TEXT: BATTLECORPS
  HIGHLANDER CHRONICLES
  Goliath out of the Box
  By Randall N. Bills
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Golaith out of the Box • Page 2
  Yalosha Peninsula 
  Qingyuan, Ningpo 
  Terran Hegemony 
  2 April 2457 
  “Bloody hell. Smack me 
  with a brick. Those slanty-
  eyed, yellow bellied sons 
  of Capellans! They sold 
  us out! They’ll regret 
  the day they sold out the 
  Highlanders. Damn them 
  to hell and back again!” 
  “Captain!” 
  Darren Callwell shout-
  ed to be heard over the 
  angry outbursts. Those, 
  and the whine of the 
  Suvorov’s turbo-diesel as it knifed through eardrums, setting 
  temples pounding. The rattling of bones as the tank clawed its 
  way across the rough terrain in their headlong flight threatened to 
  unhinge the old shoulder-socket injury.
  Captain Heather Lewis sputtered on another moment with her 
  litany of curses before turning blazing, malachite eyes down be-
  tween her legs. “What?!”
  An outsider might’ve found the scene intimate, with his face 
  pressed practically between her legs, staring up at her in the tur-
  ret’s observation seat. Yet in the poorly-made, overheating vehicle, 
  racing away from an enemy weapon they’d yet to face, the only 
  intimacy in the picture was knowing they’d been royally screwed 
  by their own side. 
  He stretched the shoulder, trying to ease the pain. “Before the 
  ECM hit, the Bonnie got a message through. They’ve got thirty 
  minutes before they estimate the Hegemony fighter screen will be 
  in position to deny them lift off.”
  “Smack me,” she said, crouching slightly to cut down on the need 
  to yell. She tore off her headset—useless since the EMP shook 
  them up—and tossed it down between her feet, missing Darren’s 
  face by centimeters. “That means we’ve got twenty.”
  
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  Golaith out of the Box • Page 3
  Darren nodded. “Captain Bellup, always optimistic.”
  Heather removed her helmet for a moment. Scratched at her 
  sweaty scalp. She swept several errant strands of brunet hair from 
  of her hatchet-like face with its high check bones and too-slim 
  chin, plopped the helmet back on, then reached to a thigh pock-
  et and pulled out a plasticized, hand-sized map. Squatting in her 
  seat, she held it up and tried to hold it steady as the Suvorov hit 
  a particularly nasty patch of ground, throwing them around like 
  pebbles rattling inside a toy can. 
  “Bloody hell.”
  “Exactly.”
  “We’ve got to get word back to the regiment. Thrice-damned 
  Maskirovka sold us out.”
  “With our comms down and the new electronic countermea-
  sures the Haffers got, we can’t let the DropShip know what’s 
  happened.”
  An exchanged glance told volumes; they both knew she would’ve 
  ordered the DropShip off world, sealing their deaths if need be, to 
  get word back to the Second Kearny. 
  The Confederation could not be trusted.
  “The Tigershrike,” he finally said. 
  Her eyes searched his, anger flaring, but banked down to a burn-
  ing need for revenge.
  “We’ve been holding it back,” she said.
  “Exactly.”
  The stench of diesel momentarily enveloped them, the noxious 
  black cloud setting off a coughing fit all around. Darren almost 
  unhinged his jaw as he hawked a wad of phlegm to the side. One 
  of these days the Confederation would make a decent tank.
   “We’ll need to block the Haffers from trying to stab past us 
  at her.”
  “Exactly.” The look they exchanged acknowledged the inevitable.
  She nodded briskly, then yelled. “Driver, bring us to a stop.” She 
  then grasped a large and dirty red flag, stood up and began wav-
  ing it, calling the armor column to a halt. 
  
