In Life No Peace, In Death No Release
by Bluestar
Rating: U. There is/will be a PG-13 version as soon as I get the battle scenes fixed, in case anyone wants to read a more vivid description of the fight.
Disclaimer: The Heavy Gear universe and the TV series do not belong to me; it/they are owned by Dream Pod 9, Paradox Entertainment, Mainframe Entertainment Inc., Columbia Tristar Television and BKN. However, the Black Sands regiment, Elizabeth et cetera are MINE. No money is being made by me at all; this story is written purely for entertainment.
Any similarities this story has to anything anyone else has written is pure coincidence and entirely unintentional. Also, this is fiction. Any similarities of name, personality, or history to any person is, again, total coincidence.
Feel free to take this fic and put it on your page, but please e-mail me and just tell me you did it. Just as long as I get the credit for my story and this story stays intact.
Please don't sue, I can't afford it! If anyone removes this disclaimer, they will know pain, they will know fear and they will die a slow and painful death. (This is not a virus threat, just covering all grounds.)
Have a nice day.
Summary: Set during the War of the Alliance. When a Northern observation post in the Badlands is threatened by the CEF, a Northern Guard regiment is sent to stop them. Several cycles later, the wrecks of the Gears are used as target practice by a young Southern pilot.
Author's Notes:
1. Don't worry. There is a TV series tie-in at the end of the story.
2. If there actually is a canon 29th Northern regiment or a Northern Black Sands regiment, e-mail me and I'll change mine to something different.
3. I haven't actually got any of the sourcebooks, so I'm working from what I can find on the Net and the TV series. The series was my first intro to the HG universe.
4. I LOVE FEEDBACK - please, please, please tell me what you think. Constructive criticism will be welcomed. Flames will be used to keep me warm, it's pretty much winter where I am at the moment.
And now, on with the story . . .
Black Sands Northern Training Centre
"Hey, Elizabeth. Did you forget to set your wakeup call, or did you just sleep right through it?"
Sergeant Elizabeth Moragan, Duelist of the 29th Northern Heavy Gear regiment, the Black Sands, blinked and opened her eyes to the early morning sunlight blazing through her window. "You're in a rare good humour today, Mika," she said, sleepily regarding the woman stood next to her bed.
Sergeant Mika grinned. "I just beat Joni in an early-morning paintball exercise."
Elizabeth rubbed her eyes as she sat up. "Did you drag him out without his morning cawfee?"
Her friend grinned back at her. "You bet I did," she said smugly.
"That's an unfair advantage and you know it," Elizabeth shot back. "You're the only one of us here who can get started without cawfee in the morning." She yawned. "Speaking of which . . ."
"Don't worry." Mika waved a steaming mug under Elizabeth's nose. "Now drink it fast and get dressed. Live-ammo exercise at 0900, in case you forgot." She exited to Elizabeth's startled profanities, which redoubled as the Duelist caught sight of the chrono. Its glowing green numerals indicated that it was already 0830.
Half an hour later, a somewhat more awake Elizabeth was in her Gear and stood to attention on the training grounds. Her Jaguar was humming gently as its super-fast NNet and VISUP sent her constantly updating information on its surroundings.
To either side of her stood her squadmates. Loner Vicin, in his old Hunter, was directly to her left. Patient Leto was beyond him, and to her right stood Joni in his Cheetah. Her friend Mika was at the far right of the line.
Their commanding officer, Lieutenant Pawul, strode up and down in front of them, his Jaguar kicking up the dry dust of the training yard.
"All right, people, today we're having a live-firing exercise. Just in case you'd forgotten why you're in this squad in the first place."
"Because no other regiment would take the Oddballs," Joni stage-whispered through the comunit, drawing an appreciative chuckle from the other Gear pilots. The Oddballs was their regiment's nickname, based on the face that Pawul was notorious for giving people who didn't fit in another chance.
The lieutenant ignored the comment. "I'll be joining you on this exercise. I want a minimum of sixty-eight percent accuracy. And remember, if anyone gets hit I'm going to be very, very angry."
His Gear's omnicamera turned to regard Elizabeth. In her last duel, she'd had an arm ripped off and had to replace it with a salvaged one from another Gear. The paint job on the arm (blue and yellow) didn't match her Duelist's vivid orange and black colour scheme, but she hadn't had time to repaint it yet.
"Understood? Okay, Oddballs, on my command. Go!"
