TEXT: BATTLECORPS
  THE DRAGONS  
  OF DESPAIR
  by Kevin Killiany
  Chapter Twelve
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Dragons of Despair • Page 2
  Alarion Parenting Monthly 
  September 3057
  POLL: PARENT’S FEARS DON’T MATCH FACTS, FIGURES
  Surveys conducted by the Ministry of Health and Education 
  on several representative worlds in the Alarion Province re-
  veal that of parents of adolescents are concerned about the 
  wrong issues.
  “For example,” says Dr. Milthrop Wynnpike, developer of 
  the survey, “Most parents cited the hallucinogenic drug 
  MindMASC as a major danger facing children today. In fact, 
  studies have shown persons under eighteen are far more 
  likely to experiment with barbiturates or supposed aphrodi-
  siacs than stimulants or hallucinogenic. MindMASC is used 
  almost exclusively by adults, and then of the fairly narrowly 
  defined “thrill seeker” personality type.
  “Parents of most adolescents would be much better advised 
  to be worried about...”
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Dragons of Despair • Page 3
  Chevalier Planetary Evaluation Base 
  Despair, Ender’s Cluster 
  Lyran Alliance 
  26 October 3057
  “Atreus.”
  Lex pulled the covers up over her head. If they didn’t see her, 
  they couldn’t make her wake up.
  “Atreus.”
  That wasn’t Shasha. That was.... Somebody. Far away. Somebody 
  hurt? Somebody she didn’t like.
  “Atreus,” then louder: “Alexandra! Wake up!”
  Why? She snuggled deeper. If they couldn’t find her, they couldn’t 
  make her get up. Those were the rules.
  A bump. Her bed bumped. And a sound like a sob. 
  Her command couch bumped again.
  “Damn it, Leftenant!” the voice was weak. But angry. Very angry. 
  “You are not dead! Wake the hell up!”
  That was Caradine. Shouting orders again. Damn aristocrats—
  Lex snapped awake.
  Her hands flew to the joysticks even as her eyes scanned the 
  data screens. No heavy metal in range. Large laser housing dam-
  aged, weapon system yellow but still operable. Comm system 
  out; ECM up and running; sensor array eighty percent, damaged 
  sensor; cockpit integrity and life support green; both left leg jump 
  jets and one torso jump jet offline; a dozen stress fractures to the 
  armor, none serious; internal structure and motive systems all one 
  hundred percent.
  Well the Nightsky does have the highest survivability rating in its 
  weight class.
  “TacSit?” she demanded.
  “We are flat on our back in the mud with a dead assault ‘Mech on 
  top of us,” Caradine reported. There was a breathless tone to her 
  
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  voice. “You’ve been out about five minutes that I know of—I was 
  out a couple myself.”
  Lex glanced at the chronometer and tried to remember what it 
  had said the last time she’d noticed it. No idea.
  “How about you?” she asked.
  “Stabbing pain every time I breathe too deep,” Caradine an-
  swered—which explained the breathless quality of her voice. 
  “Probably bruised pulmonary muscles, maybe a cracked rib or two. 
  Several aches and pains, nothing requiring immediate attention.
  “You?”
  Lex flexed what she could, testing her body’s responses.
  “Whiplash, half a dozen overstretched muscles that are going to 
  hurt like hell when they’ve had time to set up,” she said. “Nothing 
  else I can find. We were lucky.”
  “Except for the being flat on our back pinned under the assault 
  ‘Mech part,” Caradine pointed out. “Any thoughts on how to get 
  out from under our date here?”
  Lex grunted at the word choice.
  The design of her cockpit kept her from seeing more than one 
  upthrust shoulder of the Crockett, but from its position and the 
  stresses the armor schematic was reporting, she deduced the 
  Nightsky’s upper torso and left arm were free. The right arm was 
  pinned between the two machines, damaged but not crushed. 
  It should have been. In fact, most of her ‘Mech should have 
  been crushed—or at least badly bent—by the eighty-five tons of 
  dead weight that had fallen on it. The boggy ground beneath the 
  Nightsky must have yielded enough to distribute the weight—or 
  dissipate the shock of the fall—enough to limit the damage.
  And if the soil was soft enough....
  Lex experimented with flexing a leg. Servos whined—that the 
  sound of leg actuators reached her cockpit was eloquent testimo-
  ny to how far above operating parameters her command pushed 
  them. Overstress warnings flashed along the lower half of the 
  wireframe schematic. And the leg moved. 
  Lex cut power. The half-meter’s movement was not worth the 
  risk to the actuator assembly. And she couldn’t imagine a combi-
  