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  Golaith out of the Box • Page 4
  The moving herd of tanks and armored personnel carriers that 
  made up the reinforced company of Second Kearny Highlanders 
  slowly ground to a halt in a plume of dust and exhaust fumes. Her 
  legs disappeared out of view as she ran to talk with the fastest 
  tank in the column: the Tigershrike.
  Course it was a League design. Go figure. Darren shook his 
  head, pulling off his own helmet to perform emergency scratch-
  ing, imagining the row between her and Lieutenant James. No 
  way was he gonna run without having a say so. But nobody, no-
  body, gets a word in edgewise when the hatchet queen gets going. 
  Course, that’s why they’d follow her to hell and back again. 
  Why he’d follow her.
  Two minutes vanished as he prepped the autocannon feeding 
  mechanism and then tried to follow the wiring diagram and find 
  the short in the comms; it would take three hours at a minimum 
  to track down on the steamy pile, but he tried to keep occupied. 
  The thud of a body moving across the top of the tank heralded his 
  failure before he’d gotten far. 
  Green-clad, muscled legs slipped into view. He grabbed a 
  quick swig of stale water, hardly noticing the diesel taste after 
  so many hours.
  “Driver, time to let the Haffers know they need their bloody mon-
  ster machine to take on the Highlanders.”
  “Damn right, Captain,” the driver shouted back, piling on the 
  horses as he slewed the tank around.
  Darren straddled back into position by the loading breech, 
  which allowed him to just peer over the driver’s shoulder and 
  out of the thin forward observation slit. He could just make out 
  the Tigershrike spewing detritus away from its airskirts as the 
  hovercraft gunned on toward the DropShip, while a dozen tanks 
  wheeled around in disciplined ranks; a chorus line performing a 
  perfect pirouette, tracked-legs pumping in unison. He nodded, un-
  surprised but moved nonetheless by this show of discipline, of 
  bravery. They all knew what awaited them and not a one blinked 
  an eye from the responsibility. 
  Highlanders all. 
  “Let’s make it happen, people.”
  “Yes sir,” his own voice rang out with that of the driver.
  