The assortment of Gears started forward at a quick trot. "Split!" Elizabeth winced as Pawul barked the command into her earphones. The Gears split into two-by-two formation and switched to SMS mode as they headed towards the line of concrete bunkers. Propping up their weapons, they began firing at targets at the end of the field, dodging the motion-tracking autocannons that were firing back at them. Leto barely managed to roll his Grizzly out of the way of a spatter of autocannon fire before the order was given to fall back.
"Not too bad," the lieutenant conceded grudgingly. "Still, your accuracy needs some improvement. You'll be repeating this exercise until I'm happy with your performance. You get me? Now line up and try again."
The Black Sands regiment repeated the exercise several more times until Pawul was satisfied with their accuracy. Vicin, protective of his own skin as always, had managed to knock Mika's Kodiak right into a burst of autocannon rounds during the second repeat and Lieutenant Pawul had verbally chewed the pair up one side and down the other before sending them both back to the hangar to repair the damage.
"Okay people, that'll be enough for today. Debrief in the conference lounge at 1200 hours on the dot. Dismissed."
Elizabeth brushed a sweaty lock of light brown hair out of her eyes as she walked her Jaguar back to its place in the hangar. The Duelist was followed by the remainder of the team, all exhausted from the training session.
As the late morning sun beat down on the tired Oddballs, Elizabeth was gloomily certain that she was going to get a headache.
Rummaging through her locker after the debriefing, Elizabeth heard one of the locker doors slam. She curiously looked around to see Leto stood in front of his locker. He kicked the door again, apparently unaware she was in the room. The rest of the team had all gone to watch the news broadcast on trideo that would update them on the progress of the war against the CEF.
"What's wrong?" she asked quietly.
The normally unflappable Leto spun around, and she was surprised to see tears of anger in his eyes. "The casualty reports for Peace River just came in."
"Peace River - oh, of course. I sometimes forget you're a Badlander."
He nodded tightly. "My best friend was on that casualty list. He had a young son, just a cycle old."
"Leto . . . I'm so sorry . . ."
"Why are you sorry? You didn't have anything to do with it. Just leave me alone." With that, he whirled and stalked towards the hangar. Elizabeth bit her lip as her teammate kicked an inoffensive pipe lying on the floor of the locker room. Then she too turned and headed in a different direction.
Northern Headquarters
The Northern HQ was a set of beautiful white marble buildings in the middle of Valeria. Seventeen stories high and spanning a full kilometre square, it stood in one of the better regions of the city-state. Like the other government buildings of the North, it had been constructed in St. Vincent's Square and was itself the centre of all Northern military action.
This was where the offices of Colonel Acklan, commander of the entire Northern Guard, were. He was currently listening to one of his people deliver the most recent reports, feet up on his dark blue oceanwood desk. His greying hair shone softly in the muted light that came through the window blinds, and his muddy brown eyes had dulled from listening to too many casualty reports that he knew were on his head. But the mind behind those eyes was still sharp, and his people respected him for his formidable grasp of strategy and tactics.
Though it seemed as if he was not listening, the young sergeant reporting to him knew that every bit of data was being stored and reviewed in that shrewd mind. He continued.
". . . Intelligence also states that the CEF is planning to attack the town of Maribu along the Westridge Range in the Badlands due to its strategic position."
Acklan suddenly straightened up from his indolent posture. "What was that, Sergeant?"
"The CEF is planning to attack the town of Maribu, sir."
"How much of their forces are they committing to the assault?"
The man consulted the report. "Sixteen hovertanks and three full legions of GREL infantry, sir. That's four light tanks, ten medium and two heavy."
The colonel cursed. "At least they haven't found out that Maribu's our main observation post." He considered, fingers drumming on the rare oceanwood desk. "Which regiment is nearest Maribu and not currently engaged in the fighting?"
"That would be the 29th, sir. Lieutenant Pawul in command."
"The 29th? Oh, yes. The Oddballs."
The sergeant shifted uneasily on the thick wall-to-wall carpeting that lined the floor of the office.
Acklan noticed. "What is it, Sergeant?"
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" he asked nervously.
"Granted," Colonel Acklan said, knowing what was coming.
"Sir, why only one unit? Against that many CEF troops, it would be a suicide mission . . . sir."
"It would."
The next day, a translucent hologram of Lieutenant Pawul stood to attention before Colonel Acklan in his office. "Sir, reporting as ordered."
