TEXT: BATTLECORPS
  TRIAL UNDER FIRE
  Chapter 10 
  Circle of Equals
  by Loren L. Coleman
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Trial Under Fire • Page 2
  We’ll come out of the elevator here, at this north-
  west corner just behind the shuttle pad. That might 
  buy as a moment to organize, but we can’t hang back 
  too long. Given the usual Clanner conceit, Corbett and 
  his warriors will likely wait for us in the center of 
  the caldera.
  We need to move the ﬁght away from the shuttle—if 
  it’s damaged, we’re stuck on Tranquil. 
  Over to you, Lieutenant:
  …No mistake, this is a tough one. Galaxy commander 
  Corbett is commanding an elite team ﬁtted with the 
  best equipment the Jaguars possess. Our one lucky 
  break is that he lost one of his warriors against the 
  rescue company, so he’s down to four ’Mechs instead of 
  the usual Clan Star of ﬁve. He’s dangling the shuttle 
  in front of us for bait. He knows we need it. And we’ll 
  have to go through him to get it.
  Who isn’t ready?
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Trial Under Fire • Page 3
  Durghan City 
  Tranquil, Clan Homeworlds 
  6 May 3060
  First off the elevator, his Sunder’s superior armor ready to shield 
  the rest of the commando, Allen Mattila picked up the first read-
  ings. “Got them. Right out in the middle and waiting for us.”
  The shuttle screened visual sighting, but scanners fed the infor-
  mation to Connor’s HUD fast enough. A Daishi, flanked by a Mad 
  Cat, Cauldron-Born and one of the lethal Supernovas. Three hun-
  dred thirty tons of war machines commanded by Smoke Jaguar 
  elite. They stood a silent vigil in the center of the caldera, spaced 
  far enough apart to give each other plenty of room to maneuver 
  as needed.
  He swallowed dryly against a metallic taste. Dialed for his most 
  confident voice. “By pairs,” he ordered, “around the shuttle be-
  fore the Jaguars come through it to get at us.” 
  Already Thomas Sorenson was leading the field base crews 
  forward to take and inspect the shuttle. The vehicles would be 
  abandoned here. 
  There would be no time for battlefield repairs anyway.
  Throttling up into a fast walk, 
  he and Epona splitting off 
  around the right side of the 
  shuttle and landing pad. Clear 
  of the stubby wing, they 
  edged up into a run. The oth-
  er side of the pad, Dominic’s 
  Thor followed in the 
  shadow of the Sunder. 
  Dominic 
  had 
  cho-
  sen to go back to the 
  OmniMech vice keep 
  the Annihilator. Allen and Epona had 
  considered taking the assault ’Mech, 
  but in the end everyone stayed with 
  what they were most comfortable. 
  As they ran onto the field of 
  battle, the ’Mechs separated 
  until each one ran straight 
  for an enemy.
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Trial Under Fire • Page 4
  “No mercy!” Corbett ordered, transmitting on an open frequency 
  so that his enemy could hear. “Crush them!”
  “Aff, Galaxy commander,” someone answered.
  The first exchange of weapons fire lit the caldera in a wash of 
  gem-colored light and the sparks of autocannon tracers. A few 
  PPCs added to the energy display, snaking blue-white tracks 
  across the open ground to runnel armor to the ground in impotent 
  splatters. Missiles arced overhead on gray contrails, falling in a le-
  thal rain. Epona had squared off against the Cauldron-Born while 
  Allen chose to match his Sunder against the Supernova. Dominic 
  challenged the enemy Mad Cat, while Connor traded weapons fire 
  with Corbett himself. 
  The Daishi was configured for dueling, sporting four large la-
  sers, a pair of light autocannon and a medium-weight LRM rack. 
  Starting in the median range for his weapons, Corbett hit with bet-
  ter than half of his offensive power. Connor’s Mad Cat bled armor 
  from its chest and arms, and the gyro swung out of balance under 
  the savage onslaught. 
  Fighting his controls, trying to force the crosshairs to remain 
  centered over the assault Omni, Connor brought the Mad Cat back 
  under control and then triggered off his response.
  With any luck, he managed to surprise the Galaxy commander. 
