CREDS

by MisterFour

“It makes no difference what men think of war…war endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting the perfect practitioner.”
-Cormac McCarthay, Blood Meridian

God damn I hate rollin’ low cash.
Knew this badass named Wolverine, back in the day. Had this whole paradigm all to his own where vernacular seemed a completely separate language, but somehow he got his point across. No money, but tons of opportunity?
You’re rollin’ low cash.
I was on Antares, with my girl Cecile, and I had a job offer that was too real to be honest, but yet it was. Take out a communications outpost on the planetoid I was on, and get paid, and the contract was by a major clan, New Dawn. That outpost was out of the way of every major clan in this part of Fringe space, right? ‘Cept, of course, Clan 58th Wraith Squadron, which used the communications to coordinate ops for most of their major engagements, light years away.
The planet was relatively civilized. Nobody would hit this place in force and risk disturbing the commerce that was abound. But Clan New Dawn wanted it hit, by any merc who’d do the job, and they were gonna pay 70,000.
Man, I wanted that cash.
The connection that gave it to me was one of the thousands of brokers that contracted mech jocks throughout the Fringe. He threw me the offer, because I was one of the few jocks around, and because he knew that I could get this done in two weeks, but because that’s how I made what little name I have in this part of the galaxy. I’m fast.
Let’s put it this way. I fought in the Dead At Birth War, right? I was in no less than seventeen engagements, in three different ‘mechs, and only made a measly 27,000 creds, even with the Iconian Knights footin’ the bill. So 70,000 was sweet, sweet, sweet.
But, no lie, my Loki had taken some hits in my last little bout of garrison duty. I ran out of all the LB10X ammo I had, ‘cept for six salvos in the left arm. No problem, fresh reloads would be about 1,000…
No way I was walkin’ into anything with six LB10X shots. My Loki had two LB10X’s and two ER large lasers, right?
I had 2,000 creds.
Took my Loki into the big shop, to get it refitted.
The mechanic called me out of the bar I was in, said it was major.
What would Wolverine say?
Oh yeah. “If it’s major, have an extra beer.”
I didn’t follow that advice, and just went down.
The place was all rust and ordinance burn. Like a warehouse on steroids, all reactors, smelters, and chrome colored walls of dermoplast to contain the macro construction.
The mechanic’s handle was Sir Prince. He had an arm that was a Russian prosthetic, gleaming plasteel and bolts of titanium, with a damn digital ammo feed for his gyrojet rifle, if he ever held it again. His eyes were Zirosky 6000’s…nice ones.
“Right there.” He said.
The screen was a blue monochrome display, all gauzy and indistinct, part X ray, part schematic. The hairline crack running down my port LB10X was there, like a damn fault line.
“You like heat? There you go. Maybe PPC aftershock, maybe flamer. Or your reactor. Regardless, my old jock, one more shot and you are one less arm.”
The feed glinted our face in ultraviolet neon quicksilver. Beyond was the megalithic clank-rattle-thrum of heavy industry and factory sub-audibles. Like the dissonant underground ambient thumping of an old Earth New York subway.

Remember my *****ing about the Iconian Knights and Dead At Birth? I just remembered…they repaired all my damage…IK, that is. Clans are cool like that. If you fight for them, they repair whatever ails your ‘mech. I needed 7,000 to replace the rifling stock in the LB10X.
I didn’t have it.
So I went back to the bar, rollin’ low cash all the way, and thought about how this deal with the communications grid had to happen in one week.
Damn-bloody-damn, damn.
My glass emptied. I thought of my girl, Cecile. I thought of how maybe this was all good, ‘cause if the deal went through I would have to move off planet, fast. So now I could stay put, but all of my livelihood had come down to a hairline crack, and the techno du-wop humming from the speakers above just mocked me.
7,000 to get 70,000.
I thought of my Loki, and I thought of how I needed them.
Creds.
Then I looked up from my glass and there he was, the mythical bad ass returned back to Valhalla after drinking all the mead in the place.
Wolverine.
I had worked with him once, back during DAB. So I thought of poverty and Lokis and creds and clans and rolled up.
“Yo.”
Beyond his head, the sports vids were all amber monochrome. Holofeed of hydroball, from SOL space.
“Eight-track. M’man. How’s your girl?”
“Good, Wolverine, uh, sir. Hey, you on a job?”
He had the dead pan expression of a back from the dead veteran who’d seen the deepest of the darkest, with all the blood to cover it. His mouth was tight and thin. Like he had a secret or three.
“Why?”

I explained to him the sad, sad circumstances.
“Tough, ‘-track.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Gotta save for those rainy days, bud.”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
He was like one of those aloof motherf*ckers you talk to on a phone that don’t answer you right away, so you feel like a silly idiot.
“Well, I thought you could finance the op and take a percentage.”
That was my plan. Better than getting nothing, right?
“You ran guns near Madoria, right?”
I realized that he had an old Earth southern drawl, or at least the memory of it, faint and indistinct, residual echo despite galactic Diaspora. It made him seem more lethal.
“Yeah.” I answered.
“You still carry? You still handle yourself?”
“Damn straight.”
“First, we have to make a trip, and you gotta move like I move when I move…got it?”
“If you fund this, you’re in charge. It’s cool.” There, I said it.
“I’ll pick the pilots. We are going to keep it small. You, myself, and two others. We’re going to move fast…75 kph minimum. No laggers. We’re going to do this, it’s going to piss off many people, so we’re going to have no witnesses. That means paint jobs and fake tags. Plus, once we’re done, we all walk off in separate directions and keep our mouths shut. The 58th are not going to like any of us, you know. I’m going to pay for your repairs, so that’s 7,000. The two other guys get 15,000 each. You get 20,000, I get 20,000. The 7,000 is your finder’s fee. I know some guys on a dropship that are Dominion Ops certified, and they don’t care a funk about local politics. They’ll be discreet. ”

Somehow, the numbers didn’t add up quite right. Sure, he was getting a profit…but not as much as the other guys. What was his angle?
There was also the heavy thud of having to say goodbye to 50,000, but there was no getting around that. I had known I would have had to hire a lance to take the outpost, and that lance would have been paid out of the purse money for pulling off the mission. But I was getting hooked up plenty. Better to get that much and live, than to try for the whole amount and end up watching the wreckage of my mech from the rearview of an escape pod…
But that was the mystique of Wolverine. Aside from that drawl, and his cool demeanor during DAB. He had flying saucers full of cash holed away, and some said he was like a lot of clan boys, who just did it for the fight.
I’d be a clanner, but their rules are too many, their oaths too damn long, and sometimes they are a little too goody two shoes, for me. You also had to pay dues and go to meetings and recruit, so it’s like Amway mixed up with the Boy Scouts and the Masons…funk, some clans have all sorts of tidy religio-philosophical notions that puts them right beside Scientology. Still, they are the big dogs in the Fringe. One could reasonably argue that SOL was just one big earth based clan. Hell, clans put Star Patrol out of business, you know. You can’t argue clans don’t civilize the places they park.
Wolverine was drinking coffee, so he finished it. The amber feed kept going up above on sixteen separate vid screens hanging on antigravs from the walls. Someone floated upside down, somersaulted, and planted a shot. A few patrons of the bar cheered.
Wolverine leaned in, like he was going to bite off my nose.
“I gotta make some contacts. Call your girl, tell her your going to be home in a week with lot’s of cash, and then you are I are going to hit the depot. Some of my clan are there, they get first dibs.”
Wolverine wore a spent uranium signet IK ring, like they all do. He toyed with it with his thumb, looked to his side, and squinted, like he was trying to hear something beyond the bar, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to like what he heard. The amber light washed over the place, I was starting to come out of my drunk, and we had places to go.
I stepped back from the table, feeling lucid. Wolverine’s boots were knitted from the hide of an alligator’s skin. The pattern of it was unmistakable, even in the half-dark of the bar. It made me apprehensive.
Life is a strange, strange drop. I had gone from being under to being on a job. One instant, you could be walking tall, rifle in hand, pointed at the back of someone’s head…the next instant, you’re face down in a swamp, missing an arm, and some carnivorous reptile has it’s teeth in you, dragging you into the murk.
…

“Cecile.”
“Where are you?”
“On a job, baby.”
“When-“
“Listen, I will be back in a week or so. There’s a few grand under my pillow. It’s a ruby quartz wafer, untraceable and good anywhere. Use it. I’m going to come back soon, with more. Pack everything. When I get back I’ll call you and we’ll go to Bora space for a stretch…or maybe SOL.”
We’d done this, before.
“I’ll have everything ready. I love you, baby.”
“Love you to. Stay cool, Cecile. After this, you and I are going to live high, a while.”
“Come back.”
…
Antares was one of those perfectly hospitable planetoids that required no terraforming whatsoever. Years ago, explorers showed up, tested the water and atmosphere, and set up shop. A year later some corporate conglomerate moved people in. Antares was the kind of place that drove physicists and planetologists googly-moogly, when it came to deducting the odds against such an earth-like environment fit for human habitation.
Huge sprawls of urban creation, museums, art zoos, malls, apartments, corporate sectors and other modern human convenience juxtaposed by even grander stretches of natural landscape. Jungle archipelagos, mountain ranges, canyons dotted with coniferous plantlife and odd iron constructs oddly carved with geometric patterns, left by…who?
No one knows. They weigh five thousand tons, they’ve been here for a million years, and they don’t rust. They look like perfect cylinders, and they drive scientists just as googly-moogly as the physicists and planetologists. Theories abound. They look funky, you roll up on them and you put your hand on them, tracing your finger across deeply etched hieroglyphics, and wonder.
Ah, well.
Biggest oddity in the cities of Antares is the fact that the designers went nuts for brass colored ferroconcrete, and antigravs.
There are almost no conventional buildings in the cities of Antares. They float a mile into the air, at most, or a story, at least, and when you go under them you feel like a couple thousand tons of structure is going to come down like the stone and steel hand of some Maker. There they are, up high, connected by tubes and ramparts, and to think of it, checking them out from this angle as the sun rises silver through a chrome colored mist horizon, they look like space stations and Capitol Ships, are parked in orbit with one another.
No surprise, there. The architects probably saw so much of them on the way to Antares it was the only thing they could think of. When I can’t see the ground, and I am high up checking out the Ellis Superstructure or 9OR MechaConglomerate, Inc., I feel as if I am back in space, except space is blue and white, or, when the mists of the many oceans settle in, it’s brushed aluminum and burnished platinum.
…
Wolverine drove all the way to some Palatial Estate in a Fabrio 5K Hovercar. One of those crimson and matte black monsters that gangsters drive in ‘vids.
He had a cell pendant, and he made about sixteen calls in the ten minutes it took to get to the Palatials. They were all in some language I never heard of…maybe Farsi tradespeak or some Bora derivative. His sunglasses were perfect mirrors, angling down as if he was some bipedal alien predator, twin reflections of the brass building and chrome sun beyond the windshield.
I closed my eyes, and thought of how I would soon be at the controls of my Loki. In my mind, the targeting reticule is always there, fluorescent ghoul green, like the eye of an electric specter.
…
The elevator opened, and we were facing an apartment door.
The guard, with a uniform of basalt gray, didn’t even look up from his coffee and email. But I felt his eyes bore into my back all the way to the elevator.
The suit was pure corporate, down to the ruby cufflinks. The diamond tooth he had could have bought a Pegasus Interceptor, since it probably had a comm. link, to go with it. Maybe even a cranial audio hook up.
The bodyguard sat in a chair on the right, wearing a burnished looking gunmetal blue sharkskin suit. His hair had a slick vinyl glossy look. He was filing his nails.
The corp spoke.
“Wolverine, are you still on that job?”
“Here to talk about that. This is my partner, Eight. He doesn’t speak. Can your chap here get me something carcinogenic?”
The bodyguard got up smoothly, the file disappearing. The corp seemed very casual. Behind him was six vidscreens, of various sizes, all showing newfeed from Sol and Fringespace, plus a number of stock reports.
“Would you like to add to the contract? The money has already been transferred-“
Wolverine shot him with the ring gyrojet pistol he had hidden in his palm. The corper’s face disappeared with the sound of ceramic burning and breaking, at once. Blood painted the walls and screen behind him as if it was always there.
The bodyguard was holding a tray of some glassy material, pink and see-through, with two philters of wine on ice in them, an Antares specialty. He dropped the tray, going for a hidden firearm-
I had a sonic pistol. It cuts holes in you the size of Old Earth CD’s, at short range. I gave him three blasts of it, the thrum of air being cut, flesh and bone suddenly chopped into cylinders of severed matter.
He was down before he knew it, legs giving unceremoniously. He looked like he wanted to say something. Then that was that. The pistol he pulled was an onyx colored las deal. They are quiet, dependable, reliable, and clean. My ‘pistol was not, but that hardly mattered in the current discussion.
“F*ck.” I said.

“You weren’t lying. Good.” Wolverine had the pistol trained at the spot where the guard had been. The carpet beneath our feet was getting redder. For a microsecond I got queasy, and felt like the IK was going to give me one in the forehead, like the other guy got it.
“But-!”
“Shut it. One more word about this and there’s no deal. Pick up that guys pistol. Use a piece of paper…don’t touch it with your bare hands. DNA.”
I did as I was told, slowly and quietly.
“Good. Put the paper in your pocket.”
He dropped what looked like an olive green hockey puck on the ground. There was a high pitched sound, like a dentist’s drill, and all the lights went out, like the vid screens.
A localized ecm emitter.
“We’re out.” He said, in the sudden dark.
The door opened, a square of florescent white in the black, and we stepped into the corridor.
“Here.” He handed me what looked like a wafer the size of a Zippo. It was damn heavy, for how small it was.
“Vid warbler. Don’t want to be seen. Makes our image hazy. Not that anyone is going to investigate this, long. Corpers kill each other five a week. But we want to be meticulous, you understand?”
The southern drawl was conversational. Friendly, even. The enormity of the two murders still hadn’t landed on me. I just had that vapid, empty-from-the-sternum-down watery legged effect you get with an extreme adrenaline jolt. I felt my blood humming like electricity in the circuitry of my circulatory system.
We walked back from where we had come in. No one had seen us. The quiet was stifling.
He shot the guard with the laspistol, two to the head, two to the body. A jolt of small fusion and the brightness reminiscent of an oxyacetylene torch. The man fell forward across the crème colored console, and then back, to disappear behind the desk.
I was frozen, waiting for someone to come around the corner. What if a woman or some dumb wage slave came upon us? Could I shoot someone who didn’t have it coming?
Wolverine walked around the desk and fired twice more, his face expressionless. Than he dropped the pistol on the body.
Nobody came, and we slipped out into the cool of the night.
…
The drive.
“Give me your sonic.”
I did so.
We were parked by a hydrogen plant. The smell was chlorine and pine, the forest beyond barely lit by the fluorescents that glinted off the surging waters below.

