BOLSOVER VALLEY

BLUE MOUNTAINS

GILLINGHAM

FEDERATED SUNS

01:25, 18 April 3044

Another round passed by, shattering a rock to Elise’s left, forcing her to push the Clint into another spiralling jump. Every time she performed the manoeuvre it allowed her pursuers to gain more ground, her air speed slower than what they could run, but it gave the twofold boon of presenting her thicker armour to the enemy and bringing her weapons to bear.

It had been a frustrating game of cat and mouse, weaving through the darkened, rocky landscape, both the hunters and the hunted too nimble to get a proper bead on each other, marring the previously-pristine countryside with shells, lasers, and missiles. The Wasp had gotten a couple of lucky hits on Elise closer to the ambient light of the burning town, pushing her centre torso down to the red, and she had been focusing too much on the Hermes, slowed by the rocky terrain, to pay it too much attention. The bigger ‘Mech was the bigger threat – as was usually the case – and she wanted to bring it down sooner rather than later.

Such had been the situation for the last few minutes, an insignificant amount of time stretched excruciatingly long by the hyper-aware state of a combat situation and the punishing effects that extended adrenaline could have on the body. Progress had been frustratingly slow, too, the situation and her skill – degraded from years out of combat – only allowing her to land a few hits on the other ‘Mech, none of which were enough to breach. In the back, Anne had gone completely quiet, hanging on for dear life and occasionally letting out a small whimper when the Clint jerked or rattled unexpectedly.

Elise grimaced when then latest alpha strike went wide, blinking the sweat from her eyes, and turned back around to hit the ground running. The first couple of times she had done this nearly ended in disaster when the gyro’s insufficiencies almost overwhelmed her sense of balance but she felt she was getting the hang of compensating now.

Even so, she needed to change her tactic. Eventually they would catch up or land a lucky hit or she would hit a rock at the wrong angle, then it would be all over. She’d had a vague idea of making a break for the nearest forest, partway up the mountain, then heading out to Arrow Town under cover and getting help. The regional capital there had a company of combat vehicles as a garrison that might be able to make a difference by sheer weight of numbers.

If nothing else, it would give her a safe place to throw up in. It would give Anne somewhere safe to hide too, if it came to it.

She grimaced. Trying to play at skirmishing wasn’t working, nor was running, so it was time to do what she did best: pigheadedly charge into combat and hope it worked out.

Her jump jets cycled and she fired them again, angling her torso so the backward thrust arrested her motion with an abruptness that slammed her against the restraints. Her HUD noted the Wasp overshoot, not expecting the move, though she knew it would come back around soon enough. That was a problem for later, however... there was a bigger thing to deal with.

Turning in the air, she bore down on the Hermes, jaw clenched as its autocannon fired and a sun-bright laser drew a line through the air, passing her by on the mad rush in. She did the same, her AC/5 and a laser splitting the ground at the other ‘Mech’s feet, her second one flensing armour from its right leg.

Fire washed over her as she landed, the pirate trying to panic her into backing off, hoping the blast from its flamer would make her cautious about overheating. The Clint blazed like a pyre in the night but Elise pushed through it, firing her lasers again despite how the air in the cockpit began to feel heavy, each breath sucking the moisture from her mouth and lungs. She closed to melee range, rolling with the punch that connected with her right arm, then delivered a swift kick to the Hermes’ damaged leg.

The ‘Mech staggered as its armour was smashed to nothingness, the pilot overcompensating and toppling the ‘Mech onto its other side. Whoever they were, they were half decent at the job, managing to get their machine upright again just in time for her to repeat the attack, taking the blow on their less-damaged leg and resuming the onslaught of flame.

Sweat was running down Elise’s face but she refused to back down, dimly wondering what the Wasp was up to as she moved with the damaged Hermes, stopping it from putting distance between them. She fired her lasers again, despite what they did to her heat levels, despite how they made her movements – and her ‘Mech’s – sluggish and fatigued. Even as heat warnings flashed on her HUD, she saw the breach caused by her shot and followed up with yet another kick, this time the blow breaking the metal bone of the Hermes’ shin with a SNAP audible even over the din of fighting machines.