  Sorenson’s techs had managed to customize the Mad Cat, giving 
  Connor the best weapons of two different configurations. His right 
  arm held a pair of extended-range large lasers, while his left the 
  deadly punching power of a Gauss rifle. Streak SRMs rode over 
  each shoulder, sharing a single load of ammunition. It gave him an 
  optimal heat curve, able to hit at range or trade one laser up close 
  for his missiles without risking an overheating condition. 
  Now both lasers speared into the Daishi’s left side, carving 
  away armor and dropping large sections of protective plating to 
  the ground. His Gauss rifle slammed a nickel-ferrous slug into the 
  OmniMech’s gut. A mist of gray-green fluid geysered out as the 
  impact cracked through a flaw and ruptured the Daishi’s center-
  line heat sink. It would make Corbett’s furious assault that much 
  more costly in terms of heat buildup. 
  He smiled grimly as he watched the Daishi’s thermal image blos-
  som a red flower at the heart of a yellow outline. 
  “Draw in,” he ordered, lining up for his next shots. 
  
  BATTLECORPS
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  On his flanks, the warriors of his commando angled in to bring the 
  lance slowly back together. They held to their own targets, how-
  ever, keeping to the single combat which Clan warriors preferred 
  above all else. Both sides were hitting—and being hit—hard. 
  Another furious exchange, and several ’Mechs stumbled but none 
  fell. There would be no obvious mistakes made today. Corbett’s 
  warriors were the elite product of breeding cycles and a lifetime 
  of fighting their way to the top. Connor’s people had learned the 
  ropes on Huntress and Tranquil, fighting for their lives, but the 
  Damocles Commando still held one advantage, which he played 
  now to devastating effect.
  They worked together, as a team.
  “Now!” he shouted, the adrenaline giving extra strength to his 
  voice. 
  On the far left, Dominic turned and ran a sharp angle in against 
  Allen’s opponent, the Supernova. Epona tried that on the far right, 
  though ended up cut off by the Cauldron-Born. Connor simply 
  throttled back, twisted his Mad Cat at the waist, and dropped 
  crosshairs over the Supernova. 
  Though Epona was forced to stay engaged against her previous 
  opponent, the firepower of three OmniMechs managed to con-
  verge on the Supernova. With its ability to provide overwhelming 
  firepower, Connor had judged it the ’Mech likely to cripple one of 
  his warriors early on in the fight. He wanted it destroyed.
  He was granted his wish.
  Dominic’s assault-class autocannon tore through the already-
  damaged right arm, raking fire into two of the large lasers and 
  cutting the Supernova’s effectiveness down to sixty-odd percent. 
  The Thor’s large laser combined with one of Connor’s to splash 
  away armor from over the enemy ’Mech’s chest, while his follow-
  up Gauss slug delivered a hard blow to its left leg stripping it of 
  protection. 
  Allen’s Sunder hammered home a Gauss slug right behind 
  Connor’s, the impact wrenching the leg away at the hip joint. The 
  Sunder’s PPC had aimed arrow-straight for the Supernova’s head, 
  but the loss of the leg twisted it about so that instead the energy 
  cannon finished cutting away the damaged right arm instead. 
  Minus a leg, the Supernova had no hope of remaining on its feet 
  after so savage an assault. It fell in a near-graceful pirouette, slam-
  ming into the rocky ground with enough force to shake the earth. 
  
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  “First blood,” Allen crowed over the same open frequency Corbett 
  had used earlier.
  The Galaxy commander’s reply was soft and venomous. “You 
  shall pay for that.”
  The Clan force reacted instantly to the Inner Sphere tactics of 
  concentrated fire. All weapons shifted toward the center of the 
  commando line, spearing Connor Sinclair’s Mad Cat. 
  Sensor alarms rang the shrill warnings of multiple target locks. 
  He tried to throttle into reverse, spoiling their aim, knowing all the 
  while he would be too late. His muscles tensed into the impending 
  assault.
  Then a shadow passed over his cockpit canopy, turning solid as 
  Dominic’s Thor fell back to earth on jets of plasma to place itself 
  between the Smoke Jaguars and the commando leader. 