He put everything into a box the color of old lead. It had a series of buttons on it’s side, and a handle like a lunch pail on it’s top. A digital readout graced the other side.
My door popped open. He got out of the car.
The drop on the other side, deep into the dam, must have been 400 feet. My insides felt like cool dishwater. I hate heights.
He set the box down, and placed the pistols in it. Than he stripped off the skin of his right hand. I realized it was a very thin glove, maybe only a few molecules.
“Ever seen one of these? Condenses everything in it. Crunches the atoms ‘til there’s nothing between them. One shot deal. Open, close, push handle down, hit coded sequence, and mush.”
The box made a groaning sound, as if a djinn that was sequestered inside was groaning at it’s confinement. The box was one foot square.
“Help me lift it.”
It took the two of us. I’d struggled with spent uranium gauss shells that had weighed less. The size of it threw me off. We jerked, braced, and finally heaved it over the side.
“There. The only investigative forensics experts that could do something with that live in SOL space. We’re done.”
I didn’t move, staring deep into the aquatic black, the light reflecting off the eddies below like liquid lightning. I thought of an ERPPC jolt firing off towards it’s target…
“That corp was trash. He got where he was by blowing up a freighter full of pioneers, because it contained clone material products from a rival company. He’d space you, his mother, and a thousand Jewish Luddites for a profit margin. The security guard used to be a slavemaster for Hajod. I tracked his bio a few days ago. Used to cattle prod new arrivals…break ‘em down for easy brainwashing. He got a job here after Hajod got aced. Don’t cry for that sorry f*ck. He saw our faces, and that makes him expendable.”
“Yeah.” I said.
I thought of the hairline crack in my Loki’s titanic barrel. Blue feed, gauzy and indistinct, in my mind.
…
We held the mission interviews in a rented VERTOL locker. 20’ by 20’, poorly vented. The walls were an institution green. The air was sweaty and metallic. Musty.
The first ones were indy mercs, like me. But dumb.
“Whattya got?” I asked.
“Daishi.” He was dim looking. Trying to look tough, he rolled a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. Had a twin lightening bolt tattoo on one forearm. KILLZ in bold letters on the other.
“Nope, too slow.”
“I can snipe.”
“Nope.”
The fifth was a little brighter.
“I’ve done runs for Davion and Enhanced Breed.”
“Nice.” Wolverine said.
“I was with DE for a while.”

“Really?” Wolverine seemed interested. “You do time on Vagos?”
A confused look fell across the man’s face like a dim shadow.
“Vagos?”
“Yeah. The moon.”
“Oh. Yeah, screwed up some. Had to see the inside of a brig.”
“Right. Bye.”
The guy made a face like a man who had just swallowed a mouth full of hydraulic fluid by accident, and left.
“Vagos?” I asked Wolverine, whispering.
“It’s a brothel/casino cruiser we owned at the time. Every fifty days service you got a weekend there. Big parties. I was in DE.”
“Oh.”
“No liars. Liars are undependable, and can’t keep their mouths shut, besides.”
“Spike, of the Void Alliance.”
He had a vibrant accent. It had an authoritative ring to it.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Liverpool.”
I had never heard of the planet.
“What you got? This is fast. 75 kph. No laggers. We’re not going to stay long. Hit and run, waaaay off planet.”
“I like travel. My mech goes that speed, no worries.”
“What you got?”
“Sunder, good up close and far away.”
“Your Sunder goes that fast? That’s 90 tons.”
“I don’t lie.”
Wolverine motioned to some chairs in the back.
“Have a seat, you’re in.”
The man’s eyes narrowed.
“I know you. You’re IK. You were on Fevel-6, during the Voice War.”
“Yeah, we lanced together.”
“Nice to see old faces.”
The next guy walked in kind of late, while I was having my fourth cup of coffee. He looked kind of short, maybe. Young, but…how do I describe it? Efficient. He had a face like a person who has dry wit for any situation.
“Scooby, of the Iconian Knights.”
“He’s in. My clan.”
I shook his hand. He had the same ring Wolverine had.
The other IK jerked a thumb at me.
“This is Eight-Track. He’s an indy.”
“Oh. Nice.”
The guy had almost the same accent as Spike.
“What you fly?” I asked him, as he settled himself in.
He took a while to answer, and when he did, looked up and away, not making eye contact.

“A Madcat, Eight. I’m long range fire support. Twin ERPPC, twin LRM20, and I don’t miss. I installed a new Icarus class BAP just yesterday.”
“Oh.” I said, impressed.
Spike seemed to be listening intently, trying not to appear to do so. He said nothing, but nodded to himself, as if agreeing with some mental decision.
The other mechwarriors we had pulled left the same way the came. Little fuss, no talking. Mech operatorsare different from pilots. Less bravado or something. Space jockeys die more often than Mech guys. I guess it’s the ejection pods we have.
Not that it matters. Ever seen a pod eject? You’d think there was some honor, and mech jocks are gonna let the poor schmuck get away. Nope, nope, nope.
If the pilot is bad, he’ll probably get away. Why kill a good pilot? Maybe that bad pilot will someday fight you in a different mech, and you’ll blow him up again…Ha!
But, if he’s an ace, if he’s known, if he’s ELITE, then it looks like a God-damned skeet range. Pop, pop, pop, his pod goes up and everyone takes a shot. Hell, pods aren’t that armored, ya know…
We picked up another guy. A Thor pilot.
“What about our limit?” I asked Wolverine.
“That guy’s elite. He’s good. Captain Scarlet, of the Void Alliance. He’s tagging alongside Spike.”
“Can we pay him?”
“Don’t have to.”
Right then, I knew what was up. My affair had turned into a clan affair, and that’s politics within politics, like so many boxes that you opened to find more boxes, ad infinitum, ad redundum.
It occurred to me, right then, that I should ask why would IK and VA want to run a mission for ND to take out a 58th communications outpost?
I was getting’ paid, right? Why did I care?
Scarlet seemed to get along famously. Scooby gave him a high five. Wolverine almost smiled, and shook his hand. Spike gave him that man-hug act, where you it’s only at the chest, two pats on the back, and you break after two seconds.
I suddenly felt pretty third wheel.
Scarlet was kind of young looking. Maybe he had his DNA recycled every couple of years, like most of the known universe.
“You fly a Loki, Indy?”
“Name’s Eight-Track.”
“Yeah, cool. Wolverine says you’re all that and a bag of bolts. What do you pack on your action? Twin LB10X? I got a set of 20’s, myself…”
“Nice.”
“We’re gonna mess them up. In and out. Boo-yah. I even have old vids of some of the 58th’s defensive action, on this moon where they had a communications post, and whipped the snot out of these guys called Fuzion. Kind of cool. Fuzion got their clocks cleaned, but we can learn where they left off. Ever heard of MisterFour? Know what he’d say? ‘We’re gonna funk them up.’ That’s what we’re gonna do.”
“How’s Four been?” Scooby asked.
Something in the air got tense. Wolverine threw a toothpick on the ground. Overhead, a rocket took off, probably to drop a corporate satellite.
Spike finally spoke. “Ain’t seen him. Some new gig, some-other-planetside.”
“Yeah.” Scooby said.
We moved again, some nameless high rise. Spike arranged it.
The sky turned molten gold as the day waned and night started to hold dominion over Antares. The river was a stretch of silver, turning to blood as it hit the horizon. The city was a collection of derridium blocks, the mist rushing in from the ocean to partially obscure it. Meanwhile, the hum of traffic was just white noise, from up here.
I turned from the window.
“Look at this.” Spike said.
The vid screen had a readout like a HUD. Arrows showed intent. A series of blue inscriptions gave a play by play of who was dyin’. Fuzion was getting’ the shaft from the 58th. It was disheartening.
I thought of Cecilia. I missed her. Damn.
No, gotta think of the job.
“Raven comes in with the NARC. Base let’s loose with the LRM’s…the mech in the back pop snipes, and a Shadowcat outflanks, radar off, with a gauss. Signature 58th. One less Thor.” Wolverine said, his southern drawl punctuating the staccato sound of ordinance.
Scarlet took a sip of his ale.
“They let the base soften up the attack, then move in. The 58th is fresh and ready, Fuzion is worn down. That’s where Fuzion put their d*cks in the mashed potatoes; they got too close and then fought the base, first. They didn’t make use of what we have; long range weaponry.”
Scooby looked at me. He gave me the look clanners gave indy’s. Like older brothers give their snot nosed siblings.
My Loki was repaired and outfitted. New armor and an ECM. Ready to rob and mob.
Wolverine and Spike had made the arrangements. In one day, we’d be within attack range on the 58th outpost. Our dropship, the Tsunetomo, departed in three hours.
I still hadn’t slept. No one had.
Wolverine stopped the tape. A Black Knight took gauss shots from three separate directions to it’s left kneecap. Leggers.
“Let’s watch this all again, and pool ideas.” Wolverine said.
I looked at the Spike guy. He wrote down a few notes on a steno notepad with a blue felt pen. He seemed bored.
“I don’t get it…why didn’t Fuzion bring in some of their own fire support?”
Spike’s accent gave his statement a kind of professional authority that made me wish I had come from the planet Liverpool. Some accents have that capability, but I have to admit a Southern drawl is perfect for telling someone, slowly, succinctly, and just as mellow as a man in a diner asked for a piece of banana cream pie, “I am going to lay a hurt on you, son.”
Scarlet spoke.
“Bad intel. They thought that particular outpost was in a forested area, with hills and whatnot, and that they could make use of the terrain. But 58th had cleared it. You don’t put an outpost in a place where invaders can have cover until they’re in your ear. We can assume 58th did the same with our target. Plus, I know Fuzion. They’re close assault all the way. Thor’s, LB20X’s and not a gauss at their disposal. They would have been better letting the drop pod land ten feet from the damn base.”
“To their credit, Fuzion had a notion that wasn’t bad. They dropped a duo of Shadowcats in on the delta sector of the base to rush in and stir things up. Problem was, their diversion came after the main attack. Someone in the cavalry blew their cool. By the time the Shadowcats arrived, 58th had already regulated proper. Two Shadowcats against a communications base and five mechs? Don’t blame those guys for bookin’.” Scooby said.
Wolverine looked almost half asleep, his eyelids almost closed, like a Buddhist monk in a temple in Kyoto. He swiveled his chair about five inches to face me.
“Eight-Track, give us the Mousekateer role call of what 58th has.”
“I ran some Antares satellite feed, but it was old, maybe a year. It’s not much of a base…58th is fairly confident nothing is gonna happen on this planet. You got two Ziggurat style LRM’s, but they have that improved lock design left over from the Dead At Birth war, that Simon invented. Two Twin Heavy gauss pods (Scooby let out a low whistle, and Scarlet shifted uncomfortably) and a man-powered ERPPC. Not bad. You got a Raven and a Shadowcat. Chances are the Raven does regular perimeter patrols, and we know it has a narc Waiting in the wings are some bad boys= a Thor and a Thanatos. But here’s the kicker, yo. Inside the main hangar bay is typically an assault mech. My guess is a Daishi. Industry standard.”
Spike stopped scribbling and looked at me. As he spoke, he pointed at me with the pen he was holding. The pen was a ruby metallic color, inscribed with a gold VA symbol.
“That’s a lot. Especially for a communications post. That feed has to be wrong.”
Wolverine spoke.
“58th has the creds, they can afford it. They believe that the best way to handle things is to have such a defense that attackers will have to show up with quite a bit to take you out. That means that any attackers will probably give their position away. Finally, remember, the 58th likes to keep lances squirreled away here and there, in the event they have to make a major offensive. The Daishi babysits.”
Scooby was watching the vid with an interest as intense as the rads from a solar flare. I wondered if he wasn’t just going to set down his nitrolite and climb into the screen. The feed-gauzy, blue, indistinct/distinct in fluctuating eddies of flickering video imagery.

“Check it. Notice the attack pattern 58th uses? The invaders arrive, and the Thor and Thanatos go right and left, respectively, almost as if they’re running away.”
He used a ring laser pointer to punctuate his marks on the screen. The blue dot followed the mech’s routes in their wide arcs.
“They let Fuzion come in close, after hammering most of their forces. The Raven and the Shadowcat harried them, the base blasted them, and they saved the Thor and Thanatos for later. Even let the base take a few hits. Fuzion had to turn around, their butts to the base, to deal with the heavies, and that’s when they really got their asses shot off.”
I watched again as the Black Knight took gauss shots from three separate directions to it’s left kneecap.
The glow from the vidscreen highlighted the IK’s face in blue, green, then the orange/red flower of demolition.
Again and again, for the next hour, until we hit the drop pod hangar, Fuzion died at the hands of the 58th.
I reached for more coffee.
Scooby put his hand over my mug with a deft move. Like a video edit; instantaneous.
“Nope. We’re gonna have about eight hours on the drop. You’ll need sleep. We’re going hiking, near the base.”
“Why-?”
The IK pilot said nothing. Like some hypnotic effect, I began to feel drowsy. My last thought before sleep came over me was about how Scarlet was getting paid. Probably by Spike, or maybe funded by his own clan. I thought of my 20,000, plus the 7,000, plus the repairs that had been done on my machine, and it all made sense.
…
A dropship is a dropship. Bell shaped, ball shaped, hexagonal, or even your conventional capitol ship clone, the basic idea shapes the basic design- move 2,000 tons of mechs from one place to another, trans-galactic, if need be, move them out, and come back after some metal has been knocked around.
Every dropship I’ve ever seen was as ugly as a junkyard dog licking piss off a urinal, and often looks as if it were welded together in the same working environment the said urine-consuming canine would inhabit.
The depot stretched for three miles in either direction, the floor a derridium surface, ultra dense ferro-concrete, the slate landscape broken up by mechs, components, vents, engines, dropships (six of them) and both heavy movers and tea kettle shaped anti-gravs lifters, their workers attending them diligently, focused, their tangerine jumpsuits smudged by rust and electrical burns.
The sound in the place was constant and discordant, ‘lifter sirens droning, the klank of bolters, the steel on steel groan of surfacing kinetics, the burning metal scorch of a dropship launching off on some mission you’d never know about unless you had some juice.

The sound of a quick mech refit had a buzzsaw zzzzzzzzz sound that made your spine telescope and filled your mouth with a metallic flavor, resounding and amplifying until the final punctuating screech of myomers and/or endo-steel plates meshing on a molecular level until the whole project was finished, it’s resolution signified by the sound of what felt like a ten ton block of gold falling on a vast, superheated iron plate. Always sounded to me like an egg being fried, the ozone-oxide stench of it impacting your sense of smell; gold/iron/fusion.
Spike seemed to revel in it. As some tech jocks machined the housings of an aft leg heavy myomer, he inhaled deeply, like it was Cuban tobacco or lightly smoldering cherry wood.
I decided that our dropship looked like a Bora smelting scow. It could carry ten mechs easy, which put it straight into the stealth class of dropships, which is really funny considering how motherin’ big that mofo truly was. Mother of mercy, that gouged up rust hacked trash compactor looking ‘dropper was baboon’s ass-ugly. I could see spire rocket impact craters up and down it’s thrice ablative derririum flanks. It’s nose was an immense, bronze, thumbless fist.
Our mechs were already stowed. My Loki’s arm gleamed with fresh construction, the Clan LB10X refurbished, refitted, and heavy tooled. I had recalibrated the brace of heavy lasers, and reloaded the LB10X on the other arm.
The personnel locker was a series of plasteel walls with head-sized titanium cogs holding it all together. The sleeping foam mats seemed clean enough. I really didn’t want to sleep on them, though. Not that I have standards, or a decent sanitary regimen when I am on the job. I just have this morbid fear of dying in my sleep on some damn mech pusher.
We each had a mat and plexaluminum rack. Maximum utilitarian/minimum comfort. Made me feel apprehensive. I had seen a casualty cooler array once that had looked just like it, years before. Cockpits were armored, well. You could be as dead as a hyena-gnawed zebra carcass in the dust of some Serengeti, but you would look nice and pretty if your mech went up into scrap and thermal detritus and the ‘pod didn’t fly out in time.
Scooby threw a duffel onto his. Spike and Wolverine had already crashed out. The IK pilot hadn’t even taken off his boots. They were 12 hole Gripfast, each one with a sole riveted by ten steel screws.
Scarlet was a friendly guy.
“Hey Scooby, weren’t you on Armitage during the Schare-Kaledos summit?”
“Yeah.”
“See some shooting?”
“Yup.”
“How much?”
“A lot. Took a couple of rounds.”
“Damn. Heard Cooper was some badass from nowhere. Killed some fools with his own bare hands.”
“Wouldn’t know.”
“Damn.”
The VA pilot squinted at me. He looked young.
“Were those Madorian signature badges on your Loki?”

