I, KERENSKY
A BattleTech Novel by pchadi0
Note: This is my first attempt to write in 1st-person perspective. I don't usually likethis kind of fic, but I think I'd try itthis once.Texray1graciously provided proofreading. I will need a lot of guidance writing this 1st POV fic, so please be generous in your review.
BattleTech/Mechwarrior and all its component are copyright of FASA, Wizkids, and MicroSoft.
All rights reserved.
ONE
Unknown Place, Unknown Time,
Day 1
When I opened my eyes, I saw only light.
It lingered on for some time, showering me with its dull pallor until my eyeballs sunk deep into the sockets, or so I thought. Then it faded, and everything else took shape. Plastic fluid-filled containers, boxes with green and red twinkles above my head, drab plastic pipes dangling from the containers, docking in my arms. Looking further, I saw a bench with metallic objects scattered about, things that my throbbing head could not even begin to comprehend. As the light subsided, more and more shapes came into view. But instead of clueing me, they just made my eyes burn. Even worse than the light.
"Finally," a soft voice tickled my ears. I looked up, and there it was, a face with long yellow hair bundled into a tight bun. It hovered above me, closer and closer, until everything I could see was a blurry, yellowish hue. Then a bright light, similar to the one that I saw before, stabbed my right eyes. I shut my eyes and tried to turn away but the support underneath my body creaked and shuddered.
"Oh, oh, sorry. Didn't mean to hurt you," I heard the voice soothed. Slowly I opened my eyes, and the face was now perched on top of a slender figure, draped in white cloth. Before I could absorb any details, she moved forward again, waving something in front of me, and spoke again with that gentle, velvety voice. "Do you know who you are?"
As confused as I was, I understood what she was asking. This stranger wanted to know about me. The curiosity was mutual. There was so much I needed to know.
I did not remember………anything.
"Doc! He's awake! Come quick!" she shrilled. Another one, also dressed in white, quickly burst into the room. This one was much bolder than the first, putting his cold appendages on my face. Nasty little buggers! If only I could move, I would rip them apart and throw them across the room.
"Heart rate normal. Temperature normal. Pupils are dilated, maybe still in shock," he boomed while scratching something on a piece of paper. "Whatever he went through, it must've been a real hell." He bent over and spoke right in front of my face, "Hello. Can you understand me?"
I could only respond by staring into his dark eyes.
"My name is Doctor Kim. This is Nurse Lin, my assistant. We'll take good care of you. Do you remember your name?"
Name. I did not even remember if I had a name, let alone remember what it was. Again, I could only stare blankly at the good doctor and his assistant, and I could see how their flame of curiosity flickered to pity. I hated being pitied but I couldn't help feeling a little bit sorry for myself.
"Blunt-force trauma, Doc?" Nurse Lin suggested.
"Could be. Or could be just shock." The doctor swung by me to check the blinking things on top of my head. "His vitals are normal. I suspect it's mental. Something traumatic, like losing someone he loves. Heavy mental trauma has been known to cause temporary amnesia. Give him 10cc's of neurovillacine and get him to rest. We'll see if he can remember anything tomorrow."
As the doctor left, the nurse took a small glass tube with a sharp metallic object on the front end. She stabbed me with the metal, and I felt a small twinge on my lower body. But whatever she did to me, it worked. I felt relaxed, and I actually came to a point that I did not care about anything anymore.
"Poor guy," the nurse said, right before I closed my eyes. "I gave you nerve-relaxing serum. Some rest may help you retrieve your forgotten past. But let's leave that for tomorrow. Now just relax and take a good rest. I'll be here to take care of you."
I did not want to rest. I wanted to know a lot of thing. Who am I? Where am I? How did I wake up here, in the middle of these strange people? But as hard as I tried to stay awake, I could not fight the serum. I drifted farther and farther away from where I wanted to be, and before long, I yielded to sleep. The last thing I saw was Nurse Lin smiling at me.
Unknown Place, Unknown Time,
Day 5
It had been 5 days since I woke up in this bizarre world. My body had regained some of its vigor, although not as I had hoped. My knees were shaky, and my hips could barely support my body. Nevertheless, Nurse Lin said it was normal to a certain extent, considering I was out for a long time.