"Good." Acklan cut straight to the point. "I have received information that the town of Maribu will be under attack by the CEF sometime before noon tomorrow. We're already evacuating, but the CEF will be here before we finish. I'd like you and your regiment to hold them off while we do."
"How big a force are we talking here, Colonel?" Pawul asked.
"One medium tank and some GREL infantry. Nothing your squad can't handle, Lieutenant Pawul. As soon as the evacuation is complete, we'll signal you and take you out on the landship."
"Yes, sir."
"One thing, though. I want you to maintain complete radio silence outside of your regiment. I don't want the CEF to know about the evacuation before we're ready to leave."
As the ending formalities were performed and Pawul's holographic image winked out, the ever-present sergeant turned to the colonel.
"You lied to him, sir."
"Yes. I did."
"May I ask why, sir?"
Colonel Acklan gave a grim smile. "If we only send one unit, the CEF will believe that we have a worse intelligence system that we do. They'll also think that we don't consider that village to be of any great importance." He laughed then. It was an oddly rough sound, as if he rarely found anything funny enough to laugh at. "The thing you have to understand, Sergeant, is that this war is like a chess game. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a few pawns in order to win."
Black Sands Northern Training Centre
"Here." Lieutenant Pawul stabbed his finger at a spot on the three- dimensional holographic map of the Badlands valley. "The only route for the CEF forces is through this valley. They'll have to face us at this point."
Most of the Oddballs, clustered around the 3D map, nodded. However, Mika frowned. "What if they come in over the top, here and here?" She indicated the areas she meant.
Pawul shook his head. "Not possible, Sergeant. The only way up those cliffs is past us." Mika nodded, accepting that. "Now," he continued. "This is what we'll do when they get within range." Coloured dots started moving over the grid. "Joni, you're essential to this. While the rest of us pick off the GREL infantry, I want you to head for the hovertank."
"Yes, sir," Joni said promptly as Pawul continued.
"As soon as you've tagged the tank with your laser designator, get back to the rest of us ASAP." He turned to Leto. "Once Joni's transmitted the coordinates, I'd like you to start firing at the tank. If your aim is as good as it normally is, we can mop up the rest and be back to base in time for dinner." The red light that indicate the tank fluttered and died.
"For the mop-up, we'll split into two-by-two defensive formation, exactly like we practiced yesterday." The Oddballs nodded again as Pawul's gesture illustrated his point. "Any questions?"
"No, sir," chorused the regiment.
"We've got a Kodiak on our side," Vicin pointed out with a grin. "We're pretty near invincible."
Mika laughed and swatted him playfully. "Too true. Those Earthers will be shaking in their boots."
The next day, just outside the town of Maribu, the Badlands
The breeze-free desert air of the Badlands lay stiflingly on the Oddballs' Gears as they waited for the CEF forces to show. Joni, their forward scout, was ranging ahead in an attempt to get an approximate ETA.
While the rest of the team nervously watched the horizon and the slow evacuation of the village continued behind them, Elizabeth made some final checks on her Jaguar's systems. She loved the feeling of being almost part of the great machine, feeling it respond to her every move. Only when piloting her Gear did she truly feel alive. She knew it was a cliché, but hey, clichés became clichés because they were true.
It was this that made her one of the better Duelists - and also that which had relegated her to the Oddballs. Too individual and impulsive to be a Duelist in one of the more traditional HG regiments, Elizabeth's hard- earned skill for fighting in one-on-one engagements had kept her in the Northern Guard.
Her reverie was interrupted by Joni's frantic communication. "I got them. They're headed this way, ETA maybe twenty minutes."
"Good work. Head on back," came Pawul's voice over the comunit.
"You don't understand, sir. There's about sixteen tanks, from what I can see. And at least three full legions of GRELs."
"Remind me again how well Colonel Acklan can count?" Leto muttered. Elizabeth was relieved to hear him sounding more like his usual self.
"Check back with base," Vicin suggested, fear creeping into his voice.
"No can do, Vi. We're on a radio silence order," Pawul said grimly as he scanned the horizon for the first signs of trouble.
Vicin's breath came more harshly. "We're gonna die. We're . . ."
"Vicin!" Elizabeth snapped. It was the vocal equivalent of a slap round the head.
Vicin shut up, but everyone was thinking the same thing.
If an observer had viewed the scene some hours later, he or she would have found that there were many differences. The village the Oddballs had been protecting stood silent and empty, the marks where the landship had waited already fading.