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  nation of such moves that would get her free of the assault ‘Mech’s 
  corpse without doing permanent damage to her own machine.
  For a wild second she considered firing her remaining jump jets. 
  Under normal circumstances they would vaporize any mud the fall 
  had jammed up their throats. But compressed beneath the bigger 
  machine the mud would be as dense as ferrocrete—back pressure 
  would almost certainly rupture the chambers. Stuck was better 
  than stuck without a right leg.
  “Waiting for help is not an option,” she said aloud. “Even if Britto 
  and Aldicott find us, they won’t be a match if that Victor comes 
  back.”
  “Victor?” Caradine gasped. Lex wondered if the startled excla-
  mation had hurt her. “What Victor?”
  “Heavy autocannon fire to topple this hulk, plus paired medium 
  lasers scarring that tonner,” Lex explained. “Given the old school 
  hardware these guys field, a Victor is the only ‘Mech that fits the 
  profile.”
  “I don’t think there is a Victor,” Caradine cut her off. “Think about 
  it: A burst of autocannon fire to topple the dead ‘Mech and no fol-
  low-up to finish us off?
  “If there had been a Victor on the field, we wouldn’t be having 
  this conversation.”
  Lex had to admit Caradine’s logic made sense.
  “You’re thinking armor of some sort?” she asked.
  “That would fit the tech at the sensor picket theory,” Caradine 
  said. “On the other hand, I’ve heard of guerrilla forces mounting 
  autocannons on civilian trucks. It might have been something with 
  no armor, something the sensors might ignore, but couldn’t risk 
  you getting a shot at it.”
  A light truck getting in a lucky shot that immobilized them, then 
  running for help to come finish them off. The theory fit the evi-
  dence.
  “Which means we don’t have much time,” Lex said. “Depending 
  on where their back-up is and how far their radio reaches in this 
  soup, we could have company at any minute.”
  She considered her controls; knowing she had to move and 
  knowing how to move were two completely different things. The 
  
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  general schematic wasn’t helpful. Aware each passing second in-
  creased their chances of being discovered pinned and helpless, 
  she tabbed through specific diagnostic screens, trying to assess 
  what each system was capable of before trying any potentially 
  disastrous experiments.
  “What about your axe?” Caradine asked after a long minute. 
  “Chop the Crockett to moveable pieces?”
  “I meant use it like a rock climber’s hammer,” Caradine ignored 
  Lex’s bitter tone. “Grab a purchase on something and pull us 
  out.”
  Lex started to reject the suggestion out of hand, then stopped to 
  think it through.
  Caradine’s idea made sense for a Hatchetman, which held its 
  club-like hatchet in a hand. The wrist actuator was flexible enough 
  to turn the double-bladed head to grip the ground. However, the 
  Nightsky’s single-blade axe was integral to the arm assembly. This 
  gave it greater structural integrity, increasing the force and dam-
  age of its blow, but at the expense of flexibility. It could only rotate 
  as far as the forearm of the ‘Mech could turn; not enough to reach 
  the ground while the machine was on its back.
  But the Nightsky also had an elbow spike, a meters-long titanium 
  blade designed to shatter armor plate and eviscerate opposing 
  ‘Mechs. If she could raise the left arm enough to jab the spike into 
  the ground, it should be strong enough to pull the fifty ton ‘Mech 
  through the mud. But would it hold up to the extra strain of pulling 
  the ‘Mech out from under another?
  It took twenty minutes, with Lex second guessing every move-
  ment as she tried to balance limiting further damage to her 
  BattleMech with getting it on its feet and back in action as quickly 
  as possible. But by using the elbow spike as a pick and shoving 
  carefully with the legs she was able to work the medium ‘Mech 
  out from under the heavier machine.
  Whatever had been done to her left leg’s jump jets by the fall 
  was made worse by dragging them out from beneath the Crockett. 
  Their wireframe image went from red to black. The pressure was 
  too great for some of the stress-fractured armor as well; chips 
  abraded away as Lex eased her machine free. The Nightsky left 
  nearly half a ton of Kalon Royalstar under the assault ‘Mech.
  
