FoW4

==Chapter 4 - Fortunes of War==
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Konstantinople, Konstance
The Draconis Combine
August 16, 3024
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Kit watched as the Hermes II rocked back on its heels, then planted its spade-like feet wide apart as Stef Keely steadied her machine. Inside the Vindicator’s cockpit, displays on either side of the main viewport flashed with readings from thermal, magnetic resonance, and seismic scanners showing a panoply of possible threats scattered among the city’s abandoned buildings on either side of the canal. Kit couldn’t see any hostiles, but Keely apparently had a line of sight on something. The Hermes II’s autocannon pounded out a staccato beat and ejected shell casings tumbled down the artificial riverbank.
“Brent, we’ve got a fight on our hands!” Keely’s voice on the radio was no longer sunny tones, it was all controlled adrenaline, a notch below a yell. “I need you in it!”
Kit looked back up towards the Vindicator’s open cockpit hatch. “Sterns?” she shouted, wondering if it was even possible for anybody to hear her. She had almost summoned up the courage to poke her head out of the hatch when Sterns’ face suddenly reappeared, startling her.
“Blake’s Blood, Söderlund, get the hell out of there!” Sterns shouted down at her. “Run for cover in one of the buildings or-...” 
There was a deafening rumble and the Vindicator shook like a leaf, bouncing Kit off the side bulkhead of the cockpit. A display above her head flashed a warning of damage to the armor all along the 'Mech’s right flank. Outside Keely pivoted her Hermes II and delivered another burst of autocannon fire and an emerald laser pulse at something on the other side of the canal. As the forty-ton 'Mech turned, Kit could see that it’s front side was heavily cratered from missile impacts. She looked back up towards the hatch. Sterns was gone again.
“God dammit!” she yelled over the persistent cacophony of the cockpit alarms. Ignoring the part of her brain telling her such an action was patently insane, she stood up on the command chair and popped her head through the open hatch. If Sterns had been shaken from his perch on the Vindicator’s shoulder, he was nowhere in sight, unless he had fallen behind the ‘Mech where its hunched shoulders blocked Kit’s view. 
Letting herself fall back down into the cockpit, Kit sat gripping the side consoles with white knuckles to contain her trembling. Through the Vindicator’s visor viewport, a hundred meters beyond where Keely’s Hermes II stood on the canal bank with its attention still fixed on its far side, the squat shape of a Dragon came into view, it’s forward-jutting torso looking like the snout of a savage animal. Kit could clearly see a red disc marked with the Dragon’s namesake beast painted on its shoulder, the emblem of House Kurita. The Combine had become aware of the mercenaries’ presence on Konstance at last.
Kit snatched up the handheld radio and mashed the transmit button. “Keely, on your left!” The Hermes II wheeled around just in time to save itself from what might have been a catastrophic salvo to its rear quarter. The Dragon’s autocannon shells traced a line of sparking impacts up the left side of the Hermes II’s chest and blasted off one of the ear-like sensor arrays mounted on either side of the 'Mech’s head, but failed to penetrate the armor which protected the cockpit. Far more devastating was the Dragon’s laser shot which arrived just as the smoke from the autocannon shots cleared. The coruscating beam found a weak point in the armor over the Hermes II’s left hip created by the missile hits Keely’s 'Mech had taken a minute before and melted the actuator to slag. Before Keely could aim a retaliatory shot, the Dragon withdrew back down the street parallel to the canal from whence it had come.
With its hip actuator crippled, the normally swift Hermes II would be able to manage no better than a limping walk. Stef doesn’t stand a chance, Kit thought to herself. And as for herself, one of the Combine attackers had already taken a potshot at the Vindicator as it knelt harmlessly by the canal bank. Even if she had been so inclined, riding out the fight huddled inside the Vindicator’s cockpit hoping the Kurita troops would ignore the dormant 'Mech long enough for her to surrender after the fight was over - which meant after Keely was probably dead - was not an appealing option. And yet the Vindicator’s cockpit was a much safer place than anywhere outside. Climbing out and making a run for one of the abandoned buildings in the middle of a 'Mech battle would be a suicidal move.
So that narrowed her choices down to just one.
Kit reached up and sealed the cockpit hatch, then lifted Sterns’ abandoned neurohelmet off of the hooks on the rear bulkhead and lowered it over her head and shoulders. It was too large for her, and the receptor pads on her temples did not make tight contact, but there was nothing to be done about it. With practiced speed, she fastened and tightened the safety harness and connected the web of wires which linked the neurohelmet to the Vindicator’s systems through various jacks scattered around the cockpit. On the helmet’s transparent faceplate, parts of the heads-up display flashed to life. The process was routine for Kit after performing it hundreds of times during maintenance checks and simulator runs, and inhibited only by the persistent trembling of her hands. 