On the battlefield itself, the blood-soaked sands paid testament to the Oddballs' ferocity. GREL dead and five downed tanks were dotted around the churned floor of the Badlands valley, the bodies gently decaying in the unforgiving heat.
The observer would also have seen the remains of six Gears. One blackened mass was Leto's Grizzly. Near it, Pawul's headless Jaguar had collapsed front down.
The orange-and-black painted Jaguar that had belonged to Elizabeth lay still with a neat hole the size of a tree trunk through its main body. Her friend Mika, in the Kodiak they had once joked about being invincible, stared with sightless eyes into glassy oblivion with a sharp fragment of metal piercing deep into her side.
Joni's body lay not far from his beloved Cheetah. Unlike his squadmates, he had not died in his Gear, which was still dripping fuel oil from its shattered V-engine. Instead, a bullet through his neck had severed his spinal cord.
The final Gear, Vicin's Hunter, was badly dented. No CEF force was able to claim his death; only he was responsible for that. The observer would not have known that in the heat of the battle, seeing that the landship had taken off without them, his nerve had broken. The terrified pilot had tried to escape the battle by climbing the treacherous sandstone cliffs. He had nearly reached the top when his handhold had come away from the rocky wall, leaving him to fall onto the solid surface of the hard-packed valley floor.
Never let anyone tell you that war is glorious.
A week later, back at Northern HQ, a memorial service was being held in the main hall. Row upon row of uniform-clad Gear pilots filled the massive room. The room itself was well lighted by tall windows, throwing the rays of the midday sun onto the speaker on the podium. The red and black banner of the 29th Black Sands covered the wall behind him, a vivid reminder of the lives lost.
Colonel Acklan of the Northern Army mentally reviewed his speech as he prepared to address the multitude of faces before him. He cleared his throat and began.
"Words cannot express how much sorrow I feel at the loss of the 29th Black Sands regiment. Lieutenant Pawul and his squad were some of the finest pilots I knew, and I am sure everybody here feels their loss deeply." He knew the words by heart. This was the same 'insert name here' speech that was given at every memorial. "Had we but known how much of the CEF's army would be sent against the town of Maribu, perhaps things would have been done differently." No, we wouldn't, he thought. If we had sent more troops, then the CEF would have known it was more that just a Badlands town. "The 29th acquitted themselves honourably in that face of overwhelming odds. Their valour saved the lives of the people of Maribu. The full regiment will be given posthumous commendations." And then, he thought, they will be quietly forgotten.
Several cycles later . . .
The still, hot air that had preserved the broken Gears of the 29th still lay heavily on the forgotten battlefield. The only disturbance to this mocking peacefulness were the desert insects that were everywhere in the Badlands.
The quiet was shattered by an explosion that ripped through the still air. Pawul's Jaguar jerked in a grotesque parody of life as the grenade exploded in its guts. Behind it stood a Gear familiar to all who followed the Heavy Gear championships: the Red Rover. Autocannon in hand, it had obviously just launched the grenade that had torn the remains of the lieutenant's smoking Gear apart.
"Yeah!" cheered its young pilot as a truck drove up behind him.
"Marcus!" snapped the truck's driver. "You can't keep using those wrecks for target practice when I want to salvage their parts."
"Aw, come on. I was just digging it out for you, Greco," Marcus said jokingly.
"Next time, use a shovel?" his uncle suggested with resigned patience. "Now go see if you can save anything from it and I'll check the other wrecks in the valley."
"Sure thing." Marcus zoomed away as Greco drove off in a new direction.
Above them, two Northern Gears, obviously military, watched. One pointed in the direction Greco's truck had taken, then the two walked off.
Marcus walked up to another wreck, having found nothing salvageable in the melted scrap that Pawul's Jaguar now was. Picking up Elizabeth's yellow and blue arm, he checked it and then discarded it. He brightened when he found the Jaguar's intact head assembly and lifted it above his head.
"Boom Boom Boom! Heavy Gear ace Marcus Stephen Rover dismantles the competition!" He imitated the sound of a cheering crowd, waving the severed head assembly like a trophy.
His screen lit up with an image of his uncle. "Marcus!"
"What's going on?" the Gear pilot demanded, instantly forgetting his make- believe win.
"Hurry! I need your help!" pleaded Greco's image.
"Greco?" Marcus asked as the screen fritzed out. "Greco?" Receiving no answer, he grimly said, "On my way."
He dropped the Jaguar's head and skated off again on SMS mode, leaving behind the dusty battlefield.
