FaRtaL Chpt 4

==From a Ristar to a Lady - Chapter 4 -==
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Innerman City, Inman
Milligan PDZ, Woodbine Operational Area,
26th January, 3061
2200 hrs (1400 hrs on local 28 hr cycle)
"It is nice to go outside after such a long time. It’s also good to take a break from your exercising."
"Is that so? Then I will try to come out more often."
The maid, Anastasia thought her name was Louise, laughed happily at that. The laughter wasn't aimed at Ana specifically, but more for herself.
I must be getting soft if I am so easily slacking off, Anastasia lamented internally. She trained hard for the past few cycles, but on the previous morning she could barely crawl out of bed because her muscles were all so sore. She spent the whole day getting massages from her maids to help her recover, and the maids all insisted that she took a break today.
It was also a time for her to get acclimated to the local day/night cycles. Inman was a slightly larger planet than Terra, and took 28 standard hours to make one complete rotation. As a result, the natives adjusted their daily schedules to the local cycle. Instead of 2400 hrs for local time, they used 2800 hrs.
The normal schedule for most people was to wake at 0600 hrs, do their stuff til 1400 hrs, then have a short rest period til 1800 hrs, where they would usually take a short nap (the locals call it siesta), then usually work again for a short time before knocking off for leisure, or start their leisure time straightaway. At 2600 hrs, most people would go to sleep for the next day, the long rest period. It also happened that every standard week of 7 days coincided with 6 local cycles, since each standard Thursday more or less matched the local cycle, so it was considered the start of each cycle and standard week, and hence also designated the rest day instead of the traditional Sunday.
Left with nothing to do, Anastasia gave into her curiosity and decided to explore the city a bit during the second sleep period, when less people would be out and about. Furthermore, she was feeling a bit cooped up in the Kalinski estate, having gotten used to constantly moving around when she was leading the Jaguar’s Mists Binary. So she made up an excuse about buying proper exercise attire to leave the estate, claiming that the ones the servants had provided still did not fit quite right.
The caveat was that she had to go with a bodyguard, given the current state of the capital.
The bodyguard, Ben, was now driving their hoverlimo. He did not look like much, and Anastasia figured she could have taken him down in seconds when she was still Avryl. Still, it was better than nothing, at least until she had trained up sufficiently to protect herself. In fact, she was already feeling a bit stronger compared to when she just woke up as Anastasia.
The Peloran Class Six hoverlimo was luxurious enough, but the low humming of the combustion engine spoke to its relatively low tech construction, while in the Clan Homeworlds, hover vehicles were usually powered by fuel cells or batteries.
Anastasia looked out of the window, which was opened to let in the cool air. Innerman City was completely different to what she had previously experienced before.
Some of the larger, more advanced structures were obviously old, but well-maintained, and probably stemmed from the time of the Star League. The simple but elegant architecture spoke of high hopes and a yearning for a more prosperous life.
Compared to the brutally utilitarian structures of the Smoke Jaguars, spiced up by bombastic monuments to the glory of the clan, or the plain cookie-cutter industrial looking cities of the Draconis Combine, occasionally interspersed with small pockets of beautifully crafted Japanese buildings, this was a whole new experience for her.
As the hoverlimo cruised at a steady speed down the road, Anastasia tried to process her mixed feelings. The fall of the Star League resulted in the Succession Wars, which lasted for more than two hundred years and wrecked the Inner Sphere, as the Lords of the five Great Houses struggled in vain to gain dominance over the others.
House Davion, rulers of the Federated Suns, where Inman was located.
House Steiner, rulers of the Lyran Commonwealth. Houses Steiner and Davion had merged through an alliance marriage, but Anastasia, with some of the rumors she had heard as Avryl, suspected the union was not going as smoothly as planned.
House Kurita, rulers of the Draconis Combine, which the Smoke Jaguars tried to conquer unsuccessfully.
House Marik, rulers of the Free Worlds League. She did not know much about them except they tended to wage internal conflicts within themselves almost as much as against external enemies.
House Liao, rulers of the Capellan Confederation. The weakest House, but had skilled warriors who were almost fanatical in battle.
For Anastasia, it was a bittersweet feeling, knowing that she had become a noble of one of the states which betrayed the Star League. Even now, evidence that the city was the result of Star League technology and economy was apparent, with access points along the roads for maintenance of the underground infrastructure. For example, the lack of messy hanging electrical cables informed her that the electrical grid was all underground, but this required vast maintenance and a robust infrastructure.
