NORTH-WEST OF TIBSHELF
BLUE MOUNTAINS
GILLINGHAM
FEDERATED SUNS
07:17, 15 May 3044
The tent erupted into focussed mayhem as five people burst into action at the same moment.
“Elise, take command!” Walters barked, their attention needed in the undercrewed Manticore.
The woman paused, jaw tight, and nodded shortly. There was a hard set to her eyes.
Monty noticed the worried glance Anne gave her but that was all the concern they would have time for.
“Heavies screen the Sherpas, Ronnie with me to strike and flank,” Elise snapped before disappearing out into the chaos.
Monty nodded, feeling self-conscious about the delay in getting his aged body out of that perishingly comfortable camp chair.
You see, Montgomery Goodwin was an old man. His knees hurt most days, his back hurt every day, and often it was a struggle to get going in the morning. He had already lived a life that had wrung him out and left him alone in an empty house, waiting for a death that crept closer and closer with every passing season.
Now, however, when he faced down death on a daily basis, he had never felt so alive. He was more energised than he had been since his fifties, more active than he had been since his thirties, and he was filled with a purpose he hadn’t ever thought he would find. He grasped the feeling and let it galvanise him into action, pushing away the pain and fatigue to build the momentum of his creaking bones into a respectable jog.
Engines roared as the defenders’ stolen technicals buzzed around, their passengers occasionally firing looted manpack SRMs or futile bursts of machine gun fire to draw the attention of whatever was crashing through the distant trees.
Walters was already in the tank despite their false leg and Ronnie was in her cockpit, both of them advantaged by being younger and having less vertical distance to travel. For Monty, having the tallest BattleMech of the lot meant a punishing climb up to Maximus’ off-centre cockpit, every aching rung of the rope ladder murder on his knees.
There was a whine as a fusion engine powered up from idle, followed by a rattle of tracks as the Manticore placed itself side-on between the Sherpas and the sound of fighting, its pitted armour a bold statement, the muzzle of its turret turret pointed menacingly in the direction of the enemy.
A roar from Monty’s left and Elise’s Clint shot off into the air, nearly blowing the command tent over with its backwash.
He had been in chaotic situations before. Hell, he’d helped to raise four children. But nothing compared to the din of a battlefield. Noises competing to be the loudest. Close. Distant. Overlapping. Overwhelming. And the smells, the stink of burned petrochemicals, the tang of gunsmoke in the crisp mountain air, of aged sweat in the cockpit… It was not what you would call pleasant but there was certainly nothing else like it.
The cold wind was cutting through him as he heaved himself up the last few rungs onto Maximus’ hunched shoulders, leaving the ladder where it was rather than waste precious seconds winding it back in. He was soon in the Thunderbolt’s cockpit, divesting of his clothes as he went, almost tripping over his trousers on his way to the command chair.
Abe and his techs kept the vehicles unlocked at all times, ready for an emergency start like this, and Monty could hear the comms chatter through his antique neurohelmet even before he lowered it over his head.
“— clear, I repeat, infantry get clear!” he heard Elise bark. “Ronnie, tag those damn targets!”
When put in a command role, the slightly nervous woman he had met all those weeks ago was transformed into someone else entirely. She was sharper, colder, and even her acquired Outback twang dropped away entirely to a clipped, received accent straight out the high halls of any 2800s period drama. This other woman was efficient, competent, and Monty wasn’t sure he liked her.
But he would damn well follow her nonetheless.
“Bottle it before it jumps, don’t let it go!” Elise snapped. “Shit! Heavies prepare for incoming!”
Jacket on, strapped in, he had pushed his engine to life and was just about to grip the throttle when it felt like he got hit in the body by a sledgehammer. Warning lights flashed in his vision, his ears rang, and his stomach lurched precariously as Maximus toppled backwards, landing on its back with a jolt that sent pain shooting up Monty’s spine.
He groaned, trying to shake himself back into the present and figure out a way to get back on his feet — a downed ‘Mech was a dead ‘Mech. Very much like he had to when he took a tumble in the flesh, he rolled Maximus’ shoulders to the side in an effort to get on his front where the arms and legs could get better leverage.
It was this movement that saved his life when fifty tonnes of machine landed right where his head would have been, the impact rattling his bones.
Even as far as those pirates went, it was a mean-looking bastard. The familiar lines of an Enforcer were blurred by extra armour and vicious spikes, its visor was obscured by plates in the form of a grinning, daemon-faced skull, and the left arm — normally tipped by the hardened lens of a large laser — ended in a wicked claw that even now swept downwards in a raking arc.
Acting in panic, Monty triggered his torso weapons, three lasers and a pair of missiles enough to throw off the monster’s aim, causing the temperature in Maximus’ cockpit to jump from cool to tropical and the claw to drag furrows in the mountainside that a person could have stood in.
Monty lashed out with his fist arm, the Enforcer swaying like a boxer to keep out of reach, and while Maximus’ metal fingers were scant metres too short to reach the pirate FrankenMech, the enemy pilot made a small error of judgement by allowing him to close his fist and fire.