He never knew the true story of why those wrecks were there.
by Bluestar
Rating: U. There is/will be a PG-13 version as soon as I get the battle scenes fixed, in case anyone wants to read a more vivid description of the fight.
Disclaimer: The Heavy Gear universe and the TV series do not belong to me; it/they are owned by Dream Pod 9, Paradox Entertainment, Mainframe Entertainment Inc., Columbia Tristar Television and BKN. However, the Black Sands regiment, Elizabeth et cetera are MINE. No money is being made by me at all; this story is written purely for entertainment.
Any similarities this story has to anything anyone else has written is pure coincidence and entirely unintentional. Also, this is fiction. Any similarities of name, personality, or history to any person is, again, total coincidence.
Feel free to take this fic and put it on your page, but please e-mail me and just tell me you did it. Just as long as I get the credit for my story and this story stays intact.
Please don't sue, I can't afford it! If anyone removes this disclaimer, they will know pain, they will know fear and they will die a slow and painful death. (This is not a virus threat, just covering all grounds.)
Have a nice day.
Summary: Set during the War of the Alliance. When a Northern observation post in the Badlands is threatened by the CEF, a Northern Guard regiment is sent to stop them. Several cycles later, the wrecks of the Gears are used as target practice by a young Southern pilot.
Author's Notes:
1. Don't worry. There is a TV series tie-in at the end of the story.
2. If there actually is a canon 29th Northern regiment or a Northern Black Sands regiment, e-mail me and I'll change mine to something different.
3. I haven't actually got any of the sourcebooks, so I'm working from what I can find on the Net and the TV series. The series was my first intro to the HG universe.
4. I LOVE FEEDBACK - please, please, please tell me what you think. Constructive criticism will be welcomed. Flames will be used to keep me warm, it's pretty much winter where I am at the moment.
And now, on with the story . . .
Black Sands Northern Training Centre
"Hey, Elizabeth. Did you forget to set your wakeup call, or did you just sleep right through it?"
Sergeant Elizabeth Moragan, Duelist of the 29th Northern Heavy Gear regiment, the Black Sands, blinked and opened her eyes to the early morning sunlight blazing through her window. "You're in a rare good humour today, Mika," she said, sleepily regarding the woman stood next to her bed.
Sergeant Mika grinned. "I just beat Joni in an early-morning paintball exercise."
Elizabeth rubbed her eyes as she sat up. "Did you drag him out without his morning cawfee?"
Her friend grinned back at her. "You bet I did," she said smugly.
"That's an unfair advantage and you know it," Elizabeth shot back. "You're the only one of us here who can get started without cawfee in the morning." She yawned. "Speaking of which . . ."
"Don't worry." Mika waved a steaming mug under Elizabeth's nose. "Now drink it fast and get dressed. Live-ammo exercise at 0900, in case you forgot." She exited to Elizabeth's startled profanities, which redoubled as the Duelist caught sight of the chrono. Its glowing green numerals indicated that it was already 0830.
Half an hour later, a somewhat more awake Elizabeth was in her Gear and stood to attention on the training grounds. Her Jaguar was humming gently as its super-fast NNet and VISUP sent her constantly updating information on its surroundings.
To either side of her stood her squadmates. Loner Vicin, in his old Hunter, was directly to her left. Patient Leto was beyond him, and to her right stood Joni in his Cheetah. Her friend Mika was at the far right of the line.
Their commanding officer, Lieutenant Pawul, strode up and down in front of them, his Jaguar kicking up the dry dust of the training yard.
"All right, people, today we're having a live-firing exercise. Just in case you'd forgotten why you're in this squad in the first place."
"Because no other regiment would take the Oddballs," Joni stage-whispered through the comunit, drawing an appreciative chuckle from the other Gear pilots. The Oddballs was their regiment's nickname, based on the face that Pawul was notorious for giving people who didn't fit in another chance.
The lieutenant ignored the comment. "I'll be joining you on this exercise. I want a minimum of sixty-eight percent accuracy. And remember, if anyone gets hit I'm going to be very, very angry."
His Gear's omnicamera turned to regard Elizabeth. In her last duel, she'd had an arm ripped off and had to replace it with a salvaged one from another Gear. The paint job on the arm (blue and yellow) didn't match her Duelist's vivid orange and black colour scheme, but she hadn't had time to repaint it yet.
"Understood? Okay, Oddballs, on my command. Go!"