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  Golaith out of the Box • Page 5
  The tanks, most of them heavies, still picked up good speed as 
  they began to get rolling. A momentum built, which he’d seen 
  smash through enemy after enemy in the campaigns fought be-
  side the hatchet queen. He gritted teeth, not wanting to face the 
  fear flittering in his belly like a thrice-damned Masker sliding 
  through grass.
  Heather said something he missed.
  “What, Captain?” he yelled, moving slightly to give his ears a 
  straight shot to where she sat, her head slightly out of the hatch.
  “The whole thing was a lie.”
  He paused for a moment then responded. “Aye, Captain. I think 
  it was. The world’s not ripe for the taking. It’s ripe for a small merc 
  force to be tossed into the grindstone of the Haffer’s new weapon 
  to see what happens. To see if the Cappies need fear this new 
  weapon.” He coughed, mouth drying out as the heat began to in-
  crease once more, the diesel engines pumping out heat for which 
  their cooling jackets could not compensate, the roiling dust of a 
  moving column of armor only adding to the dearth of moisture.
  “Expendable assets.”
  “Aye, Captain. Very definition of a merc unit.”
  “Smack me, no!” she yelled, slinking down to bring those mala-
  chite weapons to bear. “You can’t treat mercs like that. You can’t 
  treat Highlanders like that. Do that to us, and we’ll smack back, no 
  matter how long it might take. Long memories.”
  Her righteous anger sparked his and he nodded grimly. “Long 
  memories.” 
  Darren opened his mouth again to speak and no words came. 
  They passed a knowing look, filled with the admiration of two who 
  survived hell and brimstone together and would stand by the oth-
  er’s back as the reaver’s blade swept down. 
  For the first time he could think of, her stark face lightened a mo-
  ment as a brief smile graced lips unused to anything but an angry 
  grimace. 
  Nothing more to say.
  Darren turned back just in time to see a towering mammoth of 
  glinting metal and savage protuberances top a rise almost a kilo-
  meter distant. 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Golaith out of the Box • Page 6
  Any remaining moisture in his mouth leached away, the flutter-
  ing in his stomach moving to tank treads that ripped and tore. 
  “Gods,” he said, without realizing he spoke, crossing himself. 
  Roughly humanoid, the walking titan didn’t have arms so much 
  as twin barrels half the size of the entire Suvorov. No way to tell at 
  this distance, but it looked easily twelve meters tall, maybe more. 
  There was no grace to the machine. It trundled forward at a gallop 
  that had to break bones in the pilot’s ass after a while. Its weapon-
  ry, while looking formidable, didn’t exceed what they carried. Yet 
  some indescribable horror seeped in, like a viral plague defeating 
  hermetic seal after seal. Some deep-seated physiological reaction 
  at seeing a giant of such proportions. A thousand children’s faire 
  tales rose within, of monsters and demons, of Athach. He tried to 
  shrug the growing dread aside, but couldn’t seem to find a way, as 
  his breathing rattled hollowly in a clenched throat. 
  Another image, wrought at grandmama’s knees, reared. The 
  sainted David taking on Goliath, read from the pages of an ancient 
  illustrated bible said to have come down to his family from ancient 
  Terra, before the Haffers, before even the Alliance.
  The distance between the new machine—couldn’t even remem-
  ber what they called the damn walking tanks—and the Highlander 
  armor column closed as he wrestled with inner demons. He tried 
  to console himself with how David beat Goliath, but he felt only 
  emptiness and a yawning cliff. He’d not gone to church since 
  granny died and if there was a God, he was busy elsewhere. He 
  certainly wasn’t looking down on this weapon Darren just knew 
  would revolutionize warfare—the day of the tank was finished. 
  They were finished.
  God would not turn an autocannon shell into a golden stone 
  from a sling shot to strike at critical armor, sliding under the ar-
  mored helmet and killing the pilot, allowing the Highlanders to cut 
  off its head and hold it up high. 
  An azure beam of scintillating energy cut the air, blistering out 
  from the machine to cut just to the right of their position. He 
  flinched, unable to stop the reaction. He didn’t see the result, but 
  the detonation and wash of heat spoke volumes.
  “On my mark,” Captain yelled. 
  Though ashamed, her calm voice helped to wash away the gib-
  bering terror threatening to tear out of his subconscious with 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Golaith out of the Box • Page 7
  bloody fangs and slashing, burning claws. He immediately fell 
  back onto patterns learned across two decades.
  “Fire!”
  Right fist clenched, as though swinging a sling, he triggered the 
  autocannon. The bellow of screaming metal vomiting towards the 
  mammoth construct made him glad for the helmet, despite the 
  heat and itch.
  An eternity of heat and sweat and fear boiled and erupted; a 
  cauldron of blood and death stirred by the new avatar of walking 
  metal, hacking, slashing and killing Highlanders at every turn.
  Too exhausted to talk, ears ringing constantly from the hammer-
  ing of the autocannon and the broken movements of the Suvorov, 
  eyes bleary from the acrid smoke and stench of burning metal and 
  flesh, tongue swollen until he breathed through a bloody strip of 
  cloth quickly torn from a sleeve to stay alive, Darren continued to 
  fight. 
  Because he watched the captain’s back and she watched his.
  Because they all died the moment they set foot on this cursed 
  world. But it didn’t matter, because that’s what Highlanders did. For 
  centuries. Fought and died for nations that cared little how much 
  blood seeped into foreign soils. But they had their own heritage. 
  Their own history and legacy and they fought for themselves. 
  A horrendous noise shattered his eardrums and he was thrown 
  to the side, knocking his head against the loading breach, cracking 
  the helmet clean in two. He screamed as flesh tore away from his 
  blistered forehead as it touched the almost glowing metal, while 
  blood flowed from ears and nose, stars dancing a staccato across 
  his vision. 
  Drifting outside himself, he realized he lay across Heather’s legs. 
  He blinked slowly several times, before what he saw came into 
  clear focus. The top portion of the turret no longer existed, torn 
  completely away by a savage kick from the machine which blocked 
  out the sun, its shadow, death come stalking.
  He tried to call her name one last time before he realized he held 
  only her bloody legs in his hands. Though despair tried to rise, an-
  ger smacked it down; his commander’s anger taken upon himself 
  at the moment of their deaths. 
  
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  Golaith out of the Box • Page 8
  He would never know if the DropShip made it off. If the 
  Highlanders found out about the betrayal. Yet it didn’t matter. As 
  the foot smashed the last life out of the Highlanders on world, a 
  single thought buoyed him.
  They fought like Highlanders. He couldn’t ask for anything more.
   
  The End
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/BattleTech [multi]/EXTRA/Novels/Battlecorps Novels/Highlander Chronicles Pt 02 - Goilath out of the Box - Randall N. Bills.pdf