  Thrusting the Thor’s left arm directly at the face of the onrushing 
  Daishi, Dominic dared the Galaxy commander to meet his most 
  impressive weapon at point-blank range. Corbett cut away on his 
  attack run, twisting the top half of his Omni to track on the new 
  threat. Their own commander at risk, Corbett’s two remaining 
  Starmates also abandoned their line on the Mad Cat and instead 
  tracked on the Thor. 
  One long peal from his twelve-centimeter autocannon was all 
  Dominic had time for. The slugs hammered into the Daishi, rip-
  ping a jagged furrow into the edge of the assault ’Mech’s left arm. 
  Then a flurry of gem-colored lasers beams slammed into the 
  Thor, followed quickly by a wave of missiles and two Gauss slugs. 
  The wreath of fire and debris which shrouded the Thor was so 
  thick Connor almost missed the canopy blowing away and the 
  quick glimpse of a command chair rocketing up into the air. He 
  opened a channel on the commando’s private frequency.
  “That’s it for Dominic. Sorenson, he’ll be gliding back your way. 
  Watch for him.”
  Still, the sacrifice would not be in vain. Besides protecting his 
  commander, Dominic had forced the Smoke Jaguar’s to split their 
  line. Corbett had acted in his own best defense first, not thinking 
  about his command. Again, the difference in fighting on the same 
  side, and fighting together. Now the Cauldron-Born was isolated 
  on the right side of the battlefield. 
  
  BATTLECORPS
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  Rather than try to challenge Connor and cover his Starmate, the 
  Galaxy commander pushed forward his own Mad Cat to threaten 
  the commando’s only assault ’Mech—Allen’s Sunder. Allen was 
  already fading back to draw Corbett further out of position, so 
  Connor rounded on the smaller Cauldron-Born hoping to knock it 
  out of the fight with Epona’s help.
  Not that she had much left to give. 
  In a brief but savage duel, the Avatar had already lost its right 
  arm—and with it her best weapon. Now, at point-blank range, her 
  LRM launchers were all but useless as well. She managed to cut 
  away more of the armor protecting the Cauldron-Born’s Gauss 
  rifle, but failed to ruin it. 
  The squat Cauldron-Born pummeled the stricken commando 
  ’Mech with light autocannon and a single laser, tearing at the left 
  flank of the Avatar, and then punched through with the Gauss 
  slug to tear open one whole side of the fusion reactor. Golden fire 
  belched outward, gobbling everything into its expanding core. 
  Then the Avatar flew apart in a massive explosion the flash-
  blinded Connor.
  “I see her,” Allen said. “She’s out clean.”
  Blinking his vision clear, fighting away the explosion’s afterim-
  age, he did not bother searching for his warrior’s parafoil against 
  Tranquil’s pale sky. Instead, dropping his reticle over the profile of 
  the Cauldron-Born, he waited until it burned from red to the deep 
  gold of a solid targeting lock before hitting the sixty-five ton Omni 
  with everything at his disposal and damn the Mad Cat’s stunted 
  heat curve!
  Lasers stabbed scarlet destruction into the side of the enemy 
  machine, and missiles reached out at their maximum range to 
  pepper small explosion all along the Cauldron-Born’s profile. 
  It was the Gauss rifle which paid off, however, drawing a bead 
  over the forward-thrust head and smashing a large slug through 
  the left “cheek” of the cockpit and out the other side. The ’Mech 
  toppled to the right, spinning about to slam head-first into the 
  ground and bury its pilot beneath a mountain of metal and myo-
  mer.
  A wave of heat slammed through the Mad Cat’s cockpit, flash-
  drying sweat on his arms and legs. His shoulders ached from the 
  strains of constant combat—his third battle this day—though he 
  had no time to ease their discomfort. 
  
  BATTLECORPS
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  “All right,” Connor whispered into the confines of his neurohel-
  met, voice loud in his own ears, “this ends now.”
  Pivoting his Mad Cat back toward Brendon Corbett’s Daishi, 
  Connor found the last two Clan warriors pressing forward against 
  Allen’s Sunder. The commando’s assault ’Mech soaked up a flur-
  ry of brightly-colored laser darts and the azure cascades of two 
  particle projector cannon, trading wide swaths of armor for its 
  continued survival. 