The assortment of Gears started forward at a quick trot. "Split!" Elizabeth winced as Pawul barked the command into her earphones. The Gears split into two-by-two formation and switched to SMS mode as they headed towards the line of concrete bunkers. Propping up their weapons, they began firing at targets at the end of the field, dodging the motion-tracking autocannons that were firing back at them. Leto barely managed to roll his Grizzly out of the way of a spatter of autocannon fire before the order was given to fall back.
"Not too bad," the lieutenant conceded grudgingly. "Still, your accuracy needs some improvement. You'll be repeating this exercise until I'm happy with your performance. You get me? Now line up and try again."
The Black Sands regiment repeated the exercise several more times until Pawul was satisfied with their accuracy. Vicin, protective of his own skin as always, had managed to knock Mika's Kodiak right into a burst of autocannon rounds during the second repeat and Lieutenant Pawul had verbally chewed the pair up one side and down the other before sending them both back to the hangar to repair the damage.
"Okay people, that'll be enough for today. Debrief in the conference lounge at 1200 hours on the dot. Dismissed."
Elizabeth brushed a sweaty lock of light brown hair out of her eyes as she walked her Jaguar back to its place in the hangar. The Duelist was followed by the remainder of the team, all exhausted from the training session.
As the late morning sun beat down on the tired Oddballs, Elizabeth was gloomily certain that she was going to get a headache.
Rummaging through her locker after the debriefing, Elizabeth heard one of the locker doors slam. She curiously looked around to see Leto stood in front of his locker. He kicked the door again, apparently unaware she was in the room. The rest of the team had all gone to watch the news broadcast on trideo that would update them on the progress of the war against the CEF.
"What's wrong?" she asked quietly.
The normally unflappable Leto spun around, and she was surprised to see tears of anger in his eyes. "The casualty reports for Peace River just came in."
"Peace River - oh, of course. I sometimes forget you're a Badlander."
He nodded tightly. "My best friend was on that casualty list. He had a young son, just a cycle old."
"Leto . . . I'm so sorry . . ."
"Why are you sorry? You didn't have anything to do with it. Just leave me alone." With that, he whirled and stalked towards the hangar. Elizabeth bit her lip as her teammate kicked an inoffensive pipe lying on the floor of the locker room. Then she too turned and headed in a different direction.
Northern Headquarters
The Northern HQ was a set of beautiful white marble buildings in the middle of Valeria. Seventeen stories high and spanning a full kilometre square, it stood in one of the better regions of the city-state. Like the other government buildings of the North, it had been constructed in St. Vincent's Square and was itself the centre of all Northern military action.
This was where the offices of Colonel Acklan, commander of the entire Northern Guard, were. He was currently listening to one of his people deliver the most recent reports, feet up on his dark blue oceanwood desk. His greying hair shone softly in the muted light that came through the window blinds, and his muddy brown eyes had dulled from listening to too many casualty reports that he knew were on his head. But the mind behind those eyes was still sharp, and his people respected him for his formidable grasp of strategy and tactics.
Though it seemed as if he was not listening, the young sergeant reporting to him knew that every bit of data was being stored and reviewed in that shrewd mind. He continued.
". . . Intelligence also states that the CEF is planning to attack the town of Maribu along the Westridge Range in the Badlands due to its strategic position."
Acklan suddenly straightened up from his indolent posture. "What was that, Sergeant?"
"The CEF is planning to attack the town of Maribu, sir."
"How much of their forces are they committing to the assault?"
The man consulted the report. "Sixteen hovertanks and three full legions of GREL infantry, sir. That's four light tanks, ten medium and two heavy."
The colonel cursed. "At least they haven't found out that Maribu's our main observation post." He considered, fingers drumming on the rare oceanwood desk. "Which regiment is nearest Maribu and not currently engaged in the fighting?"
"That would be the 29th, sir. Lieutenant Pawul in command."
"The 29th? Oh, yes. The Oddballs."
The sergeant shifted uneasily on the thick wall-to-wall carpeting that lined the floor of the office.
Acklan noticed. "What is it, Sergeant?"
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" he asked nervously.
"Granted," Colonel Acklan said, knowing what was coming.
"Sir, why only one unit? Against that many CEF troops, it would be a suicide mission . . . sir."
"It would."
The next day, a translucent hologram of Lieutenant Pawul stood to attention before Colonel Acklan in his office. "Sir, reporting as ordered."