“Yah. I flew with the Tigershark’s. Desert and arctic. Mostly fascist rebels.”
“Pre-Comerca or post-Comerca?”
“Post, man. Way post.”
“Rightfully so, Indiot.” Scooby said.
“That’s not cool, Scooby, we’re all friends on this drop. Right?” Scarlet seemed perfectly at ease. He sat on his bunk the way an Emperor would sit on his throne.
“Sorry, man, I, uh, wasn’t here. Thinking.”
Indiot, that’s what Clanners call us.
“It’s all good, man, I get it everywhere.”
“Are you IS?” Scarlet moved the subject back around.
“Used to be. I upgraded to clan a year ago.”
“Pretty rough goin’ IS, right?”
I threw my boots under the plastic/aluminum fiberweeve bunk. Some of the avocado colored paint was scratched away, revealing bright silver.
“Yeah, but it forced me to improvise. I did a lot of ambush ops, early on.”
“Nothin’ wrong with that. This whole arrangement is an ambush op.”
I walked over to the view portal and looked upon the gloss black hulls of our mechs, their new decals gleaming with the manticore and triple crown of Dead At Birth.
Dead At Birth. A group of university kids who’d took a small cult under Madoria’s splinter group fascist rule on the nearby sand moon of Dedaboruth, and had boiled the blood of the whole galaxy in a fever pitch of total and absolute confict. A programmer, a physicist, a media mogul and a psychosocial militant strategist had pulled off what was simply to be a multiple thesis pan-doctorate, and maybe things had so very gotten out of their combined hands…
How many died? Five billion? Does it really ****in’ matter after the first two or three?
They were gone, but you always hear rumors, ghost story whispers, haunted eddies in the info stream…
Why?
Wolverine knew his counter-intel. He was black ops, somewhere in his bio. This whole mission was already encrypted. All of the bills were being sent to a dummy mech outfit, paid by an even dumber corporation façade. Our communication was a cloaked Madorian code derivative. Our mechs were jet camo, the joints and bolts hit with brass electroplate. You looked at them, and I must say you could get this palpative sense of doom that was as menacing as it was morbid.
Even the IFF signature license was altered accordingly.
Well, now you know. That’s what clans and indy’s do. Got a black op? Wanna smash up some other clan, corp, or vengeful government regime? Slap on the badge of a dead fascist/terrorist/fanatical cult/clan/merc movement, and go bust some heads. You’re Iconian Knights, The Void Alliance, New Dawn, or whatever, you’ve slagged some metal and turned some enemy into so much bio-mechanical dross, and you’ve hit the dropship, countin’ the creds, you’ve left all that destruct in your rear-view, and what are the survivors screamin’ what caused it?
Dead At Birth!
Dead At Birth!
Dead At Birth!

Ha!
…
I had f*cked up dreams.
I thought of Wolverine and myself in the apartment. Only this time, I was the one who killed that corporate guy. I took out a sonic and aimed it at his face, only it cut a scarlet rimmed circular hole in his head, and it dropped onto the ground near my foot and made a metal-on-metal wibble-wobble sound.
(A Black Knight took gauss shots from three separate directions to it’s left kneecap-it hit the ground head-first, the weight of itself crushing the pilot into gelatinous pulp-)
The dead corp looked at me, he still had an eye and some teeth. His mouth was a quarter-crescent of freshly severed skin and bone.
“You’re dead, man. My company is going to ace you and your girlfriend, Indiot.”
He smiled.
“Last year we released a cloned synthetic neutrino that had a defective amino, through a sub-corp called Clax. The amino killed 10,000 people through most of the galaxy, although they don’t know it, yet. We covered it up through a media sweep so insidious and total that Noam Chomsky himself would have never seen it coming. Then we released a counter-synthetic neutrino to counteract the side-effects-“
(A Black Knight took gauss shots from three separate directions to it’s left kneecap-)
“-through another sub-corp, which doesn’t cure the ultimately lethal effects of the amino, of course, because that would be too expensive-“
I shot another hole in him. There was a hollow thrum and the impact of sound severing bone and tissue. Wet.
“-my point being, of course-“
(A Black Knight took gauss shots from three separate directions to-)
Why did-?
I could see the vid behind him. Gauzy, blue, indistinct/distinct in fluctuating eddies of flickering video imagery.
“-that if my corporation could kill 10,000 unaware people-“
(A Black Knight took gauss hits from three-)
Why did Wolverine-?
The hole in his chest was gauzy and indistinct. Blue feed, flickering.
“-murdering your girlfriend and you will be nothing-“
(Gauss hits from-)
Why did Wolverine kill-?
Red rimmed. Gauzy. Blue feed. Flickering.
(Gauss-)
“-at all.”
Why did Wolverine kill that guy?
…
Was I really going to ask him?
…
I woke up, sweating, the mechanical pulse of the dropship thrumming hydraulically below, around, and above me. Everyone else was asleep.

Couldn’t sleep. No sleep. We’d be going, soon.
Beyond the plasteel, into the mech bay, I could see the outline of my Loki, impenetrable and blackly august in the tenebrous expanse of the hold.
Eventually we would drop back onto the surface of Antares.
There, we would find the 58th, and do what we were going to be paid to do.
…
Wolverine was going over a holo of the surface of the planet.
He had taken a plastifoam chair in front of a series of vid screens connected by coils of matte black cable to it’s system rig, like the rubber veins of some machine beast…it had a low tech paradigm to it that drew me in, the light behind eclipsing the loops and whirls of data feed. I recognized the rig, a Sony Dumonte that was capable of Tachyon channel communication.
He was in Levi’s and a cotton weave ballistic t-shirt, smoking a cigar that gave off a heavy aroma of vanilla and brandy. I cold imagine the moist tobacco, stored in beer colored casks after being cloned in some Sol space styled green house.
I had slept four hours, but it felt like twelve. There was coffee, thank the Titans.
The others were still logging in some hours on the unconsciousness channel. I had walked past Scooby Doo’s bunk, as he had turned onto his side, muttering a curse in his slumber.
“We’re going to do some marching.” Wolverine said, in a manner not without it’s cryptic qualities.
“Yah?”
“Yes.” He had a ruby light pen, like the VA one Spike had used, but it was sapphire, with an IK on the side.
Ok, so it was a sapphire light pen. I screwed up. I’ve seen too many ruby ones, you know.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“I don’t want to march in there in our mechs, without knowing what the 58th has for us. ECM or no, I want to get some eyeballs going. We got weapons, and the 58th is way too confident to patrol on foot. We’ll analyze the landscape, and then move in with the machinery.”
“Cool.”
“Can you hit the ground?”
Every clan pilot was ISBT (Industry-Standard-Basic-Training) licensed, which was a three month course anyone who went anywhere near a mech or starship accomplished before he could use either. The ISBT license was necessary to purchase anything related to mechs or starships. Kind of a joke…why learn infantry tactics if you are going to pilots 75+ tons of cold fusion driven ordinance? But ISBT was f*cking far more thorough than the basic training most infantry jocks got. Fight sims, twenty-hour plus drills and marksmanship, psychosurgery and chemical assisted, of course. Then finally, The Anvil, a hell-week of NO sleep, NO food, bare minimum water and nothing but shooting, moving, fighting and digging in. It did a number on your medulla, and it got to where you almost had frikkin’ flashbacks, but it virtually guaranteed that if someone handed you a gyrojet rifle, you could put a hole in someone’s head a mile away and march home to tell the tale…

“Yah.” I said. “I’m IS-“
“Cool.” He said.
I didn’t ask him.
The dropship vibrated about us, almost at the edge of our perceptions, and I realized we would be hitting the LZ in two hours.
Checking back into the shadows of where we had got our sleep, I could see the
plasteel window to the mech bay, a cool gray rectangle in the half-light. The arm of Scarlet’s Thor, it’s surface a grid of ferro-fibrous and rivets of admantine-galvanized titanium.
I looked back to the IK pilot. He was getting ready to make a planetary Tach communication via a series of quantum encrypted gamma channels…standard issue for a Heavy Corporate Industrial rated clan.
“We have to move if we’re going to make your mission. The 58th has been pretty hot in the radar and communications category, and New Dawn is starting to sweep.”
“I told you we didn’t have long.”
I thought again about asking Wolverine about that corporate, and then dismissed the thought as he produced a genetic locked Matroxx Gauss Pistol. It was big, like you could just hurl the sucker like a brick and cave in someone’s skull if you ran out of ammo.
I knew that it was banned on every Capitol Ship and base in Fringe and Sol space- planet only, not even Hajod would let his troops carry the weapons- on the off chance a shot would penetrate the hull of anything in space and risk atmospheric decompression.
There was no flesh wound with a gauss pistol. While the depleted uranium slug was no bigger than your fingernail, if it grazed you it’d still take a Pomeranian-sized hunk out of you.
He set it on the desk in front of him, a piece of frosted jet plasteel on the scratched olive nickel-aluminum composite surface, and began to type, the tip of his cigar smoldering like the orange red eye of a mephit.
The liquid metal of the screen’s atom/xenon display warbled and froze, whirls of quantech TCP/IP Tachyon Class Encryption, glacier blue/white, oscillating in a trilligon maelstrom in eddies of boiling vinyl hue, gravitating until an IK live feed conference script loaded.
“Stay put and shut up. You’ll learn a thing or two.” He said.
I stayed put.
“Archon Wolverine, status?”
“Magenta. Orbiting dropzone, 2 hours.”

The face was that of a man of some indeterminate middle age, bald, his features etched and distinctly European. His left eye was a military class Magnus optic, his other unblinking eye perfectly human, the iris a gunmetal blue.
I could see a map of faint scars on his face, one of which curled his lip slightly. His collar was high and marked with Overlord symbols.
Jesus, was this a Dominion?
IK Dominion, covert op cyborg bogeyman. Every clan and independent knew somebody who had a story about a Dominion whacking someone with impunity in full view of family, friends, and domestic law enforcement, only to fade off in the bureaucratic mist, as gossamer and quiet as the dreams of dying men.
“Excellent, I have patched a live feed from Excalibur op channels into New Dawn space. They are flexing, mostly fulfilling ancient corporate obligations, as well as expanding trade.”
“The 58th is a threat to our terra forming projects a decade hence, according to our Dios A.I. New Dawn is wise in eliminating a potential threat, as well as bringing about a lucrative opportunity to further trade in relation with our intended colonies.”
Wolverine spoke.
“I’m on it, sir. The team is ready to roll, and plausible deniability is in effect. Scooby is here, and we got a few VA.”
“VA?” The Dominion’s lip curled slightly.
“Yes.”
“I trust your judgment. Their mecha operations exceed our own, yet our goals are certainly parallel.”
“In ten days the 58th won’t have a radar base, here. I have contracted an Excalibur team to watch our intel when we return, but I don’t anticipate any serious planet-side static.”
“My sources tell me the team is led by Arioch. You have little to fear from any potential opposition.”
“Any word on those organic spontaneous fission cases?”
What the hell did that mean?
“We are still compiling data, but there is a report of one event in the Lunar colony, and another near Hajod Barony Space. All eyewitness report indicates they are similar, but it has yet to warrant and man pan-galactic attention…it’s too fantastic, too sporadic, and too isolated.”
“Eerie.”
“Indeed.”
I was lost.
The IK puffed his cigar in the long knowing silence between them. Smoke rose and curled, obscuring the screen.
“Roth Shalla, Archon Wolverine. Success to your operations…and I hope your friend in that chair 5.5 meters to your right can keep his lips sealed.”
I felt a jolt in my spine of distant electrical fear.
The feed cut, and Wolverine muttered “****” under his breath, crushing the burning ember that was the end of his cigar into an ash tray of dull gray iron, shaped like lotus leaf.

“What was that about?” I asked.
There was a pause as Wolverine seemed to go into some mental save mode, like a computer. Storing info, squaring away facts…you got warm from being in the vicinity of so many firing neurons.
I could hear the waking sounds in the other room. Zippers being undone, Velcro being ripped, coughing, and the occasional muttered swear word. The supercomputers in racks of two’s and three’s, linking to the display, warbled and beeped like electric Theravadian monks. I could hear the machine rattle sounds of our mechs being prepared for departure. It was the clamor of drills, the din of calibration and maintenance routine.
Wolverine’s speech abilities seemed to come online.
“The usual bag of factors= commerce, popularity, politics and power.” He said, his gaze on the charred remains of his stubbed cheroot.
The screen rippled wetly and began to scroll an E-trade logic schematic.
“How’d he know?”
“He heard your heartbeat. Dominion operatives are half hardware, half synth-organic, and that’s all you get to know. He’ll hold it over my head that you were here, but it ain’t the Sword of Damocles.”
“Damn.”
Damn.
The IK pilot punched a button on the screen, and it diffused to a flat gray, like melted vinyl cooling to become a square of dead-digital clay.
“Let’s motor.” He said. “We’re planetside.”

…
Our drop was as uneventful as it was ever going to be. We were in a field between vast stretches of forest and slate-hued granite rock beds. A silvery shroud of mist had fallen upon us, darkening up into the horizon to become black/blue thunderclouds that threatened storms, like livid violet bruises against an aluminum sky.
We had organized the equipment under the vast shadows of our machines, while the dropship had left us in it’s cold fusion driven wake. There’s always that feeling, as 5,000 tons of transport leaves you to your fate, that you really should have ditched a few years of combat training to take an afternoon class on typing and be an accountant for Galspan.
But I’ll tell you, Clan ops are a splendid, spending thing. We had it all. AI assisted field surgery bots. Plutonium driven Tachyon communicators. Fold up atmospheric solar tents. Self microwaving civilian grade field rations. Heavy distance surveillance gear, both audio and visual, with enough anti-encryption application software to crack anything within five miles in two hours, as long as it wasn’t mecha class, which used a radically different coding sequence. We even had constitution level gamma inductors, for perimeter work. They looked liked possum-sized hubcaps the color of chewed mint bubble gum, but one touch of a button and they faded like a mirage until you could only see the outline of it if you squinted.
We had some fine weapons, too.
Each of us were sporting laspistols, standard clan-issue assault gyrojet rifles, and one A.P.C.A.U.T.P.R. (Antigrav Portable Cartridge Assisted Unguided Tiger Projection Rifle). I kind of felt the need for something heavier, but then again, we were flying mechs into 58th territory.