The last wire was the most important. Its purpose was to transmit the MechWarrior’s brain waves into a computer system that translated the pilot’s own sense of balance into signals that could be interpreted by the ‘Mech’s gyroscopes, keeping it steady as it maneuvered in combat - without this guidance, the most mighty of BattleMechs was useless. Kit hesitated for only a moment before she connected this last jack, knowing what was coming.
She plugged in the wire and was instantly hit with a convulsive wave of nausea that doubled her forward in the command chair. When a 'Mech was piloted by a single MechWarrior for a prolonged period of time, its computers became attuned to the brain waves of the customary pilot, improving the efficiency of the neuron-transmission and allowing veteran MechWarriors to make their mounts move almost like an extension of their own bodies. The feedback caused by the sudden intrusion of Kit’s unfamiliar neutral patterns, aside from being viscerally unpleasant, would also impede the ease with which she could control the Vindicator. 
Swallowing the bile in her throat, Kit worked the Vindicator’s joysticks and foot pedals. The 'Mech’s arms rose obediently, if somewhat clumsily, but it remained stubbornly in a kneeling position. Kit cursed herself as she realized her error and released the switches locking the 'Mech’s legs. At last the forty-five ton 'Mech drew itself to its full ten-meter height, just as the Kurita Dragon reappeared, one block farther away than before. 
Without conscious thought Kit raised the Vindicator’s right arm, floated the corresponding targeting reticle on her heads-up display over the shape of the Dragon, mashed the button on top of the right joystick, and was rewarded with… absolutely nothing happening. She cursed herself again as realization dawned and frantically flipped the switches on the cockpit roof to disengage the safeties to the Vindicator’s weapons.
Kit looked back up and saw that by some stroke of good fortune, the Dragon did not even seem to have noticed that the Vindicator had come to life. It was carefully lining up a shot at Keely, perhaps hoping to exploit the damage it had done before and sever the Hermes II’s leg completely. Keely, aware of the impending attack this time but unable to dodge after the crippling hits she had already taken, blazed away at the Dragon with her autocannon and medium laser, causing superficial damage to the heavy 'Mech which its pilot seemed to not even notice.
The Kurita MechWarrior did notice when a bolt from the particle-projection cannon which replaced the Vindicator’s lower right arm sent a linear bolt of lightning into its left torso. Azure arcs whipped at the cracked pavement around the Dragon’s feet and chunks of armor exploded away from the point of impact. The Dragon reeled back half a pace, just as a droning alert in Kit’s ears informed her that the Vindicator’s missile launcher had a partial target lock. She thumbed the button on top of the left joystick and a flight of five missiles launched from the tubes in the Vindicator’s chest, but the Dragon was at the edge of the missiles’ minimum range and they failed to fly true. Soaring past the Dragon, the warheads detonated against the decaying faciad of an ancient apartment high-rise. Now confronted head-on by two operational medium 'Mechs, the Dragon pilot backpedaled his mount out of sight once more.
“Sterns, thank God, it’s about time.” Keely’s voice in Kit’s neurohelmet earphones sounded so relieved that it made Kit grimace as she activated her mic to give the Talons MechWarrior the bad news. 
“It’s not Sterns." she said. Her own voice sounded strangely small in her ears, like a child’s. “It’s Söderlund in the Vindicator. Sterns is… I’m not sure.”
There was a pause, then Keely’s voice came back loud enough to make Kit wince in pain. “What the hell?!” Keely screamed, followed by an incoherent string of obscenities. “What the hell are you doing in there, Söderlund?” Keely demanded.
Kit tried to put confidence she didn’t feel behind her response. “I don’t know what happened to Sterns, but you looked like you could use some help. And I didn’t feel like waiting to get killed by a stray shot, or waiting for the Combine to come drag me out of the cockpit. So…” 
“Shut up, Söderlund.” The Talons MechWarrior’s voice was not the cheerful sing-song Kit had already grown used to in her brief time with the unit, or the razor-edged near panic of a few moments before. It was calm, but carried an edge of deadly imperative. “Shut up and listen to me. The data from the Commando - have you got it?”
Kit blinked. She had completely forgotten about the task she had come into the heart of the abandoned city to do, the entire mission that the mercenaries had come to Konstance to accomplish. She glanced down into the footwell of the Vindicator’s cockpit where the memory bank from the Lyran Commando had been installed. “I didn’t get a chance to try to read it before we started getting shot at7.” she admitted.
“But maybe it’s still got what we’re looking for." Keely said. “Get out of here. Get that drive to the ship. We’ve got to get off this world but maybe we didn’t come for nothing.”
Kit’s stomach lurched. She says ‘we,’ but her 'Mech can barely move… she’s not going anywhere.
Kit’s dark train of thought went no further before a new round of warning klaxons filled the Vindicator’s cockpit. Two hundred meters farther along the curve of the canal bank, a menacing, alien shape stalked into sight, a shape all MechWarriors - and 'Mech techs - knew. “Holy hell." Kit breathed. “A Marauder.” 
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