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  Caradine wisely said nothing as Lex worked, making only a sat-
  isfied grunt when the wireframe reported the last of the crushing 
  weight was gone.
  Once clear, Lex was faced with the problem of getting her 
  Nightsky on its feet. The curving armor which defended her back 
  so well also made it difficult to stand from the supine position. 
  Placement of armor protecting the rear aspect of the hip actuators 
  prevented her from simply sitting the machine up.
  By shoving with the feet and pulling with the elbow spike, she 
  turned her ‘Mech until it was perpendicular to the slope of the hill, 
  with the damaged right arm upslope. By raising the BattleMech’s 
  right leg and damaged right arm, she could use the incline to roll 
  it to its hands and knees—a much better position for getting up-
  right.
  The world beyond the ferroglass canopy flashed a blinding red.
  Laser fire.
  The targeting computer reported two near misses. Two large 
  beams, one burning into the hulk of the Crockett, the other grazing 
  the hillside beside her supine BattleMech—flash burning the mud 
  into hardened clay.
  The Guardian ECM reported it was battling a TharHes Ares-7, 
  grandfather to her Nightsky’s own 8a targeting system. With two 
  large lasers, that meant—
  “Flashman,” Caradine said. “Coming from below our feet.”
  Lex nodded.
  The thermal sensors reported a bonfire—the heavy ‘Mech had 
  not had a chance to replace the heat sinks Caradine had destroyed. 
  No doubt the heat was creating as much interference for its weap-
  ons systems as her ECM. Otherwise not even the Guardian would 
  have convinced the lasers to target the Crockett at this close 
  range. 
  “He’s running hot.”
  “My autocannon targets heat sinks,” Caradine said. Then: “He was 
  running hot before I hurt him—and I hurt him. His thermal screwed 
  up their ambush. These guys do not have good tech support.”
  On the thermal imager the bonfire below their feet became a 
  sunrise as the heavy ‘Mech walked toward them. 
  
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  Dragons of Despair • Page 8
  There was no time for Lex to wrestle her fallen ‘Mech to its feet. 
  Any move that rolled them away from the Crockett would give 
  the Flashman a clear shot. But not moving while the heavy ‘Mech 
  circled the fallen assault... 
  Flat on its back, the Nightsky could bring none of the torso or 
  head weapons to bear on a target approaching from below its feet. 
  The large laser might be operational—yellow lights warned the 
  computer wasn’t certain—but the targeting computer’s designers 
  had never imagined this situation. The system couldn’t get a lock. 
  She had to be on her feet to fight.
  Her breath caught. 
  Eyes wide, she watched the variables tumble into place; the pat-
  tern form. She let her breath out slowly. The cold energy swept 
  down from the back of her head, calming her heart before flowing 
  into her hands, her legs.
  “What?” asked Caradine.
  Lex didn’t answer. Flexing her own leg and pulling the yoke, she 
  raised the Nightsky’s right leg. The enemy would see she was 
  about to roll her machine to its feet, but she needed it closer, in 
  sight, before she made her move.
  She heard Caradine moving behind her, apparently trying to find 
  a more secure position. 
  The white-hot thermal image told her the heavy ‘Mech was on 
  top of her before the domed top of its egg-shaped torso crested 
  the lower sill of the canopy. 
  Pausing above them, the Flashman trained both arms on the me-
  dium ‘Mech. With the heat readings on her sensors, Lex doubted 
  it could fire all four lasers. But the two mediums would be more 
  than enough to melt her cockpit to slag
  Safety interlocks had already cut the left leg’s jump jets out of 
  the system. Manually deactivating the torso jets was a flip of the 
  toggle.
  Unable to defend at near contact range, the Guardian counter 
  measures suite gave up—its reassuring beep pushed aside by the 
  harsh note of the weapons lock alarm.
  Lex fired her right leg jump jets.
  
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  There was a grinding scrape of earth and rock against armor as 
  the twin jump jets slid the Nightsky a few painful meters along 
  the muddy ground. Lex straightened the leg slightly, keeping their 
  flaming plasma wash directed at the towering Flashman. The su-
  perheated particles flooding through rents in the armor could do 
  no direct damage to the heavy ‘Mech’s internal structure, but that 
  wasn’t the point.
  The Flashman half turned, the pilot managing one step towards 
  escape before the jump jets’ heat forced the already damaged ma-
  chine into emergency thermal shutdown.
  Cutting the thrust, Lex threw the raised leg over. She was 
  slammed against her harness by the roll, but worked the joysticks, 
  getting her ‘Mechs arms under it and shoving. She felt Caradine 
  thump against the back of the command couch, thrown out of the 
  equipment cubby by the Nightsky’s staggering rise.
  Before her machine was fully erect, Lex stepped it back—toward 
  the Flashman. 
  Momentum threw her against her harness—and Caradine against 
  the bulkhead—as she snapped the still rising torso through a left 
  spin. 
  The Nightsky’s titanium elbow spike did its job, smashing through 
  weakened armor just above the Flashman’s rotator ring to shatter 
  internal structures. A grey-green spray misting across the canopy 
  told Lex she’d taken out another heat sink.
  Barely keeping her ‘Mech upright on the slanting ground, Lex 
  continued to turn, myomer cables snaking from the elbow spike as 
  it pulled free of the enemy. She straightened the arm as she spun, 
  slamming the axe head into one of the torso lasers. Not as power-
  ful as a full-body swing, the blow was still sufficient to deform the 
  muzzle, ruining the weapon.
  Lex crab stepped right as the momentum of the swing turned her 
  ‘Mech. She wasn’t going to get caught standing directly beneath 
  a falling enemy a second time. Her right arm was still extended 
  for balance when her torso and head lasers bore on the Flashman. 
  Not waiting for good tone, she fired the twin mediums and small 
  with an open-hand slap to the triggers.
  Untargeted, the three beams did not converge. But each pulse 
  laser delivered a solid double-tap of destruction to the already 
  stricken enemy.
  