There was something else though.
"Why is the capital so noisy? I thought it was siesta?" There were throngs of people crowding the streets as they neared the city centre, slowing the hoverlimo’s speed to a crawl. Many held placards, with slogans and words, some horribly misspelt, a sign of their lack of education.
At Anastasia’s question, the maid opened the window separating the driver's compartment from the passenger seats and asked the same thing to their bodyguard.
"Ah, these are protestors angry at Baron Haynes for alleged corruption."
“Hmmph.” Anastasia huffed. She was still annoyed whenever Baron Renard Haynes’ name came up. She was also somewhat vaguely aware that he had gotten into some kind of trouble the last few days, based on the reports from the media, but judging from what was happening around her right now, the media was obviously underplaying the severity of the protests.
The maid looked a little nervous. “My lady, let’s hope nobody recognizes the hoverlimo or you. It will be troublesome if somebody recognised you and connected you to the Baron. Better close the window. Or, we could turn back, but it’ll take time to exit the street.”
Anastasia looked at her, and conceded to the wisdom in her words. Behind the tinted plexiglass of the window, it would be much more difficult for the protestors to see her face. Turning back, however… it would be the same as continuing on their errand, and Anastasia really wanted to spend time outside the estate.
Traffic was at a virtual standstill now, while waiting for the mass of people in front of it to dissipate.
Then people started shrieking in fear and running away in the direction of the traffic.
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Billy was just an Agromech jockey, been one for years. Harvest after harvest, doing the same things day after day, week after week, year after year. He was short, ugly, and people said he was stupid. But he had something many people did not have.
A responsive neurological system that enabled him to almost make a 'mech dance under his control. That was his sole point of pride.
When he was younger, he had used that ability to brag and get women. He had played around, spending his earnings in flashy displays of wealth. He didn’t settle down, instead wanting to continue his free-and-easy life with no strings attached.
That life just came crashing down on him.
His boss had fired him. Their company had specialized in helping richer farmers with their harvests, and profits had been good for many years. When word came of possible regulation on the use of agromechs, including stiff fines on the condition of the machines, his boss decided he needed some additional insider knowledge. So the boss had contacted Renard Haynes who promised to get him in touch with the legislators working on the regulations.
That was all and fine, but it turned out that this communication wasn’t quite kosher, resulting in the massive shitshow going on in the city, and the legislators decided to protect themselves and claim innocence. To gather funds for the impending legal battle, his boss decided to fire him in favor of younger pilots who offered almost the same value for much lower wages.
So much for loyalty.
He got fired on the very day he found out he had racked up a huge debt with his drinking and brothel bills, when he had been planning on his substantial bonus to pay off the debt. If he couldn’t pay it off, the debtors had promised no small amount of pain with their own hired muscle. In fact, he already had a substantial dose of it, the taste of blood in his mouth and the bruises on his face stirring anger within him.
With few choices available, he took a cab into the city, and snuck into the company’s offices near the city center. There they displayed some of the HVR-99 Harvester Argomechs to prospective clients, usually rich farmers or nobles who owned extensive agricultural holdings.
He had something of a plan. Get behind the controls of a Harvester, and get out of the city. Get some vengeance on his boss, the protestors, anybody and everybody who offended him or laughed at him. Then maybe sell the mech off for a tidy price, then hide out in the countryside for the rest of his days. He fortified himself with copious doses of liquid courage, and went into the office.
It was the end of the long lunch break, so the mech display room was empty. Security at the doors was almost laughable, and he got in by claiming he needed to check something. The guards apparently had not been informed of his departure from the company, and let him in. He was worried they would pick up the alcohol from his breath, but it was a frequent enough occurrence that they didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary.
He took off his jacket, revealing the protective vest that would protect against sudden collisions. He looked up at the blocky humanoid machine in front of him, a ten metre tall behemoth equipped with a lift hoist in the right arm and a wicked looking combine in the left.
It was a far cry from the powerful battlemechs that were purposely built for war, but still a threat under the right conditions.
He quickly climbed up the rope ladder hanging from the mech to the cockpit mounted in its head, a boxy compartment surrounded by plexiglass. Experience also told him that these display machines were also usually topped up with fuel for their engines, and generally well-maintained. In front, he could see the protestors thronging the pavement and street in front of the display window. Obviously, nobody was paying any attention to him, even when he climbed into the cockpit and retracted the ladder.