The Hermes toppled for a second time and lay still, no sign of the pilot attempting to make a shot from the ground. Elise was about to poke it with her foot when a pair of missiles impacted nearby, the Wasp making its presence known. It must have a more inexperienced pilot, uncertain about firing into the brawl and risking hitting its comrade, an admirable notion but one that forced it to sit on the sidelines as she crippled their comrade.

Elise turned and fired an alpha strike at the offending Bug ‘Mech, the cockpit nevertheless cooling by increments now she was not literally set ablaze. It was flitting about like its namesake, making a hard to hit nuisance of itself, but one of her lasers nevertheless struck the left side of its torso, creating a jagged wound through the relatively light armour.

She throttled up and began moving again, making herself harder to hit, refraining from jumping to make a more stable platform for the next time she fired. Even so, everything still missed and Elise swore, noting her ammo bin was down to half capacity. The Wasp’s own attack passef her by, too preoccupied with evading to aim, and Elise stopped, taking the risk of being a stationary target in exchange for just a little bit more accuracy. For her to be free, that thing needed to go down.

“Come on, come on…” she muttered, watching her reticles lead the outlined shape of the Wasp as it jumped through the mountain night.

Now.

Her lasers hit first, purely by virtue of moving at the speed of light, cutting away the Wasp’s left arm to a glowing stump and boring a molten crater into its chest just in time for a shell from the AC/5 to take it right in the cockpit. The jets sputtered and died, the now-directionless Wasp falling to earth like a rag doll, hitting the rocky ground with an impact that Elise felt through the soles of her titanic feet.

She hadn’t meant to kill the pilot. Sometimes those things just happened. Sometimes they happened to you. That was war and only survival made it right or wrong.

Another of her father’s lessons.

A bright line stabbed past her and Elise’s attention was brought back to the Hermes II. It was sat up now and looked a mess, barely a square metre of armour on the front of the thing not damaged in some way. She planted her feet, lined up her shot and was ready to pull the triggers when, with a flash of light and a puff of smoke, the top of its head blew away and the pilot shot into the starless sky.

Elise watched them go until they disappeared out of sight, sagging in her chair as she allowed most of the tension to be released. Her head was pounding and she was desperate for a glass of water – or a cold beer, anything really.

“Fucking hell…” Anne groaned.

So caught up in the moment, Elise had forgotten the nurse was behind her, the sudden noise causing such a strong feeling of surprise that the neurohelmet picked it up, the entire ‘Mech flinching with her.

“Bloody god damn it!” Elise snapped, sitting back and closing her eyes for a brief moment until her heart stopped racing. She couldn’t look behind her, the bulky headgear being too restrictive, so she had no idea what kind of state her passenger was in. “You alright?” she asked a bit more gently.

“Yeah… nah…” Anne replied hoarsely. “This is… not what I would call fun… “

Elise didn’t trust herself to agree so she kept quiet.

“You okay?” the nurse returned.

“No,” Elise bluntly replied before she could stop herself.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No… We need to keep moving. God knows what else we’ll have to deal with by time we reach Arrow Town.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage,” Anne replied drily. There was almost a hint of accusation in her voice and Elise didn’t blame her, she had been pulling out all her training just to keep them alive and she didn’t doubt even a civilian would recognise she wasn’t just an IndustrialMech operator. So, not daring to respond, she throttled up to walking speed and headed in the direction of Arrow Town.