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  Dragons of Despair • Page 10
  As she swung her large laser around, the top of the Flashman 
  popped open and the escape couch arced up and away on a col-
  umn of smoke. 
  Lex had a momentary impression of a bright orange hazmat suit 
  and two heads—the pilot carrying the helmet. Stopping to change 
  helmets was probably what had killed the Crockett pilot. 
  Warned by the pilot’s evacuation, Lex backpedaled her Nightsky, 
  moving away as quickly as the slippery slope allowed.
  The Flashman shuddered and deformed, coming apart along 
  damage fractures as its massive gyro tore loose. Hypersonic 
  shrapnel, which moments before had been pieces of the spinning 
  wheel’s mounts and housing, buried themselves in the muddy 
  hillside or arced out over the fen. Whether through luck, grace, 
  or physics, none struck the scrambling medium ‘Mech less than 
  twenty meters away.
  With a final shudder, the seventy-five ton BattleMech separated 
  at its rotator ring. The ruptured torso tilted up, seeming to look 
  toward the roiling heavens, then fell majestically backwards. The 
  legs, still joined to the hip assembly that had supported the cen-
  tral ring, remained standing; ankle deep in the bog.
  “Oly fit,” said a voice next to Lex’s ear.
  She turned as far as her neurohelmet allowed to see Caradine—a 
  fold of survival blanket pressed against her bleeding mouth—sur-
  veying the ruined BattleMechs beyond the canopy.
  “Dey teef you dat at Buena?” Caradine asked around the impro-
  vised pressure bandage. 
  “This is a melee ‘Mech,” Lex said, still shaky with reaction.
  Caradine rejected the flip response with a shake of her head.
  “A heaffy and an affault with a medium—”
  “Two mediums,” Lex interrupted. “I wouldn’t have stood a chance 
  if you hadn’t already done most of the work.”
  To have done as much damage as she had against a Crockett and 
  a Flashman with her forty-five ton Hatchetman... Lex suspected 
  Caradine might have the chops to back up at least some of her 
  landed gentry, Nagelring arrogance.
  Though there was no sign of that arrogance now.
  
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  Dragons of Despair • Page 11
  Reaching forward, she popped the first aid locker open and 
  handed the kit back.
  “Need a hand?”
  “Nefg’tiff,” Caradine said.
  Lex watched the sensor screens while the other MechWarrior 
  did what she could to repair the damage. From the muffled speech 
  and blood soaking the scrap of blanket, she was willing to bet 
  Caradine had bitten through a lip. And if she was any judge of 
  Caucasian physiology, the right side of the woman’s face would 
  soon be a mottled bruise. Her eye was already swollen shut.
  Refining the sensors to search out light metal near the ground, 
  Lex was amazed by her clarity. She tried to sort out what she was 
  feeling, what was different. The cold energy of combat was gone. 
  but in it’s place was... something.
  Senses wide, she cataloged each beep and tone as the comput-
  er identified wildlife and the Guardian reported natural electronic 
  discharges across an approaching squall, but no organized sig-
  nals. 
  For all practical purposes she was alone on a hostile world, trans-
  porting wounded in a damaged ‘Mech and facing an unidentified 
  enemy of unknown capability. She had an objective, a mission 
  self-selected without orders. There were choices—strategies, tac-
  tics, options to be considered—but they were not swirling in a 
  paralyzing fog. 
  The med kit thrust over her shoulder interrupted Lex’s self-ex-
  amination.
  Taking it without comment, she stowed the case in its compart-
  ment and set her hands to the controls.
  “I owe you an apology, Leftenant,” Caradine said, her voice close 
  to Lex’s ear. 
  Lex turned to meet the other woman’s eyes, leaning slightly 
  away from her to focus.
  A dark red blood blister marred the point of Caradine’s chin, just 
  below the bandage plaster that covered the right corner of her 
  mouth and jaw line. Plum and purple marks, almost like stress 
  fractures, radiating from her cheekbone and temple. 
  
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  She still spoke with the breathlessness of her chest injury, but 
  the plaster allowed clearer diction than the improvised pressure 
  bandage had.
  “Before this,” Caradine indicated the carnage around them with 
  a tilt of her head, not breaking eye contact, “I didn’t believe you 
  were a real MechWarrior.”
  That was the difference.
  Lex straightened around in her command couch, facing forward 
  and cycling the reactor up.
  “Before this,” she said, “I wasn’t.”
  Clothed in her Nightsky, Lex Atreus stepped forward.
  THE END…
  
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