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TIBSHELF

GILLINGHAM

FEDERATED SUNS

01:01, 18 April 3044

Elise almost laughed when the Urbanmech stomped ponderously into sight, the emblem of the Gillingham Militia – a white horse rampant on a blue background – painted visibly across one side of its domed hull.

No wonder the militia took so long to get here, she smirked.

She was absolutely not laughing however when another light ‘Mech – a Wasp, Spider, or some other kind of Bug ‘Mech – dropped from the sky on searing blue jets, its paltry twenty tonnes still enough to shake the road on impact, and fired a medium laser at the plodding trashcan. The blinding green line slagged a glowing lump of armour from one stumpy leg but barely slowed the other ‘Mech.

After many long years in the academy and military, Elise was usually good at recognising ‘Mechs from sight alone but, after she blinked away the after-image and one or two old memories, she could see this new one had been modified beyond recognisability. One arm had clearly been taken from a different ‘Mech of similar tonnage and the hull was decorated with so many different spikes and jagged plates that it was an infernal mockery of what it might have been.

The Urbanmech responded well, its AC/10 barking out and, with either luck or a surprising amount of skill, blew the pirate’s arm clean off, the ragged wound halfway between elbow and shoulder. Parts flew for metres around, forcing Elise and Anne to instinctually shield themselves when some scattered nearby. These duellists were far from heavyweights in the BattleMech world but at street level even they seemed a pair of warring gods by comparison.

With every blow and movement, Elise flinched, her limbs twitching in sympathy as deep muscle memory demanded she throttle up and join the fray, or push on pedals and jump back to make some room.

Almost as she thought it, the pirate flared its own, sailing back off and away into the dark cloud of smoke that hung low over Tibshelf, underlit by angry orange. The Urbanmech fired impetuously after it – the pilot clearly too inexperienced to conserve ammo.

“If we’re going to go, we better do it now,” Anne commented tightly and all Elise could do was nod.

Both women broke into a sprint for the corner, the militia ‘Mech too un-noticing or uncaring of their presence to show any indication that it saw them. Being so close to even a much-maligned machine such as this was sa nerve-wracking experience for Elise, a ten-metre titan that triggered a strange dissonance of fight-or-flight and deep envy. Part of her wanted, no, needed to be in the cockpit of a ‘Mech right now – any ‘Mech; she would settle for her Powerman if only she could get to it. The other part just wanted to run, to hide, to dig the deepest hole she could and cower until all of this was over.

Either she kept going or she locked up, so all she could do was put one foot in front of the other and try to push such thoughts from her mind.

They passed by and continued into the street even as the Urbanmech ambled out into the junction, it’s bullet head rotating like a turret. There was no sign of the rest of its lance, such as they were. Elise had seen them from a distance when they ran exercises every month or so, the biggest being a Whitworth that she could have sworn had one of its lasers installed upside down. Not much compared to her old lance of heavy hitters, but it could pack a decent enough punch for its weight.

A cardinal rule of ‘Mech combat was to always stay with your lance unless there was no other choice. The militia being so spread out spoke of either a supreme lack of experience and professionalism or an entirely desperate situation.

As Elise skirted around the rubble of a half-destroyed store, she was sure it might be a bit of both.

In the next second, she was absolutely certain.

The Urbanmech fired again, causing Elise to stumble and cover her ears, spinning round to see what it was shooting at just in time for an absolute monster of a BattleMech to come through one of the buildings on the other side of the junction with barely a break in stride. In terms of height, this thing looked to be a good eighty percent taller than the militia machine and Elise knew with horrifying realisation that it was more than three times the tonnage.

It was a Banshee, the 3S model by the looks of things, although, like the now one-armed Bug ‘Mech, it had been heavily customised, covered in spikes and wickedly sharpened plates. It was coloured black with angry spots of red that drew attention to its fists and a jagged, shark-toothed grin just below the cockpit viewport.

It advanced, sloughing pieces of building as is did so, eschewing its arsenal of ranged weapons even as a shell from the Urbanmech’s cannon glanced from a thick shoulder plate and a spiteful red beam from its small laser burned away some of the spikes.