"Good." Acklan cut straight to the point. "I have received information that the town of Maribu will be under attack by the CEF sometime before noon tomorrow. We're already evacuating, but the CEF will be here before we finish. I'd like you and your regiment to hold them off while we do."
"How big a force are we talking here, Colonel?" Pawul asked.
"One medium tank and some GREL infantry. Nothing your squad can't handle, Lieutenant Pawul. As soon as the evacuation is complete, we'll signal you and take you out on the landship."
"Yes, sir."
"One thing, though. I want you to maintain complete radio silence outside of your regiment. I don't want the CEF to know about the evacuation before we're ready to leave."
As the ending formalities were performed and Pawul's holographic image winked out, the ever-present sergeant turned to the colonel.
"You lied to him, sir."
"Yes. I did."
"May I ask why, sir?"
Colonel Acklan gave a grim smile. "If we only send one unit, the CEF will believe that we have a worse intelligence system that we do. They'll also think that we don't consider that village to be of any great importance." He laughed then. It was an oddly rough sound, as if he rarely found anything funny enough to laugh at. "The thing you have to understand, Sergeant, is that this war is like a chess game. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a few pawns in order to win."
Black Sands Northern Training Centre
"Here." Lieutenant Pawul stabbed his finger at a spot on the three- dimensional holographic map of the Badlands valley. "The only route for the CEF forces is through this valley. They'll have to face us at this point."
Most of the Oddballs, clustered around the 3D map, nodded. However, Mika frowned. "What if they come in over the top, here and here?" She indicated the areas she meant.
Pawul shook his head. "Not possible, Sergeant. The only way up those cliffs is past us." Mika nodded, accepting that. "Now," he continued. "This is what we'll do when they get within range." Coloured dots started moving over the grid. "Joni, you're essential to this. While the rest of us pick off the GREL infantry, I want you to head for the hovertank."
"Yes, sir," Joni said promptly as Pawul continued.
"As soon as you've tagged the tank with your laser designator, get back to the rest of us ASAP." He turned to Leto. "Once Joni's transmitted the coordinates, I'd like you to start firing at the tank. If your aim is as good as it normally is, we can mop up the rest and be back to base in time for dinner." The red light that indicate the tank fluttered and died.
"For the mop-up, we'll split into two-by-two defensive formation, exactly like we practiced yesterday." The Oddballs nodded again as Pawul's gesture illustrated his point. "Any questions?"
"No, sir," chorused the regiment.
"We've got a Kodiak on our side," Vicin pointed out with a grin. "We're pretty near invincible."
Mika laughed and swatted him playfully. "Too true. Those Earthers will be shaking in their boots."
The next day, just outside the town of Maribu, the Badlands
The breeze-free desert air of the Badlands lay stiflingly on the Oddballs' Gears as they waited for the CEF forces to show. Joni, their forward scout, was ranging ahead in an attempt to get an approximate ETA.
While the rest of the team nervously watched the horizon and the slow evacuation of the village continued behind them, Elizabeth made some final checks on her Jaguar's systems. She loved the feeling of being almost part of the great machine, feeling it respond to her every move. Only when piloting her Gear did she truly feel alive. She knew it was a cliché, but hey, clichés became clichés because they were true.
It was this that made her one of the better Duelists - and also that which had relegated her to the Oddballs. Too individual and impulsive to be a Duelist in one of the more traditional HG regiments, Elizabeth's hard- earned skill for fighting in one-on-one engagements had kept her in the Northern Guard.
Her reverie was interrupted by Joni's frantic communication. "I got them. They're headed this way, ETA maybe twenty minutes."
"Good work. Head on back," came Pawul's voice over the comunit.
"You don't understand, sir. There's about sixteen tanks, from what I can see. And at least three full legions of GRELs."
"Remind me again how well Colonel Acklan can count?" Leto muttered. Elizabeth was relieved to hear him sounding more like his usual self.
"Check back with base," Vicin suggested, fear creeping into his voice.
"No can do, Vi. We're on a radio silence order," Pawul said grimly as he scanned the horizon for the first signs of trouble.
Vicin's breath came more harshly. "We're gonna die. We're . . ."
"Vicin!" Elizabeth snapped. It was the vocal equivalent of a slap round the head.
Vicin shut up, but everyone was thinking the same thing.
If an observer had viewed the scene some hours later, he or she would have found that there were many differences. The village the Oddballs had been protecting stood silent and empty, the marks where the landship had waited already fading.