“Figures I’d be marching again.” Scarlet said. “I should have stayed in space.”
Scarlet’s arms were tattooed with neon-hued ops sigils, old records of wars on other worlds, or in the cold and ferocious space between. One was a fist of lightening bolts, against a shield of copper, with a list of the dead in binary orbiting about it.
He was muscled, like he hit the weight room a day or three a week. F*ck, he looked like his Thor.
A few others had old DAB War vet tats, heavy ones, everything from footwork, piloting ops, mech cadre munitions sabotage, and a couple of Capitol Ship raiding parties, including a First-In Assault Pod tag, and from what I remembered those guys had a %90 casualty rate. I suddenly felt oddly out of my league- I was a mech jock, no more, no less, but it was what had paid for my bread, ammunition, and spare parts these last grip of years.
It was day, but there was certainly not a lot of sun to be seen. A fake night; the wind whistling low to rustle the leaves of distant aspen, droning through the silent chassis of our mechs, grim and colossal under that violet and black sky above.
I felt as if we were some post-apocalyptic band of roving tribesmen, questing in the name of some primordial cause. We were hunched over our equipment, listening to Wolverine lay out the plan. My breath frosted before me, and Scooby rubbed a coin sized heat module back and forth over his hands.
I ran a mental calculation. We had a Thor and a Loki, both of which were close range brawlers. We had a Madcat, for a hit from the distant horizon. We had a Sunder, which was probably a laser beast. Than we had Wolverine, in a Thanatos. I was pretty sure he was packing LRM’s in the broad mechs squared limb. Next to the slim profile of my Loki, it looked like a muscle augmented powerlifter- broad shouldered and malefic in the half dark.
Wolverine used a holo palm top to show us the plan.
“We roll in at angle Alpha, keeping our radars very much off, gentlemen. Once we’re within two days march from the 58th, we are going in on foot to measure the odds and take readings. We pick a time and move in, than we move out. The lift coordinate is 80 kilometers away, here.” His finger jabbed the screen, and the NAV point rippled green across a grid of gold and jet.

“Questions? Comments? Insults?”
“Yeah.” Spike said. “What about that Raven. I don’t mind fighting them, providing I’m behind 90 tons of ordinance.”
“I got personal bafflers for all of us. No way a Raven is going to spot us in the forest, here. We’ll all have blinder chaff, plus Scooby here is going to be in the background, in case he has to move in.”
“We gonna let them come to us?” I asked, wishing I had brought a module like Scooby’s.
“I’d like to, but we have to hit them fast. No one here wants trench warfare, and if we get surrounded in a pincer like Fuzion it’s going to be a lot of slow marchin’ and loud singin’ Chinese style funeral for us. We’re going to move in and out, straight line strafe, and you and Scarlet are going to hunt anyone who tries to put us between the base and harm’s way. Let Spike and I take the base, you guys hunt anyone who circles back. We’ll deal with the Raven when we deal with it.”
“Yeah.”
Miles above us, the atmosphere growled metallically.
…
Mech jocks and star pilots are a whole different mutation, let me tell you.
I had fallen in with all kinds, during my stint as an independent. Your far eyed idealists, your shallow greed heads, your media-driven autocratic fascist exhibitionists, your serious gun-ho soldier do-or-die-shut-up-and-be-military breeds, even your born again Christian mech jocks for Jehovah.
Clan pilots where any and all of these, but ultimately they were, like me, part hustler, part hardcore, part hellraiser.
Our team was cruising across the grassy delta towards the deep mountains where the 58th waited, crooning electronically to the distant stars beyond.
We kept it as 75kph, ECM on and radar off. But the private team chat was as brazen as it was raucous. These guys had been there, done that, gone over the deep end and had come back to brag about it with the ruthless sincerity of a human who had seen war in all it’s burning and blood-soaked revelry, and was now an artificer of it’s gruesome design.
So you laughed it up ‘cause it beat mewling with fear in some corner of a mental asylum, strapped down while a nurse tries to feed you thin rice gruel.
Wolverine told us about a drunken knife fight in a tobacco smoke clouded Ozark beer joint, culminating with the swashbuckler-like incorporation of a microphone as a kusuri-gami.
Scarlet and Scooby quipped back and forth with a steady barrage of stainless steel dynamically engineered puns (“We’re gonna mech it!” “We’re mechin’ good time!” “Loki over there, what do you see?” “What are you looking Thor?” “I’ve got an English lit degree from Mech U and have studied the auto-canon!”)

Spike waxed philosophical about experimental bio constructed infinite efficient heat sinks that would put ballistic weaponry out of business. A corporation called NH/UA was working on the design, even hosting huge simulated holo duels, with mechs carrying unbelievable amounts of energy weaponry, yet remaining as cool as liquid oxygen.
“It’s the future, mate. I’ve got a friend named Travbad who’s helping with the development schemantics.”
“No gauss? No LB10X? Kind of dry…” I said.
“It’s the future, Indy. It’s the next stage.”
“Yeah, but there’s something to be said for a 12 ton shotgun. Especially when it chambers a round…”
…
Later, the night outside was moonless; as black as a dish of shoe polish. The vault of rolling thunderheads above had stolen the stars and sequestered the moon, leaving us in the sepulcher of a sackcloth sky.
We skirted the river in the elemental dark, following one another’s radar signatures, until we reached a shelf of earth that split itself into a canyon of quartz and basalt, the silver mist, lit by the expanding dawn, blanketed a jungle of emerald leaves and glittering ferns the color of ferns. When the sun finally rose, it would be a cold and remote pearl in the platinum horizon.
We had negotiated the rubble covered slope, our mechs sometimes wobbling erratically as a combination of fine tuned myomers and a proto-AI assisted gyroscope kept a couple million creds worth of machinery from dropping a mile to end up as meaningless wreckage, ass up, face down.
“Nobody here brought jump jets?” Scooby asked, after his Madcat had shuddered and then slid downward (much to our immediate horror), surfing a ton of rock and dirt a fourth of a mile before it found it’s footing (much to our instantaneous relief), the crystalline dust kicked up into the canyon kilometer by kilometer, obscuring our view before it settled.
“Nope.” Wolverine said. “I’ve shot enough of those smartasses.”
Every mech jock had seen it. Two lances in a sniper fight using every hill and valley as cover, until a Shadowcat or MKII went burning up over a mountain to be shot ‘til it looked like a scorched erector set by pilots on the other side.
“Like trap or skeet.” Spike said. “Pull!”
His laugh echoed mechanically over out team comms.
We hit the jungle, the chassis of our machines crashing through the dense canopy. Vines snapped across my cockpit, broad leaves slapping against the plasteel.
I was thankful for the growth that shrouded our mechs on either side. It kept us out of view, protecting us from the barrage of LRM’s or the well-aimed gauss…

I had to admit, the brief flashes I got as I maneuvered through the flora, fauna, and foliage was worth the drop. Clusters of brightly hued flowers, crystalline waterfalls plummeting to diamond-clear rivers fringed with lush ferns, occasionally parting to reveal broad expanses of iron colored shale, fallen logs blanketed in moss, the earth unseen beneath the verdant primordial growth.
“What a quaint and lush ecosystem.” Scooby said.
“An Eden undiscovered.” I said.
“Perhaps we might acquire an atom bomb so we may do more damage than we are doing, already.”
Spike broke in.
“Don’t let your green thumbs twitch themselves into a knot. This will all grow back, regardless of how hard we squash it. I know this shrubbery. I did some infantry action in Brazil, Laos, Zanditkantlos…this side of mother nature can take a hit. Nothing delicate, here. Especially anything you see that’s green. The animals heard us and fled a long time ago.”
“Wish we had more of it.” Scarlet said.
I couldn’t agree more.
We were covered, yes, but we all knew that this would just serve burr the keen edge of our instincts when we hit the 58th comm. post. We wouldn’t have this forever, and the long green expanse towards the post would seem longer still when every LRM had us in it’s sights.
In that battle there would be no cover.
No, none at all…
…
We kept chugging for six hours, took an hour break, and then hit it for five more hours. That’s when the awareness that we had entered 58th communications space fell upon us, quiet and spectral, like a spider web across your face as you walk in a forest at night.
We tuned in, and there it was, a blanket of static frayed and worn, patched with Tachyon amplifiers and an audio grid of networked relay systems, out-of-date coders, and heavy emitters to spike the signal sharp enough to puncture ozone and touch planets light years away.
“Listen in, boys.” Wolverine said, his voice above the harsh discordance of a thousand data whispers. “If all goes well, no one will hear it in a week.”
…
Camp was simple.
We set up the mechs in a semi-circle, facing our backs against the lush tropical foliage, replete with trunks the color of blanched bone or umber, with it’s dense conglomeration of fronds, leaves, and palms swaying in the misted wind.
We synched our personal gravs to all the mechs and memorized the lift point. A step to the invisible lift chute and a vortex of physics keyed to each of the code rings we wore- and up you went, awash in weightlessness, to the door of your mech’s control pad.

It was brisk and polished, much easier than a myomer assisted lift assembly, like crews a hundred years ago had to deal with.
What a waste of hardware that must have been at the time.
The gamma inductors were put into place, but we scarcely doubted we would need them. The 58th outpost had a few tanks, but no real localized infantry. Footwork had it’s time and place, but a 70 ton machine capable of letting loose with a fusillade of sophisticated weaponry kind of nullified a platoon of guys with rifles. Even if they had MASER’s.
Communications was put in a slate colored khaki tent in the center, with a few vidscreens ready for transmission when we made the march and set up the live feed.
We had grav assisted microshielded tents, for keeping out the invertebrates and off the soil, and enough chemical showers to go around. For nocturnal illumination, we used night gear. Even with the canopy above filtering the deep, deep blue of night to black, we all knew any fluorescence could signal our location and invite an attack. “All it takes is one Shadowcat when we aren’t ready for it,” Spike said. “And then we’re right f*cked.”
Using connection epoxy, dense molecule energy wire, and pane upon jagged pane of stealth fields, we draped the camp in concealing technology. It took two hours of climbing trees and mechs with smart ropes and an endless supply of micr-gravs that Wolverine pulled out of a locker, but the effect was worth it.
Standing on the vine infested ground, sore from the monkey-work, my limbs and joints a distant throb of aching cartilage and worn sinew, I could look up and see the fields, like vast shards of translucent amethyst, angelic and vitreous in the inky grotto of the nocturnal jungle.
…
My dreams were indistinct and tenebrous. A cube of unconsciousness boxing me in, the faces of old memories, submerged in shadows and mouthing illusions, pressed up against the glass.
I geared up and slung a gyrojet rifle over my shoulder my hand parting the
delicate folds of the tents micro-field to reveal the verdant splendor. Too much damn nature. Made my eyes ache. I missed the look of ferroconcrete.
I had been in space for years at a time, aboard starships and in sprawling bases on the sides of moons. The primordial explosion of natural splendor hit me between the senses, like mother nature had put on a set of brass knuckles composed of teak and konked me on the bridge of the nose so hard I bled green, eyes tearing up and sight of all that damn plantlife.
I popped a can of nitrolite and drank, watching the golden half circles of fragmented sunlight, filtered by the abundance of palm trees and drifting vines above.

I found the river, following it’s silver lilt to it’s banks, the loam as dark as coffee grounds.
My feet found their way to the waters that were as tepid and opaque as cold stout beer. A mist crept in on cloudy paws to hit eddies and currents to be gently torn to cotton shreds.
The water washed over my boots. Out in the dark, a loon screamed, and I was somewhere else.
…
Two years ago.
A swamp on a terraformed planet, somewhere in the outer whorls of the expanding ripples of Fringe space, deep in the center.
“Over there.” The first one said.
“Naw, farther in.” The second said.
They were as professional as highly paid chauffeurs. I felt a weird sense of disassociation, as if I had made an appointment to be whacked.
I stumbled over a vine that had snaked it’s way out of the dense fog and barely kept myself from falling onto my face in the murk.
A gyrojet shell detonated near my head, sending up a gout of mud the color of decayed skin a meter off the soaked ground.
“Easy, turbo, can’t shoot you, here.” The one with the pistol, said.
They had waited for me in my own car. I used my voicelock, got in, and found myself at the wheel with a gun in my ear.
Smart angles with these guys. One with the pistol directly behind, six feet away, too far to turn on. One with a lasrifle to my near left, flanking. Then me, face forward, fingers laced behind my head. It kept me off balance and unable to do anything evasive. Not that I could fight worth a f*ck bare handed, anyhow, and certainly not in a swamp against two guys with firearms. If they had just detonated my car while I was in it with an atom bomb, I could not have been more dead.
My sonic pistol had been in my glove compartment. They took it, along with the $10,000 cred chip I had put there. For the bookie I owed it to, I might add. I has actually been on my way to his office.
It was the most classic of reasons to get railed; I had failed to pay off a bookie.

I had sold some light gauss ammo I had smuggled back while on garrison duty contracting for Galspan. I had sold it fast and cheap, and was en route to the bookie’s office, but hit men get paid for a contract, not for collecting. I don’t know how much there were going to end up with, but the $10,000 was frosting, for them.
The man with the rifle had sealed the chip into a zip pocket. They had made me drive to a swamp fifty miles out, and then had walked me in.
So here I was, in a deep cold panic, the mist crawling up hungrily around my heels.
They were spacers, probably from around Kuniper belt, from the dialect. As sharp as monofilament wire as they were, the two had not been on a lot of planets, I could tell. But to them, a barren place, a pistol, and a corpse, and you had a recipe for a profit. I was just an ingredient.
I had tried to reason with them, but even scared out of my damn skin, I didn’t have it in me to beg. I knew there was little point- they had evil, frozen eyes and the flat expressions of experienced soldiers. They didn’t operate mechs, but it didn’t matter.
My fear was up, way up. The drive had helped it along, the swamp had amplified it, but it wasn’t until my slip that the whole feeling of being truly doomed had come upon me.
This was it.
I thought of Cecile, waiting at our 99th story apartment
It was different than the andrenal jolt one got from combat. I felt lucid, my vision a tunnel of fear. There was no way out of this- and yet there was a synchronicity that was set inside of me, next to a nauseous cloud of fear. Eight Track, a.k.a. Falzio Dupre, mechwarrior, gunrunner, part time smuggler and independent contractor…he grew up on the edge of Sol, did some scores, had some moments, met a nice girl who treated him better than he deserved, and then owed money to people he really should have paid off right away and got clipped.
I should have ditched the car.
I should have called the bookie.
I should have paid him sooner.
“Hey, Mr. Track, pick up the pace, we got a ship to catch, ha-ha-ha!”
I should have called Cecile.
I should have signed on with a clan.
I should have been better to Cecile.
****.
“Over there, by those rocks. Perfect.”
There they were. My gravestones.

I knew what I looked like- hair matted with sweat, trembling, eyes bulging in panic- my tongue felt like a thick piece of dried leather in my mouth.
We came to a shallow part of a river area of the swamp. Moss dappled logs, the color of umber, stacked atop each other, criss crossing the brackish waters that stunk of rot, decayed earth, and brine.
“Watch your step, Fitz. Keep him covered.” The voice behind me said.
Fitz. His name was Fitz. I was going to be shot in some filthy ****ing swamp by a guy named Fitz.
Please get me out of this, I thought. I didn’t know who I was praying to- call it Tao, or God, or Buddha, or Allah- but praying kept me from dissolving into a puddle of fear, even though I had no right to do it.
My heartbeat hammered in my chest. I could feel it pulsing in my throat, almost gagging me.
If I get out of this, I’m never going to gamble again. I’m going to stop cheating on Cecile, I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to…
They made me walk across first, and I slipped again, my leg sinking knee deep into the frigid muck.
The two hitmen behind me laughed. For no real reason, their mockery flamed me. I felt stupid and helpless, and it made me even angrier. Not that it was going to do me any good. I was outgunned in every sense of the term.
We were halfway across, the river was maybe five meters- when I turned slightly, seeing the one called Fitz navigate across, he rifle trained upon me. Is face was a series of cruel lines and merciless features, impassive and murderous…
…then a log erupted from the moss colored water in a spray of mud and bit into Fitz’s right arm with a grinding roar.
A shot went by my ear with a zip of rent atmosphere. The wash engulfed the human and the creature, I saw a glimpse of it, scaled hide, a flash of teeth, and then they both disappeared into the murk.
The other hitman with the pistol turned to where they had been a microsecond ago.
“Fitz? Fitz!!?”
His pistol was aimed low, at the water.
I charged, closing the distance, going for his arm, slipping on the moss, hitting him at his knee in an uncoordinated tackle.
Then were were in the water, chest deep.
My vision was a centrifuge of grey sky and black mud.