HIGHWAY 42

BLUE MOUNTAINS

GILLINGHAM

FEDERATED SUNS

01:54, 18 April 3044

They had found the road before they found the forest and decided to follow it out east, Elise keeping a paranoid eye on the directional scanners for any sign of pursuit, taking advantage of the flat surface to avoid any of the natural obstacles that littered the slopes of the wide valley. Despite being a major connection in the region, Highway 42 was only two lanes across and completely unlit. Most of the domestic cargo came into Tibshelf via air, and that which couldn’t went via the infrequent trains. Roads were necessary but just too inefficient when compared to the vast distances between settlements on a sparse backwater like this.

Given space to stretch its legs, the Clint settled into a pleasant, ambling rhythm, the rocking of the cockpit an unexpectedly soothing experience. At more than one point during the long walk, Elise had thought Anne was asleep, only for the nurse to speak up as if she couldn’t bear the silence.

“Remind me again what the plan is,” she said on her latest attempt to break it.

“Like I said last time: go to Arrow Town, get help.”

“Yeah, but what then? You think the militia will like you wandering up in a ‘Mech you technically stole?”

Elise scowled. “I remember this being your idea.”

“Hmm, I suppose,” Anne conceded. “I’ll make sure to visit you in prison.”

Despite herself, Elise laughed.

“They’ll arrest you too, you know,” she pointed out.

“Me? No, of course not,” Anne argued with manufactured innocence. “Just swept along by the drama of everything, officer, I feared for my life!” She snorted. “Besides, they respect nurses out here, so they won’t want to lose me.”

Elise scoffed but knew the woman was right. Despite the massive deficit in education and wealth compared to the rest of the Federated Suns, many Outback planets like Gillingham nevertheless managed to maintain a robust and widespread, if comparatively basic, healthcare program. You wouldn’t find the latest treatments or advanced bionics, but most ailments could be managed and the rough nature of frontier life meant even people with basic first aid training could stabilise a patient like a battlefield medic.

“True,” Elise agreed. “I don’t even have a job any more…”

Or a former place of work… or a home… or any friends… Her face fell and the clouds began to set in. Everything she had worked so hard to build here, gone in a single night. Not even that: she had barely been awake over an hour.

It was far too easy to destroy things and far too difficult to rebuild. If the town ever would.

She had nothing left except a ‘Mech she stole, the clothes she had come in, and a passenger she wasn’t even sure she liked.

Prison might be the best option. She no longer had the resources to keep running.

They fell into silence again, only the whir and stomp of the ‘Mech on the road to keep it from being complete.

Elise was struggling to keep focus, her mind slipping away into the uncertain future, everything clouding behind a miasma of fatigue. She slowed from a walk to a slow plod, then from that to nothing, squinting out through the cockpit viewport with the aid of her targeting system’s magnifier. There was definitely a faint glow up ahead, unmoving as far as she could tell and below the silhouetted line of the distant horizon.

“What is it?” Anne asked. From the sound of it, she was trying to crane her neck around to get a better look.

“Not sure, going to get a little closer.”

Elise moved the Clint off the road on the right hand side, heading forwards at an angle until she was back amongst the rocks and a few sparse trees. The forest began in earnest on the other side, a tall old-growth expanse that spread up the slopes of the nearby mountains for kilometres in every direction, dark and brooding. She made sure she kept an eye on it as she closed.

Moving to within a hundred metres, Elise could see there were several points of orange light strung along the road and when she hit the fifty mark, she could see they were flickering in some kind of shells. She stopped moving at looked carefully, her eyes resolving the shapes of tracks and turrets and the angles of armoured vehicles.

With a sinking feeling, she moved the Clint closer, beginning to recognise the shapes of Vedettes, Scorpions, a couple of Hetzers, and what might have been a Bulldog if it hadn’t been a tangled wreckage.

“Is that what I think it is…?” Anne asked quietly.

Elise nodded, the movement restricted by her heavy helmet. “I think we found our reinforcements…”

“But… what are they doing here?”

“How should I know?” Elise shrugged, wishing the Clint was fitted with a searchlight. “Best guess is someone got the call out before comms were cut off and they were ambushed on the way in.”