  Then extra-long bursts from Corbett’s fifty-millimeter auto-
  cannon pounded in, ripping into the Sunder’s right hip joint and 
  tearing it apart. 
  Stumbling backward, fighting the pull of gravity, Allen managed 
  to scar a new molten weal across the Daishi’s chest with his PPC 
  though his Gauss rifle missed wide. Then the frozen hip joint be-
  trayed him and the Sunder crashed roughly to the ground. 
  Allen immediately rolled the assault Omni back to its front, trying 
  at once to get his feet beneath him as the enemy ’Mechs closed.
  Two on two. Teamwork meant a great deal less at such odds, and 
  the Clan equipment and training would begin to tell as the fighting 
  turned desperate. Throttling forward, Connor shrugged aside a 
  few glancing blows from the other Mad Cat’s weapons. His inten-
  tion was to bring down the Galaxy commander. Without Corbett, 
  the remaining enemy Mad Cat could not hope to stand against the 
  two commando MechWarriors. 
  He walked forward to clear the Jaguar Mad Cat from his line of 
  sight, toggling for all long-range weaponry as the Daishi’s profile 
  eased under his targeting crosshairs. The sluggish response of his 
  heat-addled OmniMech cost him a few precious seconds, working 
  his way into a prime firing solution. But finally the reticle burned 
  the deep gold of a hard lock, and he eased into the salvo.
  Only to have an urgent transmission from Thomas Sorenson 
  stay his hand. 
  “We’re in the shuttle,” the corporal reported, “but it’s wired with 
  explosives! They’re set to trigger off an engine startup as well as 
  remote detonation—a dead-man’s switch if I had to guess. We’re 
  working on defusing it, but you have to buy us time.
  “And whatever you do, do not fire on Brendon Corbett!”
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Trial Under Fire • Page 9
  The Dire Wolf’s sensor alarms warned Galaxy Commander 
  Corbett that another ’Mech had a strong targeting lock on him:
  The Inner Sphere commander, turning away from the ruined 
  Cauldron-Born to come at his right flank. 
  But the Dire Wolf’s right-side armor was still strong, so he ig-
  nored the customized Mad Cat long enough to put an end to the 
  Sunder. Only a chance hit against his cockpit could stop him, and 
  then it would be over so fast the Galaxy commander would hardly 
  know it. A glorious death in the fires of battle.
  Not that he believed it possible. His destiny was to lead Clan 
  Smoke Jaguar back to dominance, and nothing would prevent that. 
  Nothing, and no one. Let the surat try his best—it wouldn’t save 
  his warrior in the Sunder and in the end it would not save him. 
  The troublesome raiders would never leave Tranquil alive. He 
  had seen to that when ordering his shuttle wired with explosives, 
  tying a remote detonator into his own computer. Even with the 
  destruction of his OmniMech—though certainly he would escape 
  alive—his revenge would still be complete. 
  He silently dared the enemy commander to fire on the Dire Wolf, 
  believing himself far more ready—far more prepared—to tempt 
  the fates than his counterpart could ever be.
  Then the alarms cut out as the enemy officer broke off his at-
  tack to run in at the back of Corbett’s Starmate instead. Amanda 
  Wimmer’s Mad Cat stumbled into view, driven forward by a pair of 
  scarlet laser beams coring into its back. Then the silver-gray blur 
  of a Gauss slug slammed in behind them, crushing armor and tita-
  nium supports as it punched through the housing which protected 
  the OmniMech’s massive gyroscope. The Mad Cat stumbled to its 
  knees then sprawled out over the ground, high-velocity metal still 
  spitting out the near-mortal wound. A rain of missiles slammed 
  into the stricken ’Mech, finishing the job. 
  His Starmate managed to bring down the emergency dampen-
  ing fields, saving the corpse of her ruined machine, but it would 
  not continue this battle.
  “Freebirth!” he shouted, slamming a fist down on the auxiliary 
  monitor he’d had watching Amanda’s Mad Cat. The glass smashed 
  inward, and a backlash of electrical fire burned his hand. He ig-
  nored the pain and the caustic scent of melting insulation which 
  now burned in his lungs.