I punched him in the face.
He rolled with it, and then clawed at my face, cursing.
I had his gunarm by the jacket sleeve. My other hand found his shoulder as he pushed me into the water to drown me.
I kicked his legs out, and I pulled with what little leverage I had. We both went under again.
But my feet found the bottom of the pond, and I pulled and tore with my hands. The jacket came free.
I broke out of the water and onto the shore, the jacket in my hands.
Fitz was still screaming.
An alligator. I thought. Stupid luck. Stupid luck. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
The other hitman was trudging through the mud away from me, yelling incomprehensibly, towards the rifle on the other shore.
I went after him, fighting my way through the water and swamp detritus.
I tore at the inside button of the jacket, searching.
He was out of the water, almost to the rifle.
“Fitz!!?” He said, looking around. It was as if he had forgotten about me entirely, even as he reached for the weapon.
I pulled at the sonic pistol, still running forward, almost slipping. I felt uncoordinated, my vision whirling. The pistol caught on the edge o the inside pocket. I pulled, harder, realizing I couldn’t feel my legs.
He had the rifle in his arms. He turned towards me, mouth open, teeth bared. I could see the black circle that was the rifle’s barrel…
I shot him in the chest from about ten feet away.
He seemed to freeze in place, head going up, eyes screwed shut, teeth bared, then he staggered back…
I shot him again, and again, in the belly and the chest.
He sank to his knees, eyes open, mouth open, letting out a hoarse, voiceless groan.
I shot him once more, and most of his face came off in an arc of bone and skin.
There was the WUUUUFFFFT! sonics, the sound of silk ripping as his flesh and bone were cut into perfect cylinders, the he fell face forward into the reddening wet earth.
Everything kind of stopped.
There was the shore, the powdered steel sky, the branches of dead trees piercing the moors, and the hitman, dead at my feet, so red with his own blood I couldn’t see the mud on him, anymore.
I ditched the pistol. Sonics pack a hit like a ten ton sickle, and are great if you can’t hit the broadside of an Atlas, but they run out of ammo like prom queens run out of virginity.
The rifle was a snubnosed bullpup design, lethal and uncompromising. I picked it out of the blood flecked mire.
I was in some sort of autopilot. All of the swamp sounds- the droning of gnats, the croaking of amphibians, the shrieks of birds- all of it was drowned out by the white noise in my head.

The alligator had did some serious damage. His arm and been tore off at the shoulder. But the hitman was a toughguy. Crawled up onto the shore, his skin the color of a gull’s wing, spattered with gore and sludge.
The stump of his arm was a grayish yellow mess of bone and flesh, a thin river of blood trailing into the log strewn river.
I leveled the rifle at him.
“Help.” He said.
I felt as cold as the waters of the swamp around us.
He noticed his shoulder, and the six inch ribbon of skin that was still there, where his arm had been.
“Oh God.” He croaked.
He looked back to where I was, and at the rifle that was trained upon him.
“Listen,” he sputtered, pulling his body towards me with one arm. “Take me to the car…I got creds, I got guns, I got unregistered…cloned stem cell tissue…in stabilized cryogenic wafer form…you can sell ‘em fast, man, just…”
The reptile rose from the swamp with lethal certainty.
It was the size of a sofa, a few meters across, it’s narrow snout curling back along rows of spiny fangs to a rictus grin, it’s stubby clawed feet almost comical as it regarded me.
I stood there, the rifle heavy in my numb arms.
The hitman’s face froze in a contorted grimace of agonized horror as the reptile nearly severed his leg at the knee with a methodical snap, dragging what was left of Fritz into the black mire. The waters rippled, crimsoning, and then were silent.
I stood there for I don’t know how long, and then threw the rifle in after them, feeling sick, elated, or both.
…
I can’t tell you too much of the rest.
Everything in me was screaming, and maybe I went loony in the time it took for me to walk, quaking with the cold, hands tucked in my armpits, trying to find my damn car in all that grey drudge, which felt 1,000 kilometers from home.
There was a long car ride back, and at one point I realized I had snapped out of it…whatever I was in.
Death had been at my back, as opposing and indomitable as the 100 ton tread of an Atlas, and yet here I was.
I remember the hollow ache of my gut, the memory of adrenaline still dancing in my blood. I looked in the mirror when I got to my pad and saw a lot of it, blood, streaking my face and clothes in ribbons of crusted gore. Then I threw up in the sink.
I showered for an hour, then tossed everything I had been wearing into an incinerator.
Cecile hadn’t been there when I arrived. She was gone, possibly to her classes at the University, where she had been studying neural instructional soft carbon viral design. Light years ahead of current learning. You would be infected with a synthesized composite of DNA code and intelligent nanotech synaptic microcells. You’d get a cold for a day, and then you’d be well-versed in all the science of geostatial thermodynamics…

The bookie never saw me coming. I had stepped from the alley behind the races, gun in hand, cred chip in the other. His slate-blank barbiturate eyes had briefly blanched into twin black panes of surprise, and then I had paid him off.
He didn’t ask about the hitmen, and to tell the facts of the matter, I wasn’t about to bring it up.
I guess I should have shot him full of circular incisions and kept the 10,000, but I felt a little fresh out of good karma, and my mind was still engulfed in the Novocain grip of shot. The swamp was still with me. I had shot enough people for the week.
Later I had sat in the bed, watching the sheets rise and fall in the still-dark soft silence of the quiet evening as Cecile dreamed, and looked down at my hands, dreading to see mud encrusted under the fingernails. Or blood.
Sometimes, even now, in the worst of my dreams, I stand at the edge of that swamp, shaking.
Fitz claws his way out with one arm, his mouth a geyser of fountaining crimson.
Something clamps onto my ankle with a vise of unearthly flesh, with the cold of 1,000 graves, and I am dragged noiselessly into waters replete with alligators and pale, tide pushed corpses, rotting in the flesh-numbing depths, crowding me until I can’t see or breathe anymore…
I didn’t find religion, or become one of the good guys, or decide not to jock mechs and enter battle in and against machines that let loose volleys of city disintegrating ordinance.
But I never cheated on Cecile, again.
I never gambled again.
I never ended up under the gun of a hitman.
I never ended up in debt to a bookie.
I never walked into another swamp, again…
…and I never wore a pair of alligator skinned boots.
You know what I mean?
…
Then I’m back again, standing by the river, staring into the burbling crystal depths.
Scarlet stepped noiselessly from the jungle growth. Although morning, it was dim. The canopy above seemed to swipe the sun from the sky with a verdant, vine-wrapped claw.
He was geared up, steam wafting from a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Hey, you and Wolverine and I are gonna start stepping on some earth in a big way. We are going to set up some vid units and get some 4-11 on the 38th.”
“Be right there.”
“Everything cool?”
I looked into the river.
There was nothing it could tell me that I didn’t already know.
I thought of Cecile.

“Perfect…I’m perfect.”
…
The march wasn’t the marathon I thought it would be. I should have known Wolverine wasn’t going to subject us to it three-day hike. Not with our time frame. Hell, I have to give the man mad props, he went with us. F*ck, he even took point. Scarlet had a rifle in one hand and the Tiger Projector in the other. He whistled for a while until Wolverine threw him a sharp look. I had a gyrojet rifle and a laspistol on my hip. I couldn’t help but feel stupid, considering there might be a couple of mechs roaming the hills. We followed a trail through the foliage, a valley leading to the outpost on our Westside. I felt comfortable enough, but when we spotted it’s outline a mile ahead through the silvery mist, I felt a magnetic charge run up my spine. Like we were naked, on that hillside. Just below us was a wide expanse of dirt, tire treads going in either direction. “Supply trail.” Wolverine said. I broke out the binocs and checked out the base. It was what you’d expect. Big, bustling, bristling with ordinance and communications grids. The radar dish towered up beside it, it’s solar panels and data feed arrays like hematite under the cold Antares sun. You can bet your girlfriend’s ass there were mechs everywhere. I saw something, something big, then… The viewer went black. “What-?” Scarlet, his face grave, one hand over the binocs. Wolverine stood a couple meters away, staring at a clearing. I walked past Scarlet, and saw it. A wide imprint of a mech’s foot. The ground pushed in by three feet. It wasn’t that wide, but it didn’t seem to matter. “Makes you feel real f*ckin’ small, now don’t it?” Wolverine asked, his voice hoarse.
“Geesh, and to think that’s only a Raven.”
“Small lasers don’t seem like much when you are operating 75 tons of machinery. But when you think about what it would do to you if you got hit outside of your mech…”
“Instant incineration, man.” Scarlet said. “Nothin’ left to bury.”
“Let’s set up those viewpods and get back to op center. I feel exposed.” I said.
Wolverine looked back at the communications center. I suddenly realized he hadn’t brought a helmet. He was wearing a cowboy hat. Leather, from looks of it.
“I hear ya, Eight. Let’s vanish.”
We left the pods dug deep in the hillside, where not even someone fifteen away would see them.
I couldn’t help but think of New Dawn, maybe a light year away, get ready to move, waiting for the five of us to make it all happen.
It gave me a significant amount of perspective.
…

The vid feed was different, black and green, like night vision. It gave me an overwhelming amount of relief- like a good omen.
Scooby’s dialect seemed even more pronounced, just like Spike’s. As if being around each other amplified their accent. But as he gave us the assessment, it lent a degree of panache’ to the entire affair.
“We got off light, mates. No ERPPC on the outpost. No heavy gauss cannon, either. But we still got LRM projectors. Three of ‘em.”
“No prob.” Spike said, taking a nip of what smelt like whiskey from a derridium flask emblazoned with a VA symbol. “I’ll take ‘em out in midstride. Don’t you worry, gents.”
“Three LRM’s?” I said. “That’s kind of light, compared to what Fuzion had to deal with.”
Wolverine aimed at the screen with his sapphire light pen. The dot fell on the hazy picture of the base, on one of the launchers, squat and crouched, like a gargoyle with two barrels on each of it’s derridium shoulders.
“Those are quad LRM 20’s, Eight. Improved targeting systems, get a lock in two seconds.”
“Yup.” Scarlet said. “See those arrays on either side? Quad AMS. No mech could carry that many, too much heat, too much computer logic requirements, but sentry guns like these can easily handle them. So don’t use missiles on those bad boys.”
“Wow.” I was impressed.
“So what?” Spike said, drinking a can of nitrolite. “I’ll pick them off in twelve seconds. Zap, zap, zap.” He punctuated his presentation by jabbing the air with his finger at each ‘zap’.
Wolverine lit a cigarette. The smoke of it wafted into the dark blue of the night, the ruddy light from it’s tip illuminating the features of his face in a hellish glow. “Yes, Spike, you are godlike in your capabilities, but I am sure Scooby will throw his two ERPPC’s in, as well. But here’s the mech role call= No Raven, but according to our little foray in the jungle it’s there. We got two Thor’s…one by the ordinance depot…the other by the hangar…but seein’ as how Thors are standard, not a big development, there.”
“No Shadowcat, but I am going to assume it’s probably on patrol over on the other side, maybe in the hills. There’s our Thanatos, next to the hangar. Over there, next to the cold fusion silo, we have a Masakari. The main base door is open, so that’s what we got instead of a Daishi. Expect some serious long range wuuuuumph.”
Scarlet seemed elated. He punched his fist into the palm of his hand.
“Easy. Easy creds. We may as well call 58th and tell ‘em we’re on our way.”
The stealth fields above were hypotenuse triangles of neon drenched powdered azure radiance, filmy and indistinct in the opal-hued moonlight. They made me feel safe. Enclosed.
Wolverine’s voice cut through good cheer like an acetylene torch through Styrofoam.
“Stop laughin’ and take a look at those.” His calloused finger indicated two shapes, crouched next to the immense 400 ton tachyon dish.
There they were, parked in front of communications dish. Squat, crouching monsters. Mechs, big ones, certainly assault class. Huge sockets in their torsos, immense enough to house Heavy Gauss. Arms like a Vulture, with twin ordinance barrels. Their

legs were ponderous looking, but the overall appearance of the two mechs was that of moon crushing firepower.
“Jesus, are those real?”
“Yes. They’re Fafnirs.”
“Fafnirs?”
“New ‘uns. Big, built from Daishi parts. Refitted to carry anything from Gauss to Autocannon in those chest units. Serious firepower…takes a lot of training to handle those.”
“I would think a mech’s a mech.”
“Oh, a mech is pretty much like any other, but not these. Us pilots are pretty unique. But those are new designs, fresh from Sol space. New systems, new controls, recalibrated neural link, cybersocket flux smart tech…you gotta be half hardware to handle those. Cyberboys use ‘em. Takes advantage of the latest in wetware, hardwiring, and cybernetic implants. It’s standard with any new Clan/IS hybrid. After a while, they redesign the systems and you don’t need to have so much hardware inside you. But Banzai has a lot of cash to spend on the latest and greatest.”
“What’s that mean to us?”
“Us? We’re f*cked.” … We all took a break after that horror story. Then Wolverine brought up a map of the base and we did a play by play. We all shut up while he talked. “Ok, LRM20 on the hangar and two on the main base. Main base in the center, cold fusion silo south east, communications dish north of the base, with the hangar west and north west respectively.” “We trot in going 70 kph, Spike and Scooby take out the LRM’s. Industry standard. Let’s presume that the Shadowcat and the Thor are going to do like they did with Fuzion and go into orbit and pop snipe. That leaves a Masakari and a Thanatos laying down fire, with the Thor bringing up the rear and then doing an outflank, like Fuzion, once again.” “Everyone moves in. Eight Track splits off with Spike and takes out the Thor and the Shadowcat, but you are going to plunk off shots on the Tachyon dish the whole while. Every shot counts.” “We all know Masakari’s…they hang back and split your skulls from range. Scooby, you get that piece of the pie. Lay down suppressive LRM fire and keep him buried.” “Scarlet and I are going head to head with the Thanatos and the other Thor. We’ll win…we’ll f*ckin’ win.”
“Spike, Eight, after you clean up your plate with the Thor you guys will sweep back and assist whoever needs assisting, and make sure that dish is dust. Gun the Raven down if you see him.”
I piped up.
“Hey, why Spike and I on the Thor? Why not send me?”
Wolverine looked at me with a casual steadiness.