A long time
I didn't know how long because I could not remember anything. I did not have any recollection of who I was, what I was, or what I did prior to this. I did not even remember my name. Nurse Lin said that a local trapper found me several weeks ago at a river bend north of this small town, apparently frozen to death in the cold winter. No identity, no friends, nothing. Just like that, lying in the snow.
"It surprised everyone that you were still alive," Nurse Lin said to me one time. "Ordinary people would've been frozen solid. You have a remarkable resistance to cold. Lucky for you, Mr. Skyami got you before the nolans."
"Nolans?" I said, surprised that I did not lose my ability to communicate with these locals.
"Nolans are predators unique to Engadine," Nurse Lin explained. "Fearsome animals, thick armor-like skin, long nails, ferocious appetite. Since the first settlers set their feet on Engadine, we humans have been fighting constantly with the nolans to be the sole sovereign of Engadine." She paused for a moment, scanning my face. Catching my utter confusion, she smiled and said, "You've never heard anything about nolans, have you?"
I replied with a faint shrug.
"Then you must be an off-worlder. A lot of outsiders don't know about nolans. That's understandable. Engadine is a remote world, close to the Periphery, with no particular value to any industries within the Inner Sphere, except for The Rooting. Anyway, do you remember your affiliation? Lyran? FedSun? Draconian? Capellan? Free World? Taurian? Mercenary?" When she saw my blank stare, she knew that her words did not mean anything to me. "You don't remember any of those states, do you? My god! Don't tell me…are you a clanner?"
"I…"
"I'm sorry," she retreated, knowing that she had pressed her curiosity too hard. "Maybe it's too hard for you. Just rest now. We'll try that again later."
That was two days ago. Within two days I learned a lot from Nurse Lin. This place was called Hogye, a small town in a world called Engadine, on the border of Melissa Theater, in Lyran Alliance territory. I learnt that Hogye used to be a decent-sized village, one of the hottest spots in Engadine where off-world tourists and thrill seekers spent one month for a bloody hunting game called The Rooting. I learnt that since The Clans invaded Inner Sphere, Hogye had been partially deserted, and what were left behind had to struggle to fight the nolans, the undisputed kings of Engadine before humans came to this cold, arid world. I learnt that The Clans, though more advanced than most armies in the Inner Sphere, had been defeated six years ago in a world called Tukayyid. And I learnt that today was the year of 3058, and it had been six weeks since Mr. Skyami brought me to this town.
Six weeks.
Basically, that was when my life started. I had no life before then. I did, obviously, but it was dead. Lost. Forgotten. Nurse Lin and I had been trying vigorously to scavenge what was left about my previous life, but our joint effort had been vain. Doctor Kim mentioned that I had a bad contusion on my head when I was brought to Hogye, and he hypothesized that I had a massive head-bang. It might be temporary, but from the amount of memory loss, he wondered if I would ever remember anything at all. Might as well start a new life.
So here I was, in a foreign world, standing in front of a mirror, looking at a total stranger. I was looking at my own reflection, yet I did not recognize anything. I was a nobody in front of my own eyes. A man without a face. Such a misery was almost unbearable. I spent hours standing in front of the mirror each day, trying to dig the deepest cache in my mind, searching for the elusive truth, but ever time I came up empty handed.
"Anything?" Nurse Lin said gently.
"No," I sighed. "I still do not remember anything."
"Pictures usually work better," she tapped my hand. "Here, I brought a lot of pictures. Why don't you sit with me and look at the pictures together. Who knows, maybe one of them will trigger some memories from your past."
I agreed. I followed her to a small table and took the seat in front of her. She opened up a large binder, and pulled out a stack of pictures. She handed some to me, and asked me to go through each one slowly, in case I could get something out of the picture. She explained that the pictures were emblems of different factions: Clanners, Inner Spheroids, Periphery States, Mercenaries, Bandits, everything. She good-naturedly gave me a short explanation about each faction, from the political view, social life, military units, and even the most basic difference between Inner Spheroids and Clanners.
When these pictures failed to bring something to me, she pulled out another stack of pictures. These pictures depicted faces of humans, individuals that founded the course of human lives through the universe, starting from Kerney-Fuchida, Alexander Kerensky and Stefan Amaris, Jerome Blake, to the leaders of today's Successor States. She knew every little bit of them, and how they contributed a piece to the history of mankind.
"How do you know so much about everything?" I asked curiously.