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Trial Under Fire • Page 10
  A large part of him wanted to turn on the enemy commander, 
  punishing the stravag warrior for the loss of his Starmate. But the 
  smoke jaguar, totem animal for his Clan, did not deter from the 
  deathstrike once blood was scented and neither would he. Corbett 
  centered his crosshairs over the struggling Sunder, bringing all 
  weapons to bear and raining death upon the assault ’Mech. 
  All four lasers struck deeply into the Sunder’s already-savaged 
  armor, two of them combining to slice the Gauss rifle in half. Blue 
  energy flared as the acceleration coils erupted in a wash of stored 
  electricity, the small explosion gouging deeply into the left side 
  as well. A hail of autocannon fire opened up angry wounds over 
  the left leg, crushing actuators, and his missiles exploited further 
  damage to the right hip. 
  A final burst of emerald darts from the Dire Wolf’s medium pulse 
  lasers cut through the Sunder’s left side and into the main body 
  where it melted the gyro. 
  The assault ’Mech collapsed back to the ground, its efforts to 
  rise permanently thwarted. 
  Heat scoured his cockpit, fusion reactor spiking severely to meet 
  the constant power draw for so many weapons. He backed off a 
  step from the Sunder, allowing the heat to bleed away through the 
  Dire Wolf’s many heat sinks. Then a single laser scored into his 
  right side, slashing away armor from that formerly-pristine loca-
  tion, shoving him roughly to the left. 
  Cursing, swiveling his ’Mech’s upper torso around, he stabbed 
  out again with all four lasers, forcing his heat curve higher into 
  the red. The Inner Sphere commander, back for more punishment. 
  Just the two of them now! Two lasers carved into the Mad Cat’s 
  left arm and side. The enemy ’Mech rocked under the blow but did 
  not come close to faltering. Instead, it cut inward to circle around 
  the Dire Wolf’s left flank.
  Why only a single laser? 
  The incongruous fact hit the Galaxy commander as he forced 
  the sluggish Dire Wolf into a turn to keep his weapons centered on 
  the Mad Cat. A feral grin split his lips, showing the teeth behind. 
  Opening a common channel, he allowed a bit of that satisfaction 
  to bleed into his voice. 
  “Having trouble with the shuttle?” he asked, certain now that the 
  explosives had been discovered and that they were worried about 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Trial Under Fire • Page 11
  destroying his Omni. And with good reason. “You will never leave 
  Tranquil alive. I told you that once before. It is still true.” 
  And Brendon Corbett walked his Dire Wolf forward, certain now of 
  his invulnerability as he triggered another full spread of weapons.
  “We’re still working on the explosives. We need a few more min-
  utes.”
  Any reply to Sorenson’s update was lost as Connor’s full at-
  tention was demanded by Brendon Corbett’s latest hard-hitting 
  assault. The Mad Cat shook violently as two lasers and a pair of 
  light autocannon stripped his ’Mech of more armor, denuding his 
  right leg and side down to titanium skeleton and worrying his left 
  arm within its last half-ton of protective plating. 
  A glance at the wireframe schematic showed the heavy losses 
  to his protection, promising that the Galaxy commander’s next hit 
  would penetrate somewhere to the vital systems which kept the 
  Mad Cat fighting.
  He allowed himself to return fire with both lasers this time but 
  not the Gauss rifle, holding back the headhunting weapon for a 
  slow peeling away of the Daishi’s armor. It would take both lasers 
  into the head of the assault Omni to manage a killing blow, and he 
  deliberately held his fire low to prevent such an occurrence. The 
  scarlet energy splashed over the Daishi’s left side and leg, eating 
  way the last of their armor but unable to penetrate deeper. 
  He turned in tighter, shifting his circling maneuver into a shrink-
  ing spiral. 
  Corbett matched him with a shuffling gait, though the heat build-
  up was obviously slowing the OmniMech’s response. Connor’s 
  heat curve, however, had fallen back into the yellow with his re-
  stricted weapons fire and was now riding low in the band. Myomer 
  musculature responded with greater efficiency, allowing him to 
  approach the Mad Cat’s top speed of eighty-five kph as he cut in 
  again. 