“Because I don’t know how good you are, and I’m not going to gamble the crew on it.”
His eyes were as flat and cold as a cobra’s.
I looked at him back, thought about getting pissed, then I thought about that gauss
pistol and how deep the jungle was, and deciding that thinking about getting pissed wasn’t nearly as cool as thinking about shutting my mouth.
“One problem.” Scarlet said. “What about the Fafnirs?”
“I ain’t counting them.”
“Why not?” The VA pilot took a swig from the flask Spike handed him.
“Because every time I try to, we end up dead.”
“What about-?” I began to ask.
“No. We’re dead. We’re not that good. No one’s that good.”
You couldn’t cut the silence with an acetylene torch. Too dense.
…
We held a meeting by the river.
The dark seemed even more prevalent, away from our campsite.
I stood away from the others, skipping stones across the river. Beyond, jungle sounds cut the dark. Animal noises, birds and nocturnal creatures, howling at the moon in the tropical night.
Wolverine seemed placid enough.
“We got options. We can move in, now, and let the dark cover us. Or we can just call it off. Or we can flank the communications base and snipe the radar from a distance and hope against a swift reprisal, but seven mechs chasing us all the way back to the lift point is not a viable agenda.”
“I agree. I don’t like any of that.” Scarlet said.
“Neither do I.” Scooby agreed.
“What are we going to do, children? March in there out weighed by two hundred tons? End up like Fuzion? No one wants to end up stepped on.”
“We’re all adults, here.” Spike said. “What do we do?”
“Those tags on the Fafnirs are Team Banzai. The best.”
“Damn.” I said. I had heard of Banzai. They weren’t Jesus, but they certainly were in the neighborhood of John the Baptist. Big, big fish in our part of the pond. Mech only, they trained in the off season like no other. Most of your premium clans like Neechi, Void Alliance or the Iconian Knights that had access to starcraft as well as mechs didn’t stay up late worrying too much about mech only clans like Banzai…until you ended up facing them in the field, in a mech yourself. Then, all those stories about just how good Banzai was could haunt you.
“So what?” Scarlet said. “There are only two of them.”
“Not to alarm you, sweet pea, but two of them are four of us.” Spike said.
“Let’s see.” Scarlet cracked his knuckles with malicious zeal.
“They got hired, maybe. Extra muscle.”
“Maybe they’re just stopping by.” Scarlet said.
‘”Hi, 58th. We’re Team Banzai, one of the most crack groups of Mechwarriors to ever haunt the stars. Just thought we’d drop in for tea and biccies. Brought the beer, let’s see if there’s rugby on, shall we? We parked the Fafnirs on your light Raven by accident,

hope you don’t mind. If we get too hammered tonight, can we sleep on the couch?” Spike’s voice echoed across the placid waters, the color of hematite in the star choked night.
“I got the audio surveillance gear.” Scooby interjected. “Let’s crack their communication channels and listen in on what they got going on, in there.”
“Make it happen.” Wolverine said.
…
Scooby pored over the transmissions, the computers printing out reels of communications within the 58th’s Outpost coordinates.
The IK pilot and Captain Scarlet had worked for a few hours, unleashing AI assisted software that had found subtle errors in the encryption patterns of the 58th’s code, and had exploited it with surprising success.
But the Tachyon transmissions had been well beyond us. The coding had been layered with sophisticated ionic flux wavelengths. It sheathed the Tach particles with a heavy medium of radiation that made our own cracking software useless.
“We’d need to be in a capital ship class supercomputers to break that. But we don’t need to. Our concern is what the Outpost is saying to itself, mate.”
“I need to make a call.” I said.
“It’s no risk.” He said. The gamma green glow of the liquid metal atom/xenon gave his countenance a spectral cast. He handed me a brick of some dense metal. Like a cell phone on anabolic steroids. I almost dropped the damn thing. It was a deep, deep frosted purple.
“Bring it back.” Scooby said. “It’s on loan from Excaliber. Ion-inducted tach channel frequency. Stealth encryption, worth more than you and your mech.”
Spike walked me part of the way. The hill was an incline of vines and broad, pale leaves. The sounds of the jungle seemed overpowering. An audio cacophony of croaking flora and buzzing fauna. The monkeys above us had been going pecans for a while. Our stealth fields must of drove ‘em crazy to the moon.
“Got a girl?”
“Ya.”
I was suddenly aware of how big a guy Spike was. Like a bear. He could probably bench press an AC20 shell.
I’m less than six feet and about 140 lbs. Size intimidates me.
“We’re going back out. Wolverine wants us to watch the trail. Get a real eyeful. He’s worried about those Fafnirs.”
“Jesus. He’s worried?”
“Wolverine is a tough f*cker, but he doesn’t call missions off. Say’s if worse comes to worse, we’ll wiz in, high speed, fire everything we got and pray for speed. Those tach dishes gotta go.”
“No callin’ it off?”
“No. It’s only us. New Dawn is going to maneuver, and bringing those communications down on 58th will buy them a ten hour window for their surprise attack, far as I hear.”

“It’s a f*ckin’ graveyard waitin’ to happen out there, Spike.”
“Eight, I’m not going to act all royalty with you, like us clan people don’t put in our shots and make it happen like anyone else. Hell, you indy’s are half the working mercs out there, you guys make clans. You guys work harder than we do, I feel. Really.”
“But VA and IK, we…you gotta remember that the area of the Fringe we freight in, that was nothing for a while. Borderlands. But this clan named Deadlock or LD or whatever, they were black market cybernetics jerks, they ran slaves to some of the more messed up regions, they plundered colonies…”
“We fought ‘em. No real profit, but they had to go. It was a general consensus, years ago. It wasn’t brutal, not like Madoria or Dead At Birth, no one cared, not even Star Patrol, but we went to war and we finished it. Busted them to atoms.”
“There were times when either clan could have left the other hanging. Just got up and went. But we stuck it out. You gotta understand that there were times when we were deep. In really deep space, past Tach channels, no communication, no way of knowing if we even had back up. But we stayed. I can’t explain it, maybe it’s brainwashing or honor or too much drinking off mission, but you end up going beyond some feeling of job, or work. It’s dedication, maybe, and it all sounds fairly prissy like it should be on a gift card but it works.”
“Like you with your girl. You have to call her. Like we have to do this mission. If we don’t, we lose pride. Pride is forever. We’re the best, but to be the best we have to face situations like this. Everyone can put on a shiny ring and say a few oaths, but ethics only count in times like here.”
“Maybe it’s the pollen making my allergies go nuclear, or the fact I’ve had my fair share of my cups. But I’m rambling, yes, but you understand that no one is backing down. Wheels are in motion, Eight. Big wheels, grind you to seeds, and light years away or no, those channels have to stop.”
“I hear you.” I said. Feeling cold.
“You have to be in the game, with this one. First second I spoke with you, I thought you were in some other clan, spying on us. You’re not just some dumb indiot with “Born to Kill” tattooed on your arm, ace. You should be in a clan. You got to realize that. Wolverine would have never worked with you, otherwise.”
“Thanks.”
“After you finish your call, we’re going out.”
…
The call patched me through noiselessly. No static, suddenly, Cecile was there on the other end.
Her voice made me wish I had never left.
“Hey baby, it’s me.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t talk. We’re about to go in. I’m coming back, don’t worry.”
“When?”
“Three days. I’m pretty sure. Listen, go to the back of the homecomp. In the back you’ll see a panel with three screws- it’s missing one. Take it off, you’ll find a cred chip. It’s worth 2,000. Take it, close out the room, and go to our usual spot.”
“Over at-“

“Yeah, don’t say it. Get a room there, wait for my call.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
“Where are we going?” She sounded beautiful, half a planet away.
“Out of here. New Dawn space, probably. We’ll put the Loki in storage. I got an independent operator galactic standard travel passport I have been meaning to blow the dust off.”
“See you soon.”
“Very soon.”
I hung up.
I felt empty. I didn’t want to be here, anymore.
I felt stupid for feeling that way. I had no right. I was working, and I had done this before. Why feel like this, now?
The logical side of my thought process told me that. But it’s voice was small, hollow, and utterly without conviction.
…
The hike felt quicker than the initial one we had made. We got to the same spot.
It was only Spike and I. Scarlet offered to go, but Wolverine didn’t want too much of the team going out. Scooby said he’d have his Madcat ready to roll.
It was cold, gray and cold. I thought about when we first landed. The mist above seamed corporeal, like a living, griseous shadow. It crept in from the sky, down into the jungle, spreading thin tendrils through the vines and leaves.
We followed the trail, and then went low, just as a caravan of military class vehicles was making it’s way on the side of the ravine below.
Spike and I ducked low behind a fern that must have been the size of an escape pod. Spike got his Tiger Projector ready. I broke out my binocs.
“What do you see, mate?”
“Lookin’…”
Two jeeps, their magnetic engines purring as they navigated the ravine, past quartz flecked rocks and triangular piles of slate. They each only had one driver, sporting the skull and chevron of the 58th.
A broader vehicle, a hovercraft, was between them. The plasteel capsule that served as it’s drive section held two shadows within. I couldn’t tell who they were. The back of it was a net of jade mesh. Maybe supplies.
They were less than a mile away.
“Well?” Spike said. His eyes darted back and forth back at the jungle we had left behind us, like he expected an ambush.
“Two jeeps and a hovercraft. One jeep has a heavy repeater. The other one has a laser…probably mech class.”
“Stay cool.”
We huddled there, fingers on the triggers of our weapons. I kept thinking we’d accidentally kick a stone into the ravine and end up in a firefight…and we were in no position to do anything serious.
Soon, they were out of view.
Spike let out a heavy breath.

“Let’s get up there and call Wolverine.”
…
I watched the 58th outpost, putting a few plans of attack in my mind, like if I could see the right angle than it’d be the key to pulling the assault off and living to tell the tale.
I missed Cecile. I wanted to get this over with.
I took off my helmet and broke out a can of nitrolite. I sat on the ground, helmet next to me, sipping, and then finishing the canister and throwing it in my pack, next to the ammo.
Spike came back.
“I told Wolverine. He says it’s probably a supply run, they might have a stow center dug in someplace. He wants us to stay here. Scooby is plundering the communications logs. We’ve been recording for several hours.”
“What do we do?”
“I’m going to the other side, near those big rocks. I saw a cave area, but the jungle is close to it. Good cover. Go back to where we were and don’t move. We’ll-“
He stopped, looking at a puddle of brackish water next to a log in the clearing.
It was an uneven circle of liquid, trembling, ripples of it spreading outward from the center in even rhythms.
I dove behind a tree trunk, and then froze. Spike jumped into a section of bush that was easily twice his height. The ever-present animal noises about us had stopped. I hadn’t even noticed.
The foot of the Raven was a rich red, spattered with mud, gouges in it a bright metal, glinting in what little light there was. It stomped five feet from where I had hid.
I was frozen. Pure fear, by back against the tree. My legs shook. When I swallowed, it almost hurt, my throat felt so tight.
There was the buzz whirrrrrrrrrrr as the Raven twisted it’s torso, followed by the harsh digital code sound of the mech’s sensors, searching…
Jesus, Scooby was going to start up his Madcat…what if-?
I looked at Spike.
In the shadow of the Raven, his face was a pale crescent moon of stark terror. If it saw us…
His eyes were staring at something on the ground.
I followed his gaze.
My helmet.
Holy Christ.
It sat there, mute testimony to our presence.
I don’t know how long we hid there, the mech’s gyroscope whirling as it changed position slightly, and then it stomped forward, it’s foot lifting, and then my helmet disappearing beneath it.
Then the mech smashed through the jungle and disappeared in a grinding calypso of whirling servos and buzzing myomers.
We didn’t move for a full ten minutes.
Then Spike broke out his own binocs and focused it’s crystal matrix eye onto the base.
“It went back. We’re safe.”

I almost blacked out. I felt weak.
Spike looked down at my helmet. It was beyond crushed. I don’t even think we could pry it out of the earth with a crowbar.
“Want your helmet, mate?”
“Nope.”
“You sure? It’ll make a right fine ashtray…”
We covered the helmet with some plants and took our positions on either side of the ravine, the ridge affording us a perfect view of the base and the ground below.
I fished a mic from my pack and fitted it to my collar, a second piece going into my ear using flesh adherence foam. As long as you removed it with your bare hands, it would come off. Otherwise, it stayed on your body like your nose stayed on your face.
“They’re coming.” Spike said.
“Caravan?”
“Right.”
I could see them, pulling through the thin fog, the rocks grinding under the wheels of the jeeps and into the stream next to them.
Wolverine patched in.
“Eight Track.”
“What?”
“Scooby followed the communications. Banzai is in that caravan. They went to a nearby depot for an inspection. They had been in their mechs for a while, and wanted a break.”
“Jesus, I-“
“They have hardwiring for those Fafnirs, Banzai Clan standard. Take them out and we don’t have to worry about those motherf*ckers.”
“But-?”
“It doesn’t matter what your opinion is. Take that caravan out and come back to base, we assault now. If I had known earlier, I would have risked detection and obliterated the caravan myself. Wolverine out.”
The caravan trailed closer. The hovercraft seemed larger, now, this close to our position.
“Spike-?”
“I heard. I’m taking out the first jeep and the hovercraft. Hit the rear gunner on the jeep, and then the driver, and I’ll follow up.”
“Wait, Spike, don’t hit the last jeep, we’ll use it to get back!”
“Good thinkin’, mate. Make it happen.”
We waited a minute longer, the sky as broad and dark as lead above us, the cloud cover still blanketed across the jungle.
Time stretched. I could see the individual badges on the lead drivers suit through my gyrojet rifle’s monocular. When was Spike going to-
There was a flash, I caught the blur of the Tiger for an instant, and then the lead jeep disappeared in a flash of ordinance…no fire, just scrap and dust.

The caravan stopped, the hovercraft almost hitting what was left of the first vehicle.
I turned my sights on the rear jeep.
For a few brief seconds, smoke obscured my view.
I waited, the cotton tufts drifting, I heard the other hovercraft start to cross the ravine. There was shouting, and another detonation. I felt it’s impact on my face and arms. Then the driver of the last jeep got smart and backed up with a roar of engines and a scream of tire treads, there was the harsh ruby fusion bright of it’s laser, Jesus-
I fired, missing. I fired again, accidentally hitting the driver.
His head came off in a burst of blood. The jeep stopped, the driver rocking back and forth.
I fired again, the dirt kicking up behind the jeep. The gunner was good, he stayed cool, moving the laser in my direction. Then I heard another Tiger and realized that Spike was still alive. The hovercraft flipped and crashed with a sound of sheet metal bending, the spray hitting me from my position.
The impact of the gyrojet almost knocked the 58th gunner from his seat. I don’t know if he fired at me…couldn’t tell. I shot him again, and he whirled hard, strapped in, almost going 180 degrees.
I lost him in the dust, and then realized he wasn’t moving. There was blood…enough of it to know I didn’t need to shoot again.
I ran down the ravine.
“Spike!!!”
Nothing.
I almost tripped across the silvery white sand. The water was discolored with blood and engine fluids. I took cover behind the hovercraft, hoping Spike didn’t fire again. That tiger projector was too much, we should’ve got something smaller…
“I’m here. Almost got scorched. You are a lousy shot, Eight.”
“Yeah, I should’ve said something. Let’s go.’
“Kill those Banzai guys.”
“On it, meet me at the jeep.”
I could hear the base. Some droning signal sound, a klaxon, sounding off in the mist like a dirge of war.
I could see Spike, jumping down the rocks. He had ditched the projector.
I got to the side where the driver was.
He was face forward, his Banzai badges drenched in blood and fluids. Most of his head was either blown off or crushed.
Rifle ready, I went around the corner of the vehicle, feeling exposed. The Raven-
The Banzai mech jock had been thrown wide, his arm pinned partially under the door of the craft. He had a pistol at his side. He looked at me.
He was old, almost. A scar went down the side of his face, from forehead to jaw, his eyes a bright blue. He hadn’t shaved, and his stubble was white. He could have been my father, maybe.
I leveled the rifle at his chest.
He didn’t move. His boots were like Scooby’s, Gripfast, with steel rivets.
The klaxon wail from the base beyond broke my thoughts.
He let out a breath, not even trying for his pistol.