The militia pilot began to panic, pushing their ‘Mech into reverse, but it was far too slow and soon the Banshee was upon them. It swung the gigantic fist of its right arm in an overhand hammer blow, right down on the Urbanmech’s cockpit, connecting with a hollow metallic BOOM, crumpling armour and shattering reinforced glass in a way that Elise knew would have killed the pilot outright.

In an almost contemptuous gesture, the Banshee withdrew its hand and shook away parts of its recent conquest. The other ‘Mech still stood upright, the wide plantar legs that usually gave it such good stability leaving it a grim statue to the fallen militiaman. Its killer pivoted on its torso mounting, casting around for another kill.

Elise almost dared not even breath as she slowly moved to one side of the road, holding out a trembling arm until it connected with Anne, ushering the dumb-struck nurse along with her. In the shadows of the buildings they would have a better chance of not being spotted than if they stayed in the middle of the street. If that thing saw them, then there was nothing they could do except die.

At least it would be quick.

For a few heart-stopping moments, the Banshee continued its search, finishing abruptly with a coruscating blast from both PPCs that had Elise covering her eyes and cowering, so convinced was she that this was meant for her.

When oblivion failed to materialise, she blinked away the spots in her eyes and watched the assault ‘Mech begin to march further into the town, presumably on the hunt for another member of the erstwhile Urbanmech’s scattered lance.

Elise waited until she was sure the immediate danger had passed before falling to her knees and retching in the dirty road, arms and legs trembling as she fought to bring herself back under control.

A few rancid breaths later and she felt the strength to manage it, using the side of the nearby building for support until her rebellious legs got back in line. She looked at Anne, who was holding her stolen rifle in a ready position, eyes scanning for threats.

Elise almost felt offended she hadn’t offered any help.

Some nurse indeed… she griped internally.

“Come on,” she croaked, staggering a few steps before asserting a proper gait.

“You alright?” Anne asked tightly.

About time… Elise thought. “Nope. You?”

“Nah.”

Elise nodded, glad to see something human in there. “Right.”

“Yeah... You know where you’re going?”

Even if Elise hadn’t already memorised everywhere of note in this little town by now, the militia compound would not be hard to find. In terms of footprint, only some of the DropPort buildings were larger and it was definitely the tallest by far. Built to standardised – if somewhat optimistic – specifications, the compound’s MechBay was large enough to fit an entire lance of gigantic assault ‘Mechs like the one they had just so narrowly avoided. This meant it needed at least twenty metres clearance for the machines to avoid bumping their heads, let alone to fit all of the cranes and winches that formed part of the maintenance gantries. It could be seen from most places in town and was a fairly obvious landmark.

Which also made it a fairly obvious target.

Elise had no idea what they would find there, her confidence running on fumes with the presence of that grim-visaged Banshee. It had seemed the secure option when unmounted pirates, or even a light ‘Mech, were the only variables, but now she wasn’t so sure…

“Absolutely,” Elise replied, trying to feign the self-assured control that had once come naturally to her as a captain. She was sure Anne could see right through it.

MILITIA SQUARE

TIBSHELF

GILLINGHAM

FEDERATED SUNS

01:16, 18 April 3044

The going had been tough until this point, even after escaping the edges of the ‘Mech fight.

Tibshelf had been reduced to a series of scenes stitched together, any sense of connectivity blurred by the adrenaline swamping Elise’s system. More than once they had stumbled across a firefight in progress, a knot of terrified citizen militia locked in combat with a merciless pack of the grin-masked pirates, the outcome either uncertain or swung too far to make a difference. Usually in favour of the better-equipped and presumably more experienced raiders.

Each time, a hushed argument had nearly started between Anne and Elise. The nurse wanted to go and help the civilians nominally under her care while Elise’s urge was to stay as far away as possible. To get involved would have meant a likely death for one or both of them, she always argued, and each time she offered Anne the chance to go on her own. Regardless, she stayed with the former MechWarrior/Operator and, by the time the compound’s attached blockhouse was in sight, the pair had settled into a sullen silence.

They paused at a corner, Elise making a show of surveying the modest plaza before the militia hangar’s colossal doors. Originally, it had been designed as a staging area and parade ground for the militia forces, but considering nothing resembling a parade had never happened once in Elise’s three and a half years as a resident, it tended to be a congregating ground for idle hands or a focal point for market stalls.