Considering how far out they were, and how far Arrow Town was from Tibshelf, there was another option Elise didn’t want to voice. It was possible they were warned before the main attack even started then lured into a trap near the cover of the treeline. Whatever had hit them had enough firepower to wreck a company of vehicles before they even had a chance to get off the road.

She found herself looking under the black eaves again.

“I think we should-,” Elise began to say, suddenly interrupted by a crackling of the short-ranged comms.

“Militia Clint, identify yourself,” spoke a voice. She could not tell the gender but they sounded young, filled with an unexpected snap of authority that fired the neurons in her brain wired for responding to that kind of thing.

“Elise Durand-Géroux, 2nd Fe-, uh, MechWarrior,” she replied before she could stop herself, cursing the slip of the tongue. She reasoned that anyone with the militia frequency ought to be friendly. Ought to be. “With whom am I speaking?”

“Captain Jamie Walters, Gillingham Militia, Arrow Town vehicle company,” the voice replied, causing Elise to look up and down the destroyed column again. “Your BattleMech is registered to a Corporal Colby Fitzpatrick, which I’m sure you are aware sounds different to Ellie Durran-Jerroo.”

Elise bit back a pithy remark. She knew Colby Fitzpatrick in passing. Nice guy, though liked to be at Gem’s a little too much, even when he was supposed to be on duty. If he was in his usual spot at the bar when… when it all happened then it would explain why he hadn’t been able to join the fight.

“Corporal Fitzpatrick went MIA while dismounted and his BattleMech needed a pilot, so I stepped in to defend the town,” Elise explained.

“A town which is thirty clicks back the way you came,” Walters replied sternly. “How do I know you aren’t one of the pirates or worse, a base looter trying make off with your spoils? Why shouldn’t I just arrest you now?”

“Told you,” Anne whispered.

Elise clenched her jaw, just about ready to fight whatever stupid little vehicle the Captain was hiding in, able to keep herself in check long enough to maintain diplomacy.

“They have at least two lances on the field, including one confirmed assault-weight unit,” she explained tightly. “I witnessed the deaths of at least half the militia forces there and have to presume this ‘Mech is the last standing. We were on our way to Arrow Town to get help.”

“Sorry that didn’t work out for you,” Walters said bitterly and Elise realised they must have lost their entire command in one go. She could empathise. “You have anything to corroborate that story?”

“Got the BattleROM logs and a passenger,” Elise replied simply.

“Passenger?”

“Uh, hello, can you hear me?” Anne spoke up.

“Yes I can hear you, who is this?”

“Nurse Lyons, Greater Bolsover Valley District; everything Elise told you was correct,” she explained. “She helped me out in an altercation with the pirates and we made our escape together when the full extent of things became known.”

There was a pause before Walters replied again.

“Very well,” they said. “You can keep control of the ‘Mech on condition you are deputised into the militia, which means you have to follow my orders, understand?”

A part of Elise’s mind rebelled against the idea of a command chain, another just wanting to leave the Clint, run to Arrow Town and never look back.

And yet… She stayed. There was a greater part she told herself was duty and desire to help the town, but she knew it was that need for power and control manifested in the form of a BattleMech.

Either way, Elise was truly in it now.

“Your orders… sir?” she asked.

“‘Captain’ is fine,” Walters replied. “Form up with me, we’re going to try and asses the situation, see if we can find any survivors.”

“Wher-” Elise began to ask when her HUD pinged, marking the thermal bloom of a high-rated fusion engine pushing to full burn from a cold start, accompanied by the activation of a militia IFF signature. Tracks crunched through the undergrowth as a wide shape covered in weapons and thick with armour plates rumbled out of the treeline and into the faint light cast by the nearest of the smouldering wrecks.

Even without the help of her ‘Mech’s systems, Elise would have recognised it instantly, and her earlier thought about taking it in a fight fell far short of the mark.

At sixty tonnes, boasting enough firepower to cripple her ‘Mech in one go, it was a Manticore heavy tank.