"I read history during my breaks," she answered in a wink. "You might've already noticed that Doctor Kim is rarely here. Sometimes I finished my work and I had to wait until he returned to the sickbay. So I read."
"Where can I read some of this history?" She had piqued my interest.
"There's a computer terminal in the next room. You can access an HPG uplink from there, including the most recent information across the Inner Sphere. But of course, the information is weeks old. But some information never change, like history."
"Are these individuals on the uplink too?"
"Most of them," she replied, stacking the pictures. "I printed them out for you. Anyway… anything from these?"
"No," I bit my lips, afraid to disappoint her. "I think I have never seen those faces before. I might have, but no one seems familiar."
"That's OK," she forged a smile. "Let's see if these bring out some memories. I don't know much about these, but I hope you may recognize some of them."
She pulled out the third stack. These pictures were images of beasts, mechanical beasts, with weapons stacking up on their bodies. Some of them were like humans, although the proportions were sometimes off. Sometimes their legs were too short, other times their heads were just too small for their bodies. Others resembled grotesque birds, with inverted limbs and joints and boxy shoulders. Most of them had tubes and holes all around their bodies.
"What are these?" I asked.
"Those are battlemechs," Nurse Lin explained. "They are the primary machines of war. When two factions dispute over something, more than likely they go to war, and battlemechs are their primary weapons. They stand between 8 to 12 meters tall, and weigh anywhere between 20 to 100 tons. These machines are piloted by mechwarriors, highly trained pilots that become the brain of the mechs. The fastest battlemechs can run up to 120 kilometers per hour, and the heaviest can actually mount weapons powerful enough to wipe out Hogye within minutes."
"Why would anyone destroy Hogye?" I asked, and I knew it sounded like a really dumb question.
"Well," she retracted, a little sheepish. "I don't mean that. Nobody would, you know. It's just an analogy of how powerful these battlemechs can be."
"I see," I nodded, and flipped through the pictures. Then I felt something. A sensation. Though faint, it ran through my entire body. I could feel its ripples running along my skin. A sensation that built up from deep inside my core, and emanated to every nerve ending. A carnal feeling, lying in the border of fear and wrath.
"What is it?" Nurse Lin said, catching the change in my façade. "Do you recognize any of those mechs?"
"I… I am not sure," I stammered, still trying to figure out everything while looking at the pictures. "But you felt something. What did you feel?"
I paused for a moment. I could not describe what I felt, so I just shook my head.
"Come on, what did you feel? Fear? Anger? Desire? Thrill?"
"Nurse Lin, please," I pleaded. "This is a very hard situation for me. You gave me a lot of pictures, and no one helped me so far. I am still lost."
The nurse leaned back in hear chair, and realized that she had pressed me too much. She let out a long sigh before saying, "You're right, I'm sorry. I don't mean to rush you. Let's do this again some other time. You need to rest." She started to pile the pictures, then looked at me with a victorious smile. "But at least we know something."
"What?"
"You were a mechwarrior."
"I what?" I was utterly baffled. "How did you end up with that conclusion?"
"Only a mechwarrior would look at a mech with passion as strong as yours when you looked at the pictures," she looked at me sincerely. "So I'll see if you can work at the mech garage. I'll talk to Trejo, the garage manager. He is a hospital regular, so he knows me well. At the mech garage you can be around battlemechs all day. You might remember something when you work with them in the past."
"So do you think that I piloted one of those before?" I asked. "What if I did not? Will I just waste my time?"
"No, you can also interact with more people. To this date, you just talk to me, maybe a little bit with Dr. Kim. By working at the mech garage, you'll talk to pilots, techs, managers, guards, different varieties of people. Maybe you can strike a conversation that brings back your memory. How's that sound? Do you like it?"
"I guess," I concurred.
"So let's just take a rest today. I'll see what I can do." She got up, but then went back to the chair with a smirk in her face. "You can't work at the mech garage without a name. People have to call you by something. Do you remember your name yet?"
"No."
"Then how should we call you?"
"I… uh…" I did not know what to do.
"Alright, what if we call you… Parker?"
"Parker?"
"Why? Don't you like it? We can always find another one…"
"Parker is fine," I forced myself to smile. "It is nice to be called by something, even if this is not my real name. Thank you, Nurse Lin. You have been a great help for me."
"Hey, it's my job," she walked to the door.