It was cold, very cold, but I couldn’t feel it. I was ankle deep in the shallow edge of the ravine. The water was as clear as glass. I could see the rocks beneath.
I took the pistol from his black plasteel mesh holster and threw it away from us.
He didn’t move.
“I’m not going to kill you. Stay here. If you move, we’ll wipe you out.”
“I can’t move, my arms pinned.”
His dialect was southern. Earth-Texan, maybe.
“Can you move your fingers?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re fine. Someone will come, but stay out of it.”
“You’re hitting the base?”
“Quiet, or my partner will finish the job.”
“Thanks.”
“Stay here. Don’t go back there for a while. You’ll know.”
“I can’t pilot anyways, man. My arm don’t work.”
“You’ll be fine, stay cool.”
He almost grinned, his face pale.
“Thanks. Thanks.”
I ran to the jeep, my boots splashing in the ravine.
Spike had a heavy gyrojet pistol out, scanning the ridge above us, the rocks like jutting teeth from the pale earth, the jungle verdant and dark in the heavy cloudcover.
“Both dead?”
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t even looking at me.
The body in the driver’s side move easy enough. I undid his seat belt, blood smearing my arm. I pushed the body into the stream, the water instantly reddening.
Spike moved fast. He threw his pistol into the passenger seat, whipped out a combat knife, it’s monomolecular edge a fine line of pearl against the steel. He cut up and down, in two, deft moves, the straps coming apart, and then jump kicked the body into the water a good three feet away, one hand on the edge of the vehicle.
“Drive.”
“I can’t, too shaky.”
“No problem, get in the passenger side.” He locked the controls of the laser so it wouldn’t move around, hitting the levers with fast precision, his knife in his teeth.
I took the passenger side.
He looked up, and his eyes widened into discs of white and green. He took the knife out of his mouth and threw it into the back seat.
“F*ck.”
I belted myself in. Spike took the driver side and didn’t bother with the restraints.
He started the engine, a warm thum of magnetics, and we reversed hard, the jolt of it almost sending my head through the windshield. I looked back.
There was the Raven, coming down the ravine.
Then my vision churned, a whirling blur of shore, jungle, water and sky, we had pulled back around, and Spike was gunning, taking the jeep as fast as it would go.

We were dead. There was nothing I could do. The mounted laser, even if I could get to it, was useless.
The air itself scorched. The ground next to us became hot and bright. I suddenly could smell burning glass, and then it was behind us.
“The Raven-!!!”
“You bet your ass!” He shouted. His teeth were bared, he was leaned over the wheel, his thumbs almost touching his lapels.
He swerved, and how he stayed in his chair, I had no idea, because I almost came out of mine, seat belt and all.
Another blast of heat. Lasers. The Raven was gunning for us, it’s aim improved.
I took a look behind me and almost pissed myself. It was closer, just starting to pick up speed, it’s feet splashing the water fifteen feet in the air, maneuvering through the creek with ease.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Spike probably saved both our asses with what he did. He turned sharply, into the creek, and we hydroplaned briefly, the wheels suddenly going quiet as we left the earth, and then the waters jetsprayed behind us, a wash of white that probably obscured the Raven’s view of our jeep. The mech fired again, scalding the creek bed to steam in a cloud that must have went up two stories. Maybe that helped.
I turned around and ducked low in the seat, bracing for impact. There was no way he could keep this up. Maybe we’d get thrown clear, and the Raven would miss us-
For an instant I saw the mech, a Madcat, it’s missile bays broad and enormous against the tin sky. It came around the hill, looming upon us, and I thought it was the 58th until I saw the gold triple crown of DAB against the gloss jet of it’s chassis.
There was the sub-sonic scream of firing ordinance, the electric cackle of ERPPC’s lit the sky, hurting my eyes, I ducked reflexively, hunched over as low as possible in the jeep’s seat.
I think maybe I blacked out, or I stopped breathing, and then I looked up and realized it was Scooby.
The Raven had stopped firing. I looked back, and it was limping through the water, far behind us, dragging it’s leg like some injured superpredator.
I felt the heat blast of the LRM’s from where I was, I didn’t see them at first, arcing overhead, and the sound of them almost made me deaf. This close to a mech…when something like that moves…a part of you just feels scared, like nothing should be that big, like buildings should stay still and not walk…
I looked back again, and then shielded my eyes as the LRM’s descended onto the Raven and it was rent asunder into a billowing tempest of silver and blue cold fusion.
“Yup.” Spike said, maybe to nobody. “Yup, yup. That’s how it’s done. It’s going to be us that way, soon.”
The jeep’s engine roared, and he drove us beneath the Madcat. I caught a glimpse of it’s myomer driven servos, as gargantuan as hovercars. I suddenly remembered how my Loki looked, with it’s freshly machined LB10X, glinted quicksilver in the mechanical dark of the repair facility.

“They left already!!?” I yelled.
“Ya. Essence being of time and importance and all that.” The jungle above and around us was an eye-blaring streak of green vegetation and blue shadows. My eyes had yet to adjust.
“The campsite!!?” I was yelling. This was all fast forward. Like a car crash. Like a gun fight. Like your first sexual experience.
“Stop yelling what?” Somewhere, the rest of the crew was moving, the distant crashing sounds resonating and amplifying in the confines of the tropical forest.
“We, our equipment…”
“Well, jackass, I figure we’d call ahead and tell the 58th we need 25 minutes to pack our good things and have ourselves some tea and a nap, mate. Maybe some good chess. Ya idgit, who cares? We’re bombing the site when we leave. Wolverine and I laid the charges ourselves. We’re the second wave arse. Put some pep in your step, mate!!!”
Damn. I was a tyro, all of a sudden. It was the Raven, too close…too close…
By the time I hopped over logs and fronds, stripping my body armored vest and my holstered laspistol, chucking them into a meter square duffel, my mech helmet in my Loki, I left my rifle against a rock, I picked up my sleeping bag and dropped it, what was I doing? I didn’t need it! There was the unearthly electric groan as ninety tons of Sunder powered up, and the ground shuddered like 6 on the Richter scale, the vibration so intense I almost couldn’t feel my feet up to my ankles. This was it this was it this was…
Then there was the gravitonic lift as I was propelled weightless in a sheath of gravitons, and then I was strapping myself in, the controls and sensor screens of my mech lighting up like a Christmas tree. The rest of the crew were blips, and then I was going 76kph, crashing through the jungle we had hid inside of for those days. Spike’s Sunder was immense in front of me, it’s broad chassis eclipsing the view of the vale before me.
My tongue was thick in my mouth, my hands slick with perspiration. I threw on a set of gloves. My hands shook, in spite of themselves. This was it.
We had left the campsite behind us when my sensors registered the blast. Probably a low-yield neutron sub-atomic, or just conventional fusion bombs. In my rear angle vid, the campsite was a burning plume of flickering light, sending dense smoke into the misted sky above the jungle.
“Eight Track.” Wolverine.
“Yo.”
“You know the plan. No radar, no Thor.”
“Roger.”
“Stay by Spike. Cover him. Flank right. Got it?”
“Yes.”

“Spike said we don’t have to worry about Fafnirs.”
“Not unless they have some other pilots.”
“Jesus, I’m picking up transmissions. It’s a f*ckin’ hornets nest.”
“Contact!” Scarlet said. There was the distant crash of missile impact and macro-ordinance. The line went turned to static.
Scooby’s voice came online. Despite the violence, he sounded bored.
“1 LRM down…make that another. Good shot, Scarlet. Wolverine, it would sit quite right with me if you would engage that Thor threatening my flank…thank you.”
I checked back at the base. It was an obscure series of geometric lines, cutting the aluminum hue of the horizon, clouds of missiles erupting from the towers around it. I thought of those towers, the quad LRM’s with all their technology, severing the very bleeding edge of technology…
We were closing, fast. Wolverine had been right to ruthlessly enforce the minimum 76kph directive. Scooby’s Madcat was in the rear, moving in figure-eights, staying back from the main assault, to make full use of his long range firepower.
Scooby was on the comm. His voice was still calm, almost meditative.
“I just snipped another LRM off that base…wait, there here comes the Shadowcat, and the Thor.”
There was the sound of a gauss impact, like a yard of admantium being driven through an anvil of steel with a hydraulic impact servo.
“Ouch. That will take some mending. They have gauss, repeat, they have gauss…”
I was close enough to the base to hit it with my lasers. Ahead, Spike was giving the radar dish some attention. Ruby lines of amplified light, clan-class lasers etching the battlefield, cutting the heavy reinforced construction of the dish…smoke tumbled from it’s form in black tufts, darkening the sky.
I saw the LRM’s of the tower, crouched and lethal. I imagined their barrels, four of them, unleashing fire upon Scooby, Scarlet, and Wolverine…my crew…
Then the area around and above the base became crowded with weapons fire. Scarlet took a hit, the redoubtable form of his Thor twisting from the impact of a gauss that tore into it’s shoulder, lasers that cut deep into it’s hide, even from where I was I could see the craters of impacts from the LRM’s the tower had unleashed upon him.
I was closer, now. So was Spike and the rest, the glowing dots of our radar signatures closing in on the base with steady inertia.
I hit one of them solid, the impact leaving a blackened crater. It still fired. I almost lost it in the white clouds of the missile launch. How many had hit the others as Spike and I had caught up?
Scooby.

“I see the Masakari. Yes, gentlemen, it’s packing ERPPC’s, only the best for our good foes. Ouch! Scarlet took a hit. I’m concentrating fire.”
I fired again. The sound of it was neon thunder in the confines of my mech. The LRM projectors were smoking…I expected them to fire again, and then Spike must have picked them out, my whole image enhancement became digital smoke and electric fire…
Scooby.
“Spike, Eight Track, if you don’t step on the Shadowcat and that Thor threatening our right flank, you are both getting a lump of coal in your stocking for Christmas (WHUMP! The sound of gauss, the snip of perforate air, the sonic impact of ferro fibrous being split asunder) that hurt, gents, make it happen, please. I’m playing pop the weasel with a Masakari, after all.”
The verdant stretch of the valley before us was aglow with criss-crossing firepower…the blazing ruby arc of laser fire, the metallic azure-tinged snap of gauss, the blazing jetstreams of missiles from either side. I couldn’t see the sun, through all of the ordinance.
I lost sight of Scooby, and the saw him on the move, coming out of the fire and the trailing exhaust plumes of the missiles, his flank smoldering. The air in front of him crackled with power as the ERPPC’s forked out in columns of focused energy, the lightening arc of it jolting the Masakari across from him, an immense craft that looked ponderous and yet lethal, it’s arms slim and viscous, each two barrels, it’s form an abrupt and brutish brick as it moved into a better firing position, the electrical shocks leaping in currents across it’s chassis. It returned fire, but I didn’t see the effects of it’s barrage.
I heard Spike fire to my starboard side, I wondered who he was aiming for, my attention was drawn to Wolverine, who was…
…pacing in deadly circles with the Thor, they were trading blows, the Thor was afire, though, I let off a shot, twin large lasers, I think I hit him, and then…
…Wolverine fired, I could hear the LB20X from here, feel the detonation through the shielded plasteel surface, and the Thor ran as it died, the ferocious neon silver of it’s reactor core ingniting fall, my image enhancement going white with it’s detonation. I could see the wide-shouldered etched black outline of Wolverine against the incandescence. It was only then that I realized that the right arm of Wolverine’s Thanatos had been severed. Great gouts of burning smoke billowed from it’s mutilated socket.
Spike fairly howled over the communications channel.
“Eight, it would be completely dandy if you did something about that Thor and Shadowcat team up that is doing it’s utmost to CRAWL UP OUR ASS!!!”
Oh.
As if to underline Spike’s statement, an impact on my starboard torso abruptly shook my craft, the whiplash shaking me to the right, even with my restraint gear.
I heard Scooby, again.

“Scarlet, that Thanatos is trying to give me a sloppy kiss, will you please kindly redirect your attentions from the base to that particular thorn before it wedges itself into my mech’s good side?”
There was another explosion. It made my ears ache.
Jesus.
The Shadowcat hit my left flank, maybe large lasers, not sure, then there was the impact of LB10X. I was red, red…
“I’m on it, Scooby.” Scarlet seemed like he was having a good time.
I hit the Shadowcat in the leg, by accident, really, I was aiming for it’s flank, and it seemed to go in a half circle, trying to come in for another shot. It was hunched over, like the predatorial shapes of the LRM projectors, fast and lethal…
I could sense Spike, sparring with the Thor, I wondered what he was doing, I could see the sapphire glint of his radar signature, in violent orbit with the ruby glint of the enemy…
…the Shadowcat came around, bringing his weapons upon me…
…I hit it again, in the leg, disrupting his aim, I had used both my lasers and my LB10X’s, the detonation jackhammered on either side of me, and the Shadowcat began to drag it’s leg behind it, three clicks away, almost pathetic as it struggled to maneuver it’s 45 ton form to some sort of cover.
There was the base, to my port. There was the jungle behind me, there was the sky above, blackening with the coming night, there was Spike to my starboard, presumably engaging the remaining 58th Thor with some success, there was the Masakari within protective cover of the base, targeting Scooby, I guess, I could imagine quad electric current beams of ionic energy impacting along his Madcat, maybe…I could imagine Wolverine, hitting the base with all the weapons on the chassis of his mech, killing communication for the 58th and it’s allies so New Dawn could complete it’s assault, light years away, there was the Shadowcat, it’s cockpit illuminated with greater detail in the rectangle of my enhanced image visual, and then it’s leg came off as my weapons fell across it, and then the myomic feedback must have been too much for it’s reactor, and it went fusion, bright, too bright, scalding my vision, I could feel it’s heat as it died…my HUD flickering as I almost went nova from it’s detonation, myself.
The sensors of my mech showed my armor as green, then to yellow, the temperature in my machine rocketing to 110 degrees before the heat sinks compensated. My back and chest were drenched. If not for the helmet, it would have gone right into my eyes.
I checked back at Spike, as the Thor he was fighting followed suit. It ran in a half circle, and then beams of ravening light pierced it. The mech stopped, lurched, and then froze in mid-step before the nuclear explosion of it’s breached reactor darkening the field for miles.
“I have lost my missile racks.” Scooby said. “All fire on that radar dish, or we may as well break contact, go home, and watch reruns on the telly.”

The base was as close as we would ever want it to be. I could see the ruined metal chassis of the blasted LRM racks, like the bodies of scorched steel spiders.
I checked my radar, just as the enemy Thanatos winked out of existence, along with Scarlet’s signature. I thought he was dead until, tense moments later, his voice came through the comm .
“Whew! He blew up way too close. Legged ‘em, but it shut me down…thanks for the assist on that, Wolverine.”
“Not a problem, Scarlet. There is something delightful about a crossfire…”
I checked my heat, still good, and then cycled through my radar, trying to find more opponents. We were to the side of the base, a vast field to my right, the valley rising up about us.
I lost visual of Spike, but I saw the ruby luminescence of his large lasers knifing into what was left of the communication tower.
I focused, ignoring the explosions to my port (was that Scooby? Or Wolverine..?) and then there was the trigger and the sound of my weapons, the recoil traveling up the Loki’s arms, rocking the machine, and the radar dish tumbled like a 200 ton plate, hitting the earth, crumpling from it’s own weight, and my sensors, which had been abuzz with the base’s communications, suddenly sputtered and collapsed into audio flatline.
“It’s gone!”
“Good.” Wolverine said. “Go to the drop point.”
I saw it, in the hills, coming up over the hills, like a ghost in my radar, distant and godlike, and Spike’s mech staggered with the impact, his arm rent asunder, billowing, the flame of it’s rent chassis obscuring my view of him.
It’s arms were menacing barrels of energy weapons arrays, it’s head like a chevalier, the shoulders like medieval armor, then it backed out of view.
A Novacat. An energy mech, a real monster of when it came to energy ordinance, and it had us at range, intercepting our path to the dropship pick-up zone. It was lighter than Spike’s craft by a good 20 tons, so it could get a profound amount of speed, compared to an assault mech that would be just as equipped when it came to weapons.
He must have powered down his machine, waiting for us to get closer, listening for our tread, and then activated his mech and trudged up over the hill, targeting weak points in the enemy for easy kills.
I checked my sensor transmissions and cycled through the team, analyzing damage.
Scooby, his cube shaped LRM pods gone, bleeding thick black smog from damaged internal systems through smoldering rents in his armor.

