter - but the autocannon fired, shells ripping into the Griffin, as well as the trees around him.
Some sort of shotgun blast, mother mentioned autocannon like that, he thought. And then the PPC glowed as ready to fire on his weapons display and Chris closed his finger on the trigger.
Hawker’s PPC wasn’t firing yet - perhaps it had a slower charge time? Or he was trying to save himself the heat of firing it quickly? As the Mad Dog hopped forwards quickly with its bird-like gait, Chris had tried to predict the movements of the arms and he aimed for the same shoulder joint as before.
The shot was just a hair lower than he had intended, biting into the upper arm below the shoulder. At first, he thought that it had failed… but then the muzzle of the PPC dropped. Lower and lower, until both the weapon and arm hung nearly vertical.
“Stravag!” Blake Hawker cursed and his autocannon fired again.
One of the submunitions slammed into Chris’ cockpit, rattling him in his chair despite the restraints. His head slammed against the headrest and he was glad that it was padded - even with the neurohelmet’s mass that could have hurt.
Throwing off the carelessness of his small victory, he kept the Griffin running, unable to get away from the Mad Dog but keeping it from closing in on him either.
The cockpit was swelteringly hot and Chris refrained from firing his PPC as soon as it charged, instead waiting for good shots. That might have been a mistake for the next shot he took missed and Hawker was firing his autocannon as fast as it would cycle.
However, no shot that hit did serious damage. It ground away armor further, breaching it in a few places but nothing that was affecting the core systems within. Whatever the nature of the autocannon, the way it scattered small explosive shells around was working against Blake Hawker, who could have shredded the remaining protection of the Griffin if he’d been firing a more concentrated weapon.
With the temperature down to only the yellow warnings, Chris tucked in behind a tree to avoid another autocannon salvo and fired his PPC once more.
The Diamond Shark twisted his ‘mech at the last minute, taking the shot on the right-side of the omnimech. The beam lashed past the damaged arm and bit into the side torso, not far above the waist ring.
It didn’t stop Blake Hawker advancing, though he must have decided that there was more than enough risk for he left a trail of unfired missiles behind him for the next hundred meters of the chase, ejecting unfired munitions from the Mad Dog.
They must have been SRMs, Chris thought, sniping again before turning to cut across a low ridge that would screen the Griffin’s legs from inbound fire. He can’t get close enough so he’s getting rid of them before they explode if I can get a penetrating shot. He fired his jumpjets as he went up the rise - not enough to lift himself off the ground, but just to squeeze a little more acceleration out of the machine. For a reward, the maneuver meant that Blake Hawker’s next shots missed.
They exchanged fire twice more before the Mad Dog crossed the ridge and as it did so, Chris managed to land a shot on the right hip.
The impact sent the heavier ‘mech staggering as Hawker came down the slope - he didn’t fall but the myomers of the leg must have seized momentarily as the charged particles washed over the armor. The leg dragged a short trench in the soil before the clansman had his balance back, and left a trail of armor plating.
“Do you hear your comrades?” Blake Hawker asked over the channel.
Chris frowned. What’s he up to?
“My warriors are defeating them,” the Diamond Shark told him, matter of factly. “A few earth berms and man portable weapons would not have been enough to stop the garrison troopers from storming your squalid little settlement. Sending my Nova to reinforce them was only necessary to deal with your tanks and ‘mechs. Or Mech, rather.”
“It’s cost you two ‘mechs and two elementals!” Chris shot back - and then shot more literally, the beam catching the right leg just above the ankle joint. He’d hoped for another hit to the hip, enough to disable it. But the Mad Dog kept coming.
“Speak properly.” Blake Hawker seemed more offended by the contraction than by the casualties. “You are the only one left. Once I bring you down, this will be over.”
“You have to beat me first!”
The Mad Dog plowed directly through one small tree. “Your armor is barely paper-thin. You will not be able to run forever.”
Chris saw a rocky slope ahead of him, something sure to slow him. A chance for Hawker to get close? He might still have some missiles for the launchers, it was hard to say if he’d emptied his full magazines. “I do not have to lead you on forever, just for long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
As the PPC charged, Chris spun the Griffin and fired his jumpjets, soaring up into the air to look down on the Mad Dog. He landed facing fully towards the omnimech for the first time since they had begun this duel.
And as the Mad Dog’s clawed right foot began to lift for its next stride, Chris fired the PPC directly into the ankle joint connecting it to the rest of the leg.
With the sound of shearing metal, the foot was left behind and the Mad Dog almost fell as Hawker no longer had the full length of one leg to work with.
“That’s going to slow you down,” Chris remarked, forcing the scorching air through his throat. “I can keep firing as long as my reactor’s good, firing from ranges where I don’t have much chance to hit. But you only have so much ammunition - if you waste it at those ranges… what do you have left to fight with?”
For a long moment he thought Blake Hawker wasn’t going to reply but then he saw the range between himself and the Mad Dog was growing faster. When he looked back, the predatory ‘mech had come to a halt, gun still tracking him.
“A clever plan,” the Diamond Shark leader admitted bitterly. “Very well. I will not waste my ‘mech and life on a matter already decided.”
“You are giving up?” The Mad Dog’s temperature was dropping and Chris realized the reactor had shut down, the traditional token of a warrior surrendering.
“Aff.” It seemed from the tone that Blake Hawker found the admission painful. “You may have value to the Clan… and battles should be decided by skill, not luck.”
“I… won…” He had not really expected this.
“Do not gloat! I am still a Star Captain of Clan Diamond Shark, while you are barely a cadet! And we shall not deal with your comrades any more kindly than we would otherwise. They will work for us as bondsmen or face the consequences…”
Blake Hawker kept talking, but Chris was barely listening. Sitting in his dead mother’s barely functional ‘mech, clothes clinging to him with sweat, at the end of his resources… and now he was looking down on a Clan Star Captain?
It was hard to believe, but… looking at the clock he realized that it had taken him less than thirty minutes to kill an Elemental, the Hunchback and Piranha warriors, another elemental and then to defeat Blake Hawker. Five victories in less time than might be needed for a meal.
What was it that he’d read about five victories… oh yes: “I’m an ace,” he mumbled to himself.
“What was that?” demanded Blake Hawker, apparently having finished his diatribe.
“Ace.”
“...very well, Ace. My word is good. You shall have your chance to join one of our sibkos. You will find it harder than you imagine… but if you triumph, you will be a warrior of Clan Diamond Shark.”
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