His heat jumped even further as stuttering red lines stitched across his opponent. Where a basic Thunderbolt would have machine guns, his 5LS had small pulse lasers. The advanced technology had been extinct for nearly a century and was extremely potent in a knife fight like this.
A ragged, glowing scar was cut across the pirate’s face and chest, causing it to reel in simulated pain and surprise, then once again a second later when the impact of a deadly precise autocannon shot blew plates from its melee arm, showering Monty with shrapnel. It spun to face the new threat, sent off a crashing round from its higher-calibre cannon, then jumped away to intercept its newest assailant.
“You alright in there, Monty?” Elise’s voice crackled over comms. She sounded distracted, tense, the feed undercut by the telltale rumble of firing jumpjets. Without her focus, she sounded almost concerned.
“She’ll be right,” Monty panted, taking the opportunity to roll onto his side, then front, each jolt causing him to grimace in pain.
“Then get in the fight,” Elise ordered, any hint of warmth gone. “Catch up with the Sherpas, give us that fire support!”
“And what have I been bloody well doing…?” he muttered under his breath, pushing Maximus to its feet and taking stock of the situation.
The mountainside was in chaos, scarred and shrouded in drifting tendrils of smoke. Trees were shattered, rocks broken, and the command tent now little more than strips of tattered fabric.
Walters was acting as rolling cover for the retreating vehicles, exchanging long-range fire with the modified Crusader Monty had seen the night he met the others, while Elise and Ronnie tied up the rest of the lance. They flitted and darted among the Enforcer and the ‘Mechs identified by Maximus’ computer as a WSP-1K and a VL-5T.
The last one in particular was being a terror. As manoeuvrable as the Clint, this Vulcan variant bore enough medium lasers to cripple most ‘Mechs and the speed to bring them to bear. It was working with the Enforcer to try and trap Elise, not quite managing it but doing a good job of forcing her on the defensive, stopping her from joining the fight in earnest and utilising that autocannon of hers with her usual accuracy. Meanwhile, the Wasp and Ronnie were playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse, moving through the trees at breakneck speeds, not quite catching each other.
Monty levelled his large laser, its target reticule hovering briefly over the Enforcer, and he had already made the decision to go for an easier target when Elise instructed, “Monty, go for the cee-ar-dee!”
“Doing it, doing it…” he muttered, backpedalling so he didn’t get fully left behind by the things he was trying to protect. The Crusader was moving slowly, using the trees for cover and its superior range to lob missiles at the fleeing vehicles, Walters’ Manticore doing their best to keep it at bay with their PPC.
Monty’s large laser was the extended range version, another advanced weapon on his heirloom of a BattleMech, one that could almost match the distance of the long range missiles. His own launcher remained cold, down past half of its ammo capacity thanks to the other night’s adventure. Naturally, the techs had prioritised rearming the Clint over the vehicles with energy-based primary weapons. Without a maintenance gantry, it had been a time-consuming process, all twenty of the heavy shells needing to be winched up and loaded one at a time.
He targeted the Crusader, tried to lead the target like he had been taught, then… he depressed the firing stud.
***
A searing blue beam passed through Elise’s field of vision, cutting a charred path through the trees and missing its intended target by scant metres. Monty was getting better at his gunnery but still had room to improve. Not that she was able to chide him for it right now.
She was on the edge of another panic attack.
Just being in the cockpit was bad enough on the best of days, a physical reminder of her past, a perpetual trigger for bad memories of bad feelings. She felt constantly on edge, worse than the regular hypervigilance of combat, her heart racing and her breath hissing through clenched teeth, her body drenched in sweat that had little to do with the heat filling her cockpit. What’s more, her leg was in agony, an inescapable reminder of that time in the not-enough-distant past when everything came undone.
Despite all of this, she knew that Walters putting her in command was a sensible decision — she had the experience after all — but the association with her own failings, with the people she had failed, was too much for her.
All she could do was push it down, to be her father’s perfect daughter and desperately keep a lid on it lest she fail these people too. Her wide eyes flitted from target to target to the Sherpas then back round again. There were plenty enough distractions to prevent her tipping right over the edge, though it was going to be a close-run thing.
“Ronnie, bring it round before you leave the AOR!”
Jump.
Shit, shit, shit—
“Heavies, stagger your shots, keep it on the back foot!”
Dodge the Enforcer’s claw, sidestep to keep it between her and the 5T. A beast like that could break her in an instant, blown away in a single flash of emerald. That being said, in her current state a single hit from it — either of its arms — would be enough to lose a limb or ruin her internals. She needed to keep them distracted long enough for A— for the transports to get away. She just needed to keep moving.
Fuck!
Dodge. Jump. A tentative jab at the Enforcer’s damaged head. Warning lights as a small laser burned an angry line across her chest. Every jolt, jump, and sudden movement shook her against her restraints, straining against already tense muscles, pushing at bruises in a torturous embrace.
Arsing bastarding—
“Heavies use your missiles! Damn the ammo, bring it down!”
A narrow miss as the heavy shell of an AC/10 passed by her head, close enough to hear the whistle.