He could already taste their fear when he finally moved the Harvester.
He put on the bulky neurohelmet, made sure it was connected to the cable hookup behind the seat, and set it in place over his head and shoulders. He then inserted the data chip that automatically tuned the neurohelmet to him. His hands moved with easy familiarity over the controls, turning on the small battery that would ignite the engine and power the cockpit systems, flipping switches, prepping the engine and fuel lines, and making sure the myomer circuitry was connected. With everything ready, he pushed the button that would actually start the engine, and hence the mech.
The powerful Junkers 120-rated engine roared to life, and the cockpit systems fully brightened up from their standby status. He could feel the power that surged through the myomer ‘muscles’ that moved the mech. He was no mechwarrior, but the sense of power from driving a mech, that made him feel strong. Powerful.
The standard refrain sounded in his neurohelmet:
<{Engine online}>
<{Sensors online}>
<{All systems nominal}>
The Heads-Up Display (HUD) on the neurohelmet showed everything was in order. He grinned and pushed the throttle forward, shattering the store glass display.
The protestors fled in fear.
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“What the…” Anastasia widened her eyes as the protestors suddenly started fleeing the streets, many of them screaming as they tried to run away.
Their driver turned back to look at them, his eyes also wide with fear. “There’s something in front!”
Anastasia looked out the front of the hoverlimo. It took about a bit of watching, but about four hundred meters away at the far end of the wide boulevard, she saw an agromech suddenly turn the corner onto the wide thoroughfare they were on. It stomped around, waving its arms wildly and smashing aside lamp posts and smaller vehicles, sending them flying right into the throng of people. There was a wide space around it, cleared by protestors as they ran away. There were already bodies on the street, victims of the mech’s rampage. Anastasia was not sure, but she could even make out several small bodies. It even dared to hurt children!
The protestors were amongst the vehicles. Those in the vehicles were also trying to get out, since their vehicles were stuck in traffic and could not move, but with so many protestors blocking the doors, many of them were stuck as well. The situation had developed into a stampede, and Anastasia could see Louise in tears. The poor girl was frightened. Ben in front was not much better. For a bodyguard, his complexion was pale and he looked terrified.
Facing down a mech, even an industrial one, probably was not in his job description.
They had to get out, the mech seemed to be moving towards them.
“Ken, open the door and try to make space for us!” Anastasia ordered.
The bodyguard nodded. He took an opportune moment to shove open the door, then used his body to block some of the onrushing protestors as he opened the door to let Anastasia and Louise out.
The moment they got out of the hoverlimo though, a particularly burly man literally ran through the poor bodyguard. His head collided with the side mirror of the vehicle, cleanly knocking him out.
“Ben!” Louise screamed in terror. Then the man smashed into her as well.
The maid crumpled from the impact. Anastasia herself barely got out of the way, flattening herself against a car to avoid colliding with the man. She looked at Louise, who was crying profusely now, her hands clasped around her left ankle.
“My lady, my ankle! It’s hurt!” They looked at the direction of the mech. It was slowly advancing closer.
Her bodyguard was unconscious. Her maid could not walk. There was no way she could carry them both, not in this weak body. And she could not bear to see her own people hurt, especially innocent young Louise. If they served her, she was responsible for them. In her mind, she already considered the servants and maids of the estate as her people, and the role of a leader was to protect their people.
Louise cried, “Lady, you must run!”
Anastasia looked around, trying to stay calm. She saw a massive cargo hauler, also abandoned by its driver. No vehicles blocked its path to the mech. That seemed a bit promising…
She looked at the mech again. Was it her, or was it moving a bit strangely?
Her sight narrowed on the right knee joint. It walked with a hitch, probably poor maintenance on the knee actuator. Perhaps even damaged.
If she had been in Avryl’s body, she would not have hesitated to take on the mech, even if unaugmented. There were ways to open up a cockpit from the outside, and she knew quite a few of them, having learned them from Elementals as part of the training to raid the Draconis Combine. And from that point on, it was simply a matter of killing the pilot to end the threat.
But in Anastasia’s body, there was no way she would be able to scale the 'mech to reach the cockpit, even with the right equipment.
So the cargo hauler it is.
Ignoring Louise’s cries for her to run away, Anastasia lifted up the skirt of her dress and started running for the cargo hauler. It was not far, only about thirty meters away, and she was glad her exercises over the past few days had already borne fruit. She was at least able to run that far without collapsing!