  “Make something happen fast,” he warned Sorenson. “I’m run-
  ning out of room to maneuver.” 
  
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  The literal truth, as he ran within sixty meters of the large assault 
  Omni. 
  He stabbed out with lasers again, bumping his heat upward but 
  nowhere near a debilitating level. The energy weapons struck the 
  Daishi midline and into the left leg, sloughing armor to the ground 
  in half-melted plates. 
  Over his right side, Corbett could hope to take several more 
  hard hits. If the Daishi reversed itself suddenly Connor would lose 
  the angle and be pitted against fresh armor while his own dam-
  age profile looked like little more than a walking skeleton. But the 
  Daishi’s left side stood open to almost any shot, now. A flurry of 
  missiles from the SRM packs riding the Mad Cat’s shoulders could 
  conceivably finish the Galaxy commander off, while 
  Except that Brendon Corbett had the dead-man’s switch to his 
  advantage, and was so obviously more concerned with tracking in 
  on the Mad Cat than the risk at which he placed his own ’Mech. 
  “No hope!” the Jaguar commander taunted over the open chan-
  nel. “You will all die here today. Your bodies will be left for the 
  scavengers.”
  His next salvo did little to back up his boast. One laser only 
  and a rapid-fire burst from the Daishi’s fifty-millimeter autocan-
  non scored against Connor. The depleted-uranium slugs ripped 
  into his left leg, smashing aside the last of his armor but failing to 
  damage the critical actuators. The laser sliced into the Mad Cat’s 
  left torso substructure, cutting away one of his shoulder-mounted 
  launchers. The SRM system twisted free of the damaged mounts, 
  smashing against the ground and spilling a load of missiles over 
  the caldera floor. None of them detonated, though they remained 
  a dangerous obstacle if a ’Mech decided to walk over that area 
  again.
  “We’ve almost got it,” Sorenson promised, his voice on edge. 
  The corporal had to realize the time pressure his lieutenant was 
  under. 
  Sinclair almost hedged, delaying another exchange with Corbett. 
  No. Time had slipped out from under them, and it was now or not 
  at all. He would take Sorenson at his word, counting on the other 
  man to come through just as he would any other member of the 
  commando. Turning sharply, he raced almost directly at the Daishi 
  and then cut around the Omni’s left flank. Not quite at the assault 
  ’Mech’s back, but out of full line for most of Corbett’s weapons. 
  
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  Only two of the Daishi’s large lasers flared out this time, one of 
  them coring into the left leg to cripple the Mad Cat’s upper leg ac-
  tuator. He worked with the gyroscopic stabilizer to overcome the 
  OmniMech’s violent tremble, but he wouldn’t be going anywhere 
  else very fast. He dropped crosshairs over the Daishi’s side, by 
  eye scoping out the large rents already carved through its protec-
  tive armor. 
  He toggled every weapon and squeezed into the trigger. “C’mon, 
  Sorenson!”
  “Got it! Drop that last Clanner!”
  Connor would never be certain if he had waited for the corpo-
  ral’s assurance or had already committed to the barrage, and in 
  the end it really did not matter. If he hadn’t fired, the opportunity 
  would have been wasted. The two of them had to succeed to-
  gether, or not at all.
  Large lasers cut into the Daishi’s arm and left flank, both splash-
  ing through the last of the armor and pumping destructive energy 
  into the vital equipment beneath. The shoulder joint melted be-
  neath the focused energy, locking the arm in its awkward position. 
  The second laser blew threw two of the three heat sinks stored in 
  the left torso, carving a path for the Gauss slug which punched in 
  afterward to slam full force into the ammunition bin for Corbett’s 
  LRM system. Missiles compacted and then detonated, warheads 
  and propellant touching off in one grand explosion. Gouts of flame 
  shot out the back as the cellular construction channeled most of 
  the energy out special vents. The explosion eviscerated the entire 
  left side of the Omni which staggered violently to the right, teeter-
  ing on one leg. Heat blossomed in white-hot fury on the thermal 
  imager, the combination of destroyed shielding and the loss of 
  heat sinks.
  “This is not happening.” 
  Brendon Corbett had not closed the channel earlier, and his 
  shock and pain were clear. 