“Fuck!” she barked, then cursed the momentary loss of control.
The Vulcan was a half-decent pilot, at least as far as the pirates went, but the one in the Enforcer was on a whole different level. They moved with the fluidity and reaction time of a true veteran, and it was only their obsession with getting in close that stopped her from being boxed in and overwhelmed by her two opponents. It took every bit of skill she had just to avoid being hit, only allowing herself the occasional snapshot with her lasers when the chance arose, doing little more than score glancing shots across the Enforcer’s thick armour.
Triggering her jump jets to avoid another devastating burst of light from the 5T, Elise knew she needed to even the odds and quickly. She had gone into this fight less than her best and with every passing second the fatigue just drew in closer and the pain grew worse, muddying her reflexes more and more until she made a fatal mistake.
Risking a glance at her computer, her heart skipped a beat when she saw the Sherpas had passed out of the operational range of the Crusader’s missiles, Monty and Walters holding position to exchange pot shots at long range, neither side to especially great effect. Ronnie was still leading the Wasp in literal circles as it chased her around an outcropping.
“Heavies, move up, hit the Vulcan with an alpha, middle bracket!”
“But won’t that—,” Monty began to argue.
“Just do it!” she roared, her entire frame jerking sideways when the Enforcer clawed plates off her right arm.
She wished she had her old Victor, or really anything heavier than a god damn Clint, something that could weather the storm and deal it out in kind. Every inch of her wireframe was red and her lifespan could be measured in a matter of minutes or even seconds.
Still, she moved, jumping laterally to put some distance between her and the Enforcer, deliberately ignoring her levels of reaction material, watching as it ran to keep up and snapped off another wasteful shot, while the 5T went at an angle to try and flank her. The others were moving up and the Crusader took pot-shots with its LRM5s, the 15s on its wrists now dried up.
She kept an eye on it.
Monty and Walters had hit range on their medium bracket weapons, filling the space near to Elise with a deluge of rippling explosions and scorching energy that tore apart trees, obliterated topsoil, and pulverised rock. They were being over cautious, like she knew they would, their shots landing wide in an effort to not hit her.
But it had the desired effect. In a panic, the 5T withdrew, jumping back beyond the cover of the nearest trees, and even the Enforcer gave her a little more space rather than risk a bad hit. The Crusader, however, with its armour mostly intact, squared it’s shoulders and broke out into a run towards her, through the space now clear of trees. Even if it likely wouldn’t catch her with those great fists, its medium lasers could still cause issues.
“Hit the heavy, damn the heat!” she bellowed, trusting in the Clint’s systems and delivering a snapshot from her autocannon that shattered the distinctive “horn” on top of the Crusader’s head. It flinched when hit then faltered when the storm began anew, now with it at the centre. One arm raised to protect its head, it began a shamed withdrawal back out of sight of its two opponents, until a dual strike from sun-hot laser and shell of charged particles ripped muscle and snapped bone, sending that arm tumbling to the ground.
Elise barked with feral, humourless glee as the Crusader began to frantically disengage, even while the Enforcer pressed its attack on her, the 5T desperately trying to rejoin it on the offensive. She jumped to evade and warnings flashed as it burned her legs to its internals but she pressed her attack, cracking one of those lasers with her AC/5 before turning her full attention back to the Enforcer.
It swiped at her and she ducked, she punched and it dodged, she fired her lasers and it took half the hit just to rake open her chest. She ignored the klaxons, pushed through the lights, and grit her teeth so hard it hurt her jaw, when she — the claws still in her — drove a fist into the Enforcer’s face with enough force for the damaged daemon mask to buckle inwards and crack its visor.
The ‘Mech reeled, its pilot losing control on the rough ground and falling backwards. She wanted to press the attack. She wanted to burn its chest to nothing or pound its cockpit to a tangle of red wreckage, but she couldn’t. The Vulcan was already moving to support its downed comrade and her Clint was in no state to endure anything for very much longer.
So she ran. Under the cover of her heavies she withdrew as fast as she could, ordering her lance to do the same, trading a couple of long-range snapshots with her opponents to hopefully dissuade them from following; and even though the Enforcer had regained its feet, it followed its heavier lance-mate in backing off. A sensible decision when a well-thrown rock could breach your cockpit.
Even the Wasp cut off its persistent, futile, pursuit of Ronnie when called. The girl fired a single, mocking shot from her laser before swiftly catching up with the rest of the defenders.
They had done it. They had protected the unit and driven off the attackers with no casualties. They had gone against greater odds and somehow prevailed. By all accounts it was a victory.
So why did Elise feel like such a failure?
Nice fight scene! It holds the tension pretty well, though I would've liked to see more out of Monty, especially since he had his own scene earlier.
This may be a minor comment, but you may need to find a different word to refer to the Thunderbolt and the Manticore. Elise refers to both her own units and the Crusader as Heavies. Which they are, I understand, but it can get confusing.
Monty gets his moment in a later chapter, don't worry! :p
Oh yeah for sure, I think I abandoned that line of thinking later on.