The real reason for Elise’s delay was to take a breather and stretch her injured leg. Once upon a time she had exercised regularly and intensively to keep “fighting fit”, able to endure the rigours of ‘Mech combat, and though she still kept up a decent routine it was nowhere near the same. She was struggling to repay an oxygen debt her body was now cashing in with interest, not to mention the effects of being up in the middle of the night, despite her impromptu early bedtime. All of this movement – the running, crouching, kneeling – was also aggravating her injured leg something fierce and she wanted to massage out some of the pain without letting Anne know what she was doing.

“Never show weakness, whether to your enemies or your colleagues,” had been one of her father’s dubious “lessons”. “In either case, you would be eaten alive.”

These tenets of his, bored in over two decades of hands-off child-rearing and Elise’ military education were a hard thing to erode, even after years of living in the Outback. There was really something to be said about formative experiences.

“You alright?” Anne whispered. There was no hiding anything from that damn woman.

“Shipshape and Kathil fashion,” Elise replied with forced levity, pulling her lips into an expression that was more grimace than smile. It was the best she could manage under the circumstances.

“Whatever that means.”

“It…” Elise began, before shooting the nurse a look and shaking her head. “Never mind.”

The square looked clear, all of the stalls and their hawkers tending to pack away in the evening, providing her with open lines of sight across the dirty concrete expanse. On the three sides not occupied by the gigantic hangar building were the fronts of shops and businesses, providing far too many potential hiding places for snipers or ambushers. Likewise for the handful of roads that branched off, though at least she would see a ‘Mech coming over the rooftops.

Bullet will kill you as easily as a shell… she thought. That wasn’t her father’s lessons talking, rather long experience.

While everything looked clear, something was nagging her. The militia compound was supposed to be the defensive nexus of the town, where anyone taking up arms was to attend and be coordinated, and where civilians were supposed to head to if they wanted to find shelter. Yet it was still just as deserted.

There were lights on at the compound, the result of a backup generator buried below the courtyard, and if anything that only underscored how eerie things were. Elise couldn’t see any sign of movement and from their vantage point she thought the hangar door looked somewhat misshapen, like something of comparable size had collided with it.

It didn’t look good, but neither did literally anywhere else in this benighted town.

“Can’t sit around here all day,” she told Anne, voicing her next thought. “Going to have to make a run for it.”

“Joy…” the nurse drawled.

Elise willed herself to stand up straight. “Ready?”

“Yeah nah, but whatever.”

“Right. Eyes open, let’s go.”

They set off at a steady trot, Elise doing her best to ignore the burning in her leg, her head on a swivel as she tried futilely to keep an eye on every single place at once. Along with the physical maladies, her brain was running in overdrive, every old instinct screaming, every anxious impulse telling her to run as fast as she could and never look back. The shaking in her hands was so bad she had long since switched her pistol to three-round burst – she would be just as inaccurate anyway.

Halfway across the empty square, when they were at their most vulnerable, she heard a muffled shout.

Her head snapped round, saw the gaggle of masked pirates coming out of one of the feeder streets, and fired off with her pistol. The weapon bucked in her hand from the triple-tap beat but she was already running, uncaring at the effect of her haphazard attack. Boots drummed on the concrete even as her heart pounded in her ears, sweat dripping into her eyes and crawling icily down her spine, every passing second anticipating the hot kiss of lead into the flesh of her back.

A gun snapped behind her, echoed by a scattered response in kind.

Bullets whipped past her, as did the vision-stinging lash of a couple of laser bolts, skipping from the nearby concrete or heading harmlessly off into the forgotten night. Part of Elise wanted to look behind her, to see how Anne was doing just as much as how far behind her the pirates were. The greater proportion screamed to carry on running. The few metres to the compound entrance felt like a bad dream – the kind normal people have – when you run down a corridor only for it to keep stretching on into the distance.

Adrenaline flooded her body and anxiety overclocked her senses, dragging out the moment into an excruciatingly infinite experience until… she was suddenly over the threshold of the compound’s open gate, almost overbalancing as she took a sharp left towards the inviting pool of light pouring from an open doorway into the squat, solid cuboid of the main building.