  “By Kerensky’s Blood, it cannot be happening!”
  Then Connor’s remaining short-ranged missile system rocketed 
  out a flight of a half dozen stubby warheads. 
  Three of them speared through the ruin which was now the 
  Daishi’s left side, blasting away the last of the armor over the 
  Omni’s midline and gouging into the shielding protecting the core 
  
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  Trial Under Fire • Page 14
  of the fusion reactor. No dampening field was going to override 
  the destruction visited on the engine, and golden fire spilled out 
  to eat away what remained of the Daishi’s chest. Flames licked up 
  and around the forward-thrust head, the intense heat melting ar-
  mor and bursting the cockpit canopy into shards of ferroglass. Not 
  the usual catastrophic failure, but a death drawn out over several 
  long seconds.
  “No! No! Nooooo….” The denial trailed off into a scream and 
  then static as the Daishi and Galaxy commander Brendon Corbett 
  finally died.
  The Smoke Jaguar commander fully aware of his failure.
  Connor clambered down from the Mad Cat, leaving the Omni as 
  it belonged—as the last ’Mech standing over the caldera’s battle-
  field. 
  He approached the Daishi’s burned-out corpse with care, wary 
  of the intense heat it radiated. Sooty black smoke rolled into 
  Tranquil’s pale sky, pushed around by the chill breeze blowing 
  through the caldera. A beacon proclaiming the battlefield and 
  also reminding him of the incoming Jaguar forces which would 
  be dropping down from space soon. Still he wanted to be—had to 
  be—certain.
  Allen Mattila walked over from his abandoned Sunder. The shut-
  tle had powered up under thrust, and now rolled up nearby so 
  that the rest of the Damocles Commando could join Conner as he 
  hopped back from the scorching metal which framed what was 
  left of the cockpit. Sorenson hung back behind the MechWarriors, 
  carrying a square of folded black cloth. Dominic and Epona looked 
  a bit rough from their combat ejections, but well enough to walk 
  unassisted. Epona Rhi managed a brief smile and a nod. Not any 
  form of celebration, not after the cost Tranquil had demanded of 
  the Inner Sphere operation, but simple recognition for a job fin-
  ished and done.
  “Well?” Dominic asked, frowning at the ruined Daishi. “Is he?”
  No need to elaborate more than that. Everyone knew the ques-
  tion. He nodded once. “Corbett is dead. His move to resurrect the 
  Smoke Jaguars is finished.”
  
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  Trial Under Fire • Page 15
  “It was finished when we tore the heart out of Durghan City,” 
  Sorenson said. “Knocking out the Core Tap Facility below only 
  clinched it. According to Captain Taylor, Clan Wolf is already is-
  suing batchalls against incoming Jaguar forces.” It was news 
  received with great relief around the small circle of tired warriors. 
  “Corbett’s dream had died. But he refused to admit it.” Sorenson 
  glanced over at the smoking wreckage. “You just planted the final 
  stake in his heart is all.”
  He shook his head. “Not a stake. A sword.” He glanced to his 
  lancemates and then back to the analyst. “The Sword of Damocles. 
  We all helped wield it. Not that the Smoke Jaguars likely under-
  stand the reference. Their own leaders lived under the blade for so 
  long, it was bound to fall eventually.”
  Sorenson smiled thinly and offered Conner the cloth he carried. 
  “Maybe this will be enough for them, then.”
  The commando leader accepted the package with both hands, 
  feeling the weight behind it. Allen nodded, scrounged a metal rod 
  from some nearby wreckage and drove it down into the caldera’s 
  ground while Connor shook the flag open. He tied two corners 
  around the makeshift pole, then stepped back as the breeze tugged 
  at the ensign—the silver Cameron star against the black field. The 
  Star League colors, left flying over the caldera battlefield. 
  A funeral shroud, for Clan Smoke Jaguar.
  Connor Sinclair gathered his commando in by eye, leading them 
  back toward the waiting shuttle. “The Eclipse is waiting,” he re-
  minded them. 
  “Let’s go home.”
  The End
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/BattleTech [multi]/EXTRA/Novels/Battlecorps Novels/Trial Under Fire Chap 10 - Loren L. Coleman.pdf