The cargo hauler’s engine was still running, and adrenaline pushed her to grab the handholds and pull herself up to the driver’s cabin. She took in one look at the controls, which seemed not much different from the various vehicles she had driven before. The standard wheel, automatic gear transmission, and pedals for acceleration and braking. There was a suitcase next to the seat, she could use it to keep the gas pedal down.
She turned her eyes to the mech. She knew there was a chance she could knock it over with the cargo hauler, but head-on it was just too easy for it to avoid the cargo hauler with a side-step. She needed a distraction, but from where?
Suddenly, gunfire erupted from a side street. Several policemen were shooting at the mech with small arms. Their fire was ineffectual, bouncing off its thick armour. Even the few rounds that hit the broad plexiglass canopy surrounding the cockpit seemed to just bounce off.
But she had her distraction, as the mech turned and started moving towards the police.
Anastasia weighed the accelerator down with the suitcase, then quickly transferred her arms to the steering wheel even as the cargo hauler jerked into movement.
One thing that separated trained mechwarriors from mere pilots was their situational awareness. The ability to constantly take in information from their surroundings and ascertain the optimal course of action. She did not know if the pilot's neurohelmet had a three-hundred-sixty compression view, but she was betting on him not noticing the threat posed by her cargo hauler until it was too late, since his attention was focused on the police.
The gap closed quickly, even as she steered the vehicle, curving it slightly to angle it to hit the mech's knee at the optimal angle. Three hundred, two hundred, one hundred meters. Fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten! Somehow the mech did not notice the cargo hauler, and the police seemed to understand what she was doing, and continued firing sporadically even as they backed away from the rampaging mech. Just before the collision, Anastasia flung open the door of the cargo hauler and leapt out. She tumbled to the ground, rolling for several meters before she stopped. Thankfully, the thick sleeves on her dress prevented her skin from lacerations and scrapes. She was sure she would still have some bruises though.
The cargo hauler was still accelerating when it crashed into the right knee of the mech from the side. The entire leg joint twisted, and the mech spun around and crashed to the ground, causing a minor earthquake with the impact of its fall. Anastasia knew it could have fallen on her, but it was a desperate gamble, and it had paid off so far.
She looked at the police, who had backed away too far to take immediate advantage of the situation. Even now, they were cautiously advancing.
Fools! She wanted to scream at them. It is down, but it can get up again. Get on it before the pilot can do so!
So it was up to her again, and she was only a few meters away from where the mech fell. She gritted her teeth and dashed forward to clamber on the mech on her hands and knees towards the cockpit area, thankful that the policemen had stopped firing. She was very conscious of the dagger sheathed on her thigh. The mech was already shifting under her, the pilot probably coming to grips with the situation and getting ready to stand up.
The cockpit of every 'mech, regardless of type, had some nominal security system to protect the pilot. But Ana knew that rescue crews also needed to pop the canopy top to extract unconscious pilots. Civilian mechs usually have less extensive security measures compared to BattleMechs, which required specialized tools to open up the cockpit.
Memories from her time as Avryl came back to her, and she looked for an innocuous looking panel. Finding it in moments, she drew her dagger with her right hand and with a twist of her wrist, used the dagger to flick the panel open, her left hand already reaching in to yank the D-shaped pull handle inside.
The cockpit canopy popped out, revealing a small man in a bulky neurohelmet staring at her in open-mouthed amazement, even as the helmet visor covered his eyes and fed him information through the HUD.
He seemed to belatedly realize the danger he was in, his hands coming up to defend himself, but Anastasia had already stepped into the small space of the cockpit and stabbed forward with her dagger. End the threat, her mind sang. Even in the midst of combat, she was calm and collected.
She had not realized until this moment just how much she had missed the thrill of battle.
The man screamed for mercy before the first stab even went through his protective collision vest, and after the third stab of her dagger Anastasia was not sure if she should continue until the man was dead, because he was already just barely twitching, blood pouring from his mouth. Her own body was shaking with fatigue, but she knew she could not collapse, not now!
Anastasia heard massive stomps. More mechs are approaching. She looked up and saw a BattleMech of an unknown design, with the heraldry of House Rason, a black boar over a green field, emblazoned on one of the massive pauldrons on the right shoulder. She had seen it before, on Finn Rason’s RFL-5D Rifleman. 