On the battlefield itself, the blood-soaked sands paid testament to the Oddballs' ferocity. GREL dead and five downed tanks were dotted around the churned floor of the Badlands valley, the bodies gently decaying in the unforgiving heat.
The observer would also have seen the remains of six Gears. One blackened mass was Leto's Grizzly. Near it, Pawul's headless Jaguar had collapsed front down.
The orange-and-black painted Jaguar that had belonged to Elizabeth lay still with a neat hole the size of a tree trunk through its main body. Her friend Mika, in the Kodiak they had once joked about being invincible, stared with sightless eyes into glassy oblivion with a sharp fragment of metal piercing deep into her side.
Joni's body lay not far from his beloved Cheetah. Unlike his squadmates, he had not died in his Gear, which was still dripping fuel oil from its shattered V-engine. Instead, a bullet through his neck had severed his spinal cord.
The final Gear, Vicin's Hunter, was badly dented. No CEF force was able to claim his death; only he was responsible for that. The observer would not have known that in the heat of the battle, seeing that the landship had taken off without them, his nerve had broken. The terrified pilot had tried to escape the battle by climbing the treacherous sandstone cliffs. He had nearly reached the top when his handhold had come away from the rocky wall, leaving him to fall onto the solid surface of the hard-packed valley floor.
Never let anyone tell you that war is glorious.
A week later, back at Northern HQ, a memorial service was being held in the main hall. Row upon row of uniform-clad Gear pilots filled the massive room. The room itself was well lighted by tall windows, throwing the rays of the midday sun onto the speaker on the podium. The red and black banner of the 29th Black Sands covered the wall behind him, a vivid reminder of the lives lost.
Colonel Acklan of the Northern Army mentally reviewed his speech as he prepared to address the multitude of faces before him. He cleared his throat and began.
"Words cannot express how much sorrow I feel at the loss of the 29th Black Sands regiment. Lieutenant Pawul and his squad were some of the finest pilots I knew, and I am sure everybody here feels their loss deeply." He knew the words by heart. This was the same 'insert name here' speech that was given at every memorial. "Had we but known how much of the CEF's army would be sent against the town of Maribu, perhaps things would have been done differently." No, we wouldn't, he thought. If we had sent more troops, then the CEF would have known it was more that just a Badlands town. "The 29th acquitted themselves honourably in that face of overwhelming odds. Their valour saved the lives of the people of Maribu. The full regiment will be given posthumous commendations." And then, he thought, they will be quietly forgotten.
Several cycles later . . .
The still, hot air that had preserved the broken Gears of the 29th still lay heavily on the forgotten battlefield. The only disturbance to this mocking peacefulness were the desert insects that were everywhere in the Badlands.
The quiet was shattered by an explosion that ripped through the still air. Pawul's Jaguar jerked in a grotesque parody of life as the grenade exploded in its guts. Behind it stood a Gear familiar to all who followed the Heavy Gear championships: the Red Rover. Autocannon in hand, it had obviously just launched the grenade that had torn the remains of the lieutenant's smoking Gear apart.
"Yeah!" cheered its young pilot as a truck drove up behind him.
"Marcus!" snapped the truck's driver. "You can't keep using those wrecks for target practice when I want to salvage their parts."
"Aw, come on. I was just digging it out for you, Greco," Marcus said jokingly.
"Next time, use a shovel?" his uncle suggested with resigned patience. "Now go see if you can save anything from it and I'll check the other wrecks in the valley."
"Sure thing." Marcus zoomed away as Greco drove off in a new direction.
Above them, two Northern Gears, obviously military, watched. One pointed in the direction Greco's truck had taken, then the two walked off.
Marcus walked up to another wreck, having found nothing salvageable in the melted scrap that Pawul's Jaguar now was. Picking up Elizabeth's yellow and blue arm, he checked it and then discarded it. He brightened when he found the Jaguar's intact head assembly and lifted it above his head.
"Boom Boom Boom! Heavy Gear ace Marcus Stephen Rover dismantles the competition!" He imitated the sound of a cheering crowd, waving the severed head assembly like a trophy.
His screen lit up with an image of his uncle. "Marcus!"
"What's going on?" the Gear pilot demanded, instantly forgetting his make- believe win.
"Hurry! I need your help!" pleaded Greco's image.
"Greco?" Marcus asked as the screen fritzed out. "Greco?" Receiving no answer, he grimly said, "On my way."
He dropped the Jaguar's head and skated off again on SMS mode, leaving behind the dusty battlefield.
He never knew the true story of why those wrecks were there.