Under cover she finally stopped, nearly dropping her pistol when she turned and began to push closed the heavy door on creaking hinges, only pausing long enough to let Anne slip in after her. Over the woman’s shoulder she could see the pirates, more than half a dozen, hot on her heels before rapidly – and mercifully – being cut from sight by the portal slamming shut.

Elise pushed the bar across and fell to the floor, body trembling and gasping for breath.

“Fucking…” Anne wheezed. “Hell…”

She slumped to the ground, back against the wall next to Elise, not even flinching when a scattering of impacts rang across the door.

“Yeah, yeah…” she muttered. “Now you…” she limply pushed at Elise’s shoulder, annoyance clouding her voice, “You were going to leave me behind!”

“Didn’t close the door on you…” Elise weakly pointed out, wiping her eyes and sitting back on her heels with supreme effort, even as the impacts continued.

“Didn’t cl-… You ran away!” Anne argued.

“Ran away from them!” Elise jabbed a finger at the door. “I knew you could keep up!”

“Did you?!”

“What, you need me to hold your goddamn hand?” Elise nearly shouted, rounding on the other woman.

Anne held her gaze, stony-faced for a moment, then a lopsided smile broke through and spread across her face into a slightly manic half-grin.

“Feel better?” she asked.

Elise goggled at her, and the fact her anger had indeed pulled her from the hole she was sliding into just made her even more mad.

“You- you did that on purpose! You...” Elise trailed off into a frustrated sound and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet once Anne stood up.

She glared at the woman, glanced at the door, then shook her head.

“We should check out the rest of the place,” she said irritably, putting her pistol forwards and taking the lead.

They advanced cautiously. Other than continuing attempts of the pirates to futilely break their way through the reinforced door, any sounds from the outside world were stopped by the militia blockhouse’s thick, windowless concrete walls. Every careful footstep sounded deafening to Elise’s straining ears and the unusual silence stretched her last nerve to breaking point.

Exiting from a short corridor, they came to a small mess room, its low table and kitchenette scattered with discarded crockery and half-eaten meals. A gentle touch of a mug told Elise it was still warm, likely left behind by the duty militiamen when the attack started. Even if everyone had scrambled to defend the town there should have still be someone left behind, not to mention any civilians taking shelter. She knew Abe Sandoval worked on the militia’s ‘Mechs as well as the Industrials but he was nowhere to be seen.

Three corridors led from the mess: barracks, armoury, and hangar. A quick look in the first, with its three double bunks and rusting lockers, was similarly abandoned. By this time the racket from the entrance had stopped, worrying Elise even more. The pirates wouldn’t have abandoned their efforts to get in so easily, which meant they were figuring out a different – probably more explosive – way to break in.

“What now?” Anne asked. In the harsh overhead lights, Elise could see how tired she was, which must have been mirrored in her own face. The nurse’s dark blue uniform was stained with dirt and a splatter of what might have been blood, though she did not look obviously injured. Grey rings hung below eyes the colour of a clear sky and her blonde hair was a tangled mess, not that she seemed to care in the moment.

“Not a clue…” Elise admitted, sitting heavily on one of the lower bunks.

“Great.”

“Best I’ve got, other than sit tight, is to head to the hangar and look for a truck or groundcar or whatever, make a break for it.”

Anne looked incredulous. “Yeah and go where?”

“I don’t know!” Elise admitted. “Head out to Arrow Town and get help, maybe? Just so long as we get away from this awful place!”

Anne opened her mouth to speak but was cut off by a crunching impact that shook the whole building, followed by another a few seconds later.

“What in god’s name is that?” she demanded.

Elise knew exactly what it was, she’d been on the other side of this enough times.

“’Mech!” she shouted over the next impact of a titanic foot trying to kick down the door. “We need to move! Now!”

They made it back to the mess when a final crunch was followed by an echoing clang and triumphant, mask-muffled cries.

“Go go go go go!” hissed Elise, leading the way down the hangar corridor. They had run out of time, she knew they needed to just grab whatever was there and make their escape. Any other option was certain death.

Even so, when they emerged into the vast open space of the hangar, she couldn’t help but stop when she saw what was there.

Stood in its gantry, silent and patient like the statue of a long-dead hero, was the waiting form of a BattleMech.

“Ah… Fuck…” she swore.