Wolverine, the broad-shouldered form of his Thanatos burning, gouts of smoke and fire erupting from it’s ruined armor and breeched internal structure.
Scarlet, a black smear from a fierce detonation charring his ferro fibrous chassis from hip to shoulder in a jagged crescent streak.
Spike, down an arm, his hull a blinking red/orange of extensive damage from his duel with the 58th Thor.
Then, there was me, surveying a series of hills with a valley leading to where our drop ship would meet us, knowing that the Novacat was in the hills, waiting…
“See it?” Wolverine said.
“Yeah. Novacat. Took Spike’s arm off.”
“We’re beat and bloody. It’s going to have it’s way with us. Scooby-?”
“Nope, in the red, overheating bad, got a reactor leak, I’ve flushed, maybe I can risk a shot-“
“Negative, use the base as cover and hit that valley. Scarlet?”
“I can make it, but I don’t got much to offer. An LB20X…”
“Eight, you and Scarlet take that hill and skin a Novacat.”
“On it.”
“I can help.” Spike said.
“Negative, we may need you. We don’t know what other vehicles the 58th had in their hat. Plus, I want you to cover our retreat at range if Eight and Scarlet get the short end of it.”
“Gotcha. Sorry, guys, it’s all you, then.”
I passed what was left of the base, seeing the ruined shadows of the LRM’s, it’s once-proud dish, broken and immolated, and kept close to it, using it’s cover.
The Novacat came up again, and I heard the impact before I felt it, my vision going up in a jolt, my center torso hit solid, the computers infuriatingly calm voice informing me of a possible hull breach, damage critical…
F*ck.
I hit the hill, battering trees to the side of me. I knew Scarlet had been closer, I could see him, up and over the grassy mountainside, I wondered if the Novacat was 58th or Banzai…
I saw the sapphire radar blips of the team, glowing as they made their way through the valley. I heard the sound of LB20X, KA-CHING BOOM! as Wolverine let loose, maybe on some Tanks or sentry guns. There was the distant rattle of autocannon, I couldn’t tell whose it was.
I was over the hill and into a copse of trees, pine and ash, I don’t know, and I caught a glimpse of Scarlet, his remaining arm firing at his target (KA-CHING BOOM!) but then there was a neon streak of lasfire, and his arm was sheared at the shoulder. Particles of it spattered across my hull and cockpit.

I should have known. That’s why the base wasn’t as armed as we thought it would be. They had taken all of the creds and bought a Novacat. One mech was worth it’s weight in sentry guns, straight up.
I caught up with Spike, and saw that most of the torso of his mech was a sputtering ruined stretch of gouged ferro-fibrous. He could get decimated with one hit from a medium laser, it looked like.
“Damn. I got him, but-“
“Join the team, I’m next.”
“He’s-“
“I’m on it.” I said.
“Yeah…damn.” Spike’s voice was drenched in disappointment.
I knew how he felt. No weapons, but still in the fight.
It took me forever to cross that treeline, as Scarlet lumbered past me, and I knew he was cooling down. My center torso was a blinking red column of injured crimson, one more hit and…
I saw him for a second, walking purposely, the five barrels of his arms singling me out. I hit him with twin lasers and then two LB10X shots, then it was his turn to blink.
His return fire gouged into my arm, my left one. It began to blink in concert with the center torso damage bar. The hit knocked me to the left, my visual through the cockpit snapping to the side.
My heat had been climbing. I could feel it, sweat beading on my face, the evil warmth and my back and underneath me, my mech’s reactor going overload, the HUD flickering and occasionally vanishing altogether. I hit the flush button with my left hand. I had been tempted to a get a SRM rack, but had decided against it, instead investing in a few more heat sinks, and damn, times like these I really appreciate my own wisdom…
The he was over the hill, and I was following. I could see the chlorine tint of his own heat flush, the scalding chemical burbling up to join the smog from the battle in the smoldering skies above.
The hill was behind me when dense clouds covered the burnished face of the sun, and a dark came down, so deep I almost hit the night vision.
Where was he?
He was there, a red blip, but my torso…
I wasn’t afraid, anymore. It wasn’t like the swamp, or the episode with the Raven. I was in command, I was in my Loki, I could do this…I had done this before…
He came into view as I twisted my mech’s torso to get into firing position. My shots impacted upon his torso, again, rocking him.
But his own fire hit my hip, my mech’s gyroscope malfunctioning from the impact, my vision tumbled and lurched, there was an impact on all sides, and for a second there was the dark of the earth, my mech was face down.

Maybe I blacked out for a few moments, then there was the blinking warning light of the damage that had been wrought upon my vehicle, my left arm was gone, maybe lost when the craft hit the ground.
For a mechwarrior, getting up from such a hit is the longest stretch of time to wait. You’ve seen it before on any battlefield, a mech goes down from a lucky strike to it’s hip, and then it falls, only to be perforated by shots from all sides, an easy and vulnerable target, and an even easier kill.
I could hear the groan of tortured internals and the biomechanical hiss of stressed myomers, then I was up in a semi-crouch. The Novacat was a blur in my HUD.
My arm was up.
The Novacat’s center was a charred plate of scarcely recognizable ferro fibrous. I could almost see the dense array of it’s internal structure, the once-proud black, gray and white of it’s 58th camouflage now battered and scorched.
My crosshair was a circle of light in my HUD, drifting towards the enemy mech. It’s weapons were five dark circles of eminent destruction.
-The corporate bodyguard, his mouth an O of surprise, his eyes gone wide in shock, the office room bending around me as a hole perforated the center of his chest. He was crimson with his own blood, the pieces of his tie falling to the ground where the sonic had cut them to curved sections…
-The smoky azure video feed of a Black Knight, hit by gauss shots from three separate directions to it’s left kneecap. It tumbles forever, the pilot crushed utterly as it’s torso detonates in blue and white…
-A hitman freezes in place, head going up, eyes screwed shut, teeth bared, then he staggers back, dying, the mud is gray, the blood is…
-The driver of the jeep’s head rent asunder from my shot. The organic blossom of his death magnified in the gold of my crosshairs, the rifle kicks in my hand…
-The Novacat, bucking backwards on it’s heels from the impact of my LB10X, and then a laser shatters the reactor core, I knew it, then. The pilot wouldn’t even have a chance to eject manually, his flesh would bubble and his hair would char before he even felt the agony, the system’s failing from the radiation, and he is devoured by fire that is beyond fire, before he can even begin to scream…
I flicked the image enhancement off (I didn’t even remember turning it on) and watched the Novacat. It was frozen, immobile, and then it was everywhere, scattered into sections, the heart of it blazing like a bright blue sun, scorching the cerulean, itself.
…
It was a good five minutes as I caught up with the team. My radio had died in the fall, but they had seen me on their radar.
No one asked if I had got him.
They had come across a platoon of armor as they had hit the valley. More than a dozen tanks and hovercraft= Bulldogs, Condors, Harassers. The battle had been as brief as it was intense, damage was minimal to our side, although Scarlet’s Thor had lost it’s other limb, embarrassingly enough.
The jaunt back took five or six hours. The sky had gotten darker, the broken mountains on either side dwarfing our machines. There was little chance, at this point, of encountering enemy, but we followed procedure.
As we got twenty minutes from the lift site we finally broke radio contact, and Scooby and Scarlet had gone back and forth.
“I am so alarmed!”
“It must be disarming.”
“They really went out on a limb!”
“Now you’ll have to join the army.”
“I gotta hand it to ‘em..!”
“You’ll have to shoulder the blame.”
“My mech used to look so handsome!”
“It could happen to any-body.”
We passed a few of them. Those iron menhirs, some 5,000 tons each, waiting for a tomorrow millions of light years distant, the carvings black and indecipherable, laden with mystery. I wondered at them, through the fatigue, the eyestrain, the aftershocks of adrenaline soaked combat stress. There they were, reminding us of our proper place in the universe. Indistinct motes in the eye of God.
The burnished fist that was the nose of our dropship had been the most beautiful scene I had looked upon, it’s graceless design a dream of infinite mercy under the glossy pearl that was the Antares moon, shining through the velvet night. We had kept our searchlights off, following the blinking of it’s lights until we trudged into the welcome rectangle that was the side of the craft.
The technicians had been quick, knowing how important time was. This was the most vulnerable part of the mission. More than one dropship had landed to pick up troops, only to stay where it was forever. I had been on a few punitive strikes, myself, launching ordinance into the inside of a dropship through the open bay door of it’s hold, waiting until we knew it would do the most damage to the crew’s personnel…
The drop home isn’t worth speaking of. No one was conscious for it. We all crashed, a dense after combat stretch of grave black where you don’t even remember your dreams, you are so spent. Then you wake up, coming out of delta like a coma, feeling like you have to brush the cobwebs off you.
I grabbed my duffel bag, I hadn’t even opened it yet, and marched out with the rest into the darkness of the Operations Bay.
We were a few miles in the air, over the surface of the planet, in an isolated Non-Corporate Commercial Mech Depot, overlooking Emmitsburg Bay, near where Cecile and I lived, where I had first signed up with Wolverine. It was a clever move to break it off, here. Traffic was common from this sector, and it was an easy airlift to anywhere on the planet you needed to go. Plus, it was easy to arrange for the transportation of your Mech. It was lunch hour, so all of the workers were taking their union break. We stood in the shadow of the squat mass of the dropship, going over pay from Wolverine’s palmtop.
I got my 20,000. The rest got theirs.
Spike shook my hand.
“Gotta run, mate. Scarlet and I have to jet to The Vault. VA is planning a strike on a Devil’s Fist stronghold, and we’re part of it.”
Scarlet shook my hand right after, grinning.
“You fly?”
“No.” I said.
“Damn. Well, look me up on the VA ezboards, if you want to do a job, sometime.”
“I will, really. Thank you. I mean it.”
They walked through the immense doors of the Dropship Hold and disappeared into the crowd of mercs, merchants, and marketeers.
Scooby put on a pair of titanium gold sunglasses. He had changed into an Armani suit, and had exchanged his own duffel for a leather suitcase.
“Screw work. I’m going on vacation. Sol space.”
“Let’s hit a restaurant at The Pallisades Mall, first.” Wolverine said.
“Good. Let’s.”
“You going with us?” Wolverine said.
“I can’t, I gotta catch up with my girl. We’re taking off.”
“C’mon. Hang out.” Scooby said.
“I wish I could, but I gotta jump.”
“Good luck, then.” Scooby said, shaking my hand. “I need coffee, Wolverine. I’ll meet you out in the Lobby.”
“Coolio.”
Wolverine and I stood there.
“I have to ask you…”
“What?” Wolverine said, the laptop’s desktop icons glowing feint azure on his features, in the shadows of the hold.
“Why’d you shoot that corp?”
The silence of the worker’s lunch hour got a little more silent. In it’s quiet, I was more aware of the smells of scalded steel and cold fusion waste.
“You ask f*ckin’ questions.” His voice sounded lethal and metallic.
“Yeah, you’re right, sorry-“
He laughed, quietly.
“No, you’re no rube. That corp was a 58th rep. He had contracted me to hire a lance to protect the outpost we just slagged. I took 80,000 up front, told him I’d get back to him. Seems 58th kind of suspected New Dawn would go after it, which is why those Banzai boys were there. When you told me about the job offer you had, to take it out, it was either kill you or take you up on your offer. I wanted the corp’s money, though. So I killed him to cover our tracks, once I made sure the money he had wired to me was good.”
“Jesus.”
“Yep. Made good cash. So did you. I even threw in an extra 5,000 for the shooting you did in that office room. I’m pretty f*cking magnanimous, if you stop and think about it.” Wow. That was pretty benevolent. “I know, it’s good. No problem-“ “Good.” I picked up my duffel and shook his hand. “Nice business.” “That it was. I’ll look you up, in a month.” “Thanks. I’ll keep my mouth shut.” “I know you will. Good luck with your girl.” “Thanks.” I lagged a bit, checking my duffel, organizing my data chips and cred account information. Beyond, the heavy industry repair/refit macro equipment shuddered to life, making my bones throb from the distant vibration. “I’m worried about something, Wolverine.” “What?” He was still poring over his laptop, the scrolling code a luminescent gloss black/gold. In the chemical dark confines of the hold. “I can’t get it out of my mind. That corp guy and his bodyguard. We killed them, but…” “What’s wrong? Conscience all FUBAR?” “No, but they’re big. I know they are. I see ads for them, infomercials, these guys are everywhere…” “Your worried some assh*le is going to show up one day and stick a gun in your neck and blow your head clean off into your pretty girlfriend’s lap, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Eight, this is a corporation. They are not that smart. We stung them, hard. We covered our tracks, we took care of any witnesses, but there’s always that unknown x. Everytime you hit somebody with a sting, you are going to wonder. All those variables might add up, and someone will show up with a gun in your life.”
“Fact is, I can’t give you a clean draught of happy feeling on this. But you have to consider, that outfit is a corporate, not a clan. For every CEO or president or vice-president or board member or chamberlain or f*ckin’-seneschal-whatever you whack, there is always going to be a pr*ck in a suit who can take over where they left off. It’s for creds, really, so they don’t care. Hell, the guy you kill is replaced with some guy who gets promoted…ya think they are going to waste time and bread trying to snip you off at the waist?”
“That’s the difference between corporations and clans. We aren’t profit. IK, VA, ND, RG, SM, Neechi…we’re all in it for more. Give it any pretty Boy Scout ethical terminology you want, but if you kill Scooby or any of my clan, I am going to put you in a hole, even if I have to spend 100,000 creds to finance the op.”

“That’s why you shouldn’t worry, Eight. Those f*ckers have no loyalty. It’s a damn ant farm. They are in it for cash, only, and a hundred years down the road each one of them are going to get, at the most, a gold watch and a bronze plaque saying how nice it was they dedicated their lives to profit for some logo. If they aren’t downsized or taken out by someone below them.”
“That’s the difference. There’s me, there’s you and your girl…loyalty. Corporations don’t find loyalty to be profitable, 90% of the time.”
“Get off planet. Have a beer. Do another job. Leave all this in your rearview, for a while.”

Wolverine’s words settled in, floating downward into my cognitive processes, the way a corpse drifts to the bottom of a swamp.

I left the Mech Depot, pausing to look upon the ruined chassis of my Loki, before they began to work on it. IK had paid for the damage, and it had been severe.
Then I was stepping into a hovercar rental that drove me from the drifting menhirs that were all those buildings, overhead, there long shadows black and ominous on the faces below.

Emmitsburg Bay was a stretch of chrome under the day’s early mist.

Above and on all sides of me, the silver sun of Antares sent electrum shafts of light onto huge sprawls of urban creation, museums, art zoos, malls, apartments, corporate sectors and other modern human convenience juxtaposed by even grander stretches of natural landscape. Jungle archipelagos, mountain ranges, canyons dotted with coniferous plantlife and those odd iron constructs oddly carved with geometric patterns…evidence of life, alien, human, or otherwise, it hardly mattered.

I found Cecile waiting for me in the lounge of the New Galaxy Hilton. She had packed everything, in bronze tinted titanium suitcases. It was a sight I had been aching for ever since we left. I had no home, at least, no physical home. She was home, and where we went from there, didn’t matter.

We took a Capitol Ship luxury liner, heading for the Kuniper Belt.

Somewhere out there, new experiences were waiting, for both of us.

Tomorrow we would find them.

THE END.