“You are early, Viscount Rason.” she quipped. Already, relief was spreading through her body at the presence of competent reinforcements.
She was not even aware when she fell unconscious.
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Finn Rason had been prepared for many things, but seeing his fiancee Anastasia Kalinska standing over the body of a half-dead mech pilot with a bloody dagger in the cockpit of a downed Harvester was definitely not one of them.
First things first. He quickly got out of his Templar and lifted her small, lithe body into his arms. He carefully carried her out of the Harvester, and walked over to a shaded area of the boulevard. He frowned at the dagger in her hand, and carefully pried it away, handing it off to a nearby policeman. The police officers on the scene were already cordoning off the area and securing the Harvester.
Meanwhile, his scratch lance had set up around the area to prevent any further adventurism by anybody seeking to escalate the situation. A hover APC had accompanied them, and there were medics who would be able to provide medical care.
His fiancee’s fine dress was torn and tattered in places, and splattered with blood on others. Her hair was tousled, and there was blood on her face too. It was remarkable how she had still held onto her dagger even when unconscious. A policeman inflated a small airbed, and Finn laid her down carefully on it. A medic came over to look her over.
“My lady!” He heard a cry. Finn turned around to see a man in a black jacket supporting a young girl, clad in the clothes of a maid. He had a nasty bruise on the side of his head, with a trail of blood, while the girl was limping badly.
The man bowed, and stammered, “My lord, we are the servants of Lady Kalinska. May we ask about the lady’s condition?”
“The medic’s taking care of it. You two should get your wounds looked after too.” He gestured to his men, who quickly corralled the two next to Lady Kalinska.
He wondered if he should question the two, but the man talked first, “The stampede knocked me out, and Luisa here got her ankle stepped on.”
The girl was in tears, “My lord, I tried to stop Lady Kalinska. I really did! I told her to abandon us and run away, but she got up into that truck instead!”
Finn blinked and looked at one of the policemen standing around. “Is that true?” he asked.
One of the policemen holding a submachine gun nodded. “Yeah. We were just on the scene when that cargo hauler started charging at the mech. We figured it needed a distraction, and we helped set it up. This small lady jumped out before the hauler hit the mech. When the mech fell though, we didn’t know what to do. She somehow opened up the hatch cover and dove in. It was crazy sir.”
Surprised, Finn looked down at Anastasia. It took tons of courage to take on mechs on foot in any circumstance. And she did it without any appropriate gear or training…
Hold on. Finn realized something was strange. How did she know to pop the cockpit canopy? And to make the mech fall… he looked at the positions of the cargo hauler and the mech. She hit the knee at the best angle to make it fall. This isn’t the sort of stuff you can simply learn from holovids. How would a delicate noblewoman like her have the gumption to even try it?
The only thing he knew about Anastasia was that she had had an affair with Baron Renard Haynes, and when the Baron rejected her, she tried to commit suicide by jumping into a lake. But after this unexpected incident, he had to change his view of Anastasia.
“Not many people, even if military, could have done that. And I mean that in all sincerity.” Spencer commented, his eyes scrutinizing Anastasia as though she was an interesting puzzle he wanted to solve. The man had arrived along with some foot infantry deployed from an APC from the Haynes palatial manor.
Finn frowned and moved to block his view. “She’s my fiancee, and I don’t appreciate you staring at her.”
Spencer got the hint and backed away. Finn got a feeling the other man was not likely to let this go, however, and resolved to keep a closer eye on Anastasia in the future.
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*; Note from the Author : The novel which inspired the taking down of the Harvester was of course Hearts of Chaos, by Victor Milan, and one of the few where the protagonist is NOT a mechwarrior. Cassie Suthorn takes down a Battlemaster almost single-handedly by popping the canopy and killing its mechwarrior.Still, there were several problems with the scene as Milan wrote it. For example, if it was so easy to pop the cockpit canopy of a Battlemaster (or any battlemech, for that matter), then why all the hoohah over battlearmor? The way I see it, if rescue crews needed to pop the canopy top for battlemechs, they would probably need a finer touch, e.g. a small number panel to type in access codes, only capable by fingers in non-combat situations, plus the use of a specialized tool or two that usually only rescue crews would have. Even the humble screwdriver would do. Imagine trying to unscrew a panel under combat conditions!But since in this story, it's just a Harvester, a civilian mech, then such security measures would not be needed, hence a simple panel which could be opened easily, plus the D pull handle.
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Chapter 4