­CHAPTER 10 – "Transition to Endgame": Eaton: April, 3061

Life moves fast, but there are times when it moves at a crawl. Times in fact, where your consciousness seems the temporal gravitational well, that everything is focused on you, that time for all other beings stands still while you suck the deficit down the drain in some crucial time span, thieving their time when you need it to stay alive. Some might have called it fate or karma or some trancendental bullshit but I still attribute it to sheer survival instinct coupled with the honed reflexes of warrior-kind.

So it was that when I rounded that corner to the south courtyard that would be my trial of defeat, my timesense slowed and became useless. Moving at full throttle, I was able to discern each myomer firing, each shift in weight, each mechanical limb controlled subconsciously by my middle brain and physically by the mech's gyroscope. I could smell the heat and musk of my own perspiration, and the very slight tang of the tobacco smoke that would never leave this cockpit, unless of course a stronger smoke replaced it, as it very soon would.

As the ferrocrete armored siding gave way to a full view of the ambush I first noticed the Colonel's mech, the tanned and scored Warhammer, headless and face-first to the ground, the long right-arm particle projection cannon bent underneath the smoking, glowing torso, and the left cannon several meters away from it's dismembered owner. I next noticed the Marauder, standing just outside the south gate but pivoted to look into this darkened courtyard. The smoke from the Warhammer obscured for a moment Sara's Uziel, but Kellie's Thunderbolt waited for me, nearly astride the downed mech.

Before I could get on the comm, my eye was drawn to her shoulder mounted missile launcher and the telltale circular orange flecks of rocket launches, and this was when my combat senses kicked in. LRMs are fast, but the Thunderbolt is an older mech, and the launcher cycles through rockets sequentially, rather than firing salvoes like Eltanin's. While the first missile was still in flight, I had already reacted and was attempting to jink to the right. The older launchers where also notorious for minimum range issues and I was too close for the missiles to track well, and as a result more than half of the stream of rockets missed completely. I registered the sensations of the percussions and waited for my gyroscope to steady me for I lined up my own shot with my PPC.

Moving to a half crouch I nearly stopped myself as I wondered if there perhaps hadn't been some mistake, that she had fired at me accidentally, or mistaken me for a hostile, or my IFF transponder had gone out. In the split second of hesitation her lasers tracked onto my position and fired, in a way that was deliberate and quite antagonistic. My BDU began flashing yellow but I seemed to only hear it dimly, as one might hear the sounds of nearby dormitories through even thick walls, the muffled conversations, parties, and lovemaking.

I must've fired then, as the streak of my PPC reached out to her. I managed to hit her directly dead center, scoring a devastatingly clean shot right above the mech's fusion heart, beating with white-hot plasma. In the dark recesses of my mind, the calculators crunched and I knew I only needed three more shots like that to take her out completely. Or less… The hit was so strong that her next shot went wild, striking the building next to me and etching a groove in its façade.

Piercing through the loud damage warnings of my BDU came the almost casual tone of my missile lock on and I cycled to my launcher and fired it off, the rockets leaving wispy gray contrails and splashing the crater on her chest with more damage. In my battle haze, I did not smile, only calculated. I rose and angled south, but kept a bead on her now righted mech. Her lasers struck again then, cutting like claws all over my torso, and I clawed back with my own.

Traitor bitch. I aligned my PPC and struck her a second time just above the fusion core and exposed the internal structure. She was mine. Just one more shot and the cannon would cut through the titanium-carbide structure and breach the fusion core's shielding, letting loose the very literal hellfire there. You're mine. I've won this battle. And I would have, if there would have been time for one more shot.

But my time ran out just then. I had a moment of comprehension as twin bluish trails linked my mech and Sara's captured Uziel. We might have been simply holding up two very long, very bright girders between us, but if that was the case, why was my mech spouting enormous gouts of flame and throwing fiery shrapnel forth like spittle? Now I did, in fact, hear the BDU's alarms, and I was thrown hard against my restraints as her twin arm mounted cannons pounded my mech off its feet and I soared. Something broke free and struck me in the temple, not entirely blunt but not sharp enough to penetrate, yet still enough of both to beat me senseless and still leave a nasty cut behind, not that I knew about it then. For then I knew only that I was soaring.

My memory exaggerates it of course. I lost the sensation of weight and gave in to gravity's pull, and so did Eltanin, but soaring is too strong of a word for the clumsy, explosive hop that we took. If the flight was clumsy, the landing was more so. My mech's shoulder carved deep ruts in the earth as I skidded to a stop amidst another hail of rocket and laser fire. Klaxons sung and heat poured into the cockpit. Fires like greedy little demon children leapt out of the consoles as shorts in the circuitry ignited absolutely anything that could burn. I was mostly trying to figured out why the hell the planet had abruptly made a 90 degree rotation and had moment of horror in which I tried to claw the ground to keep from falling vertically down and off it before another set of particle beams sunk into my downed machine and I watched the beams come in, from to the right - or was it above- where Sara's Uziel in the corner – or top – of my viewport bore down beside Kellie's Thunderbolt.

This second set of beams cut their way into the torso interior and suddenly all was orange, yellow, and black as my ammunition blew and my mech lifted off the ground – soaring again! – like a too-fat exploding grasshopper that can only hop once.

My instincts came active and my hand slammed onto the eject button. Once, twice, three times and I mashed it down with all my strength. I could feel my skin starting to burn now as the fire seemed to consume completely. I was thrown side to side by more explosions, the smoke filled the cockpit and then one final explosion, quiet and soft to my deadened senses, rocked my world and I knew it no more.

I would call them fevered dreams, but fevered implied sickness, and dreams imply non-reality. Its likely that any user of strong narcotics would have known what I experienced. My viewport on reality was not clear. It was smudged or misted over, but it was reality. It was so warped as to be dreamlike, but it was not dreamlike.

Semantics notwithstanding, I passed into a period of semi-unconsciousness that a narcotic addict would have understood. I was a mild addict to tobacco and adrenaline, but those don't filter reality to the extent of some others. This reality was heavily filtered. Demonic faces looked down at me. Great black demonic faces, and one of them was an Atlas, but I realized immediately that it was of my own creation and I made a mental shaking of the head to clear it. This produced pain that was also decidedly undreamlike.

I watched Sara and Kellie come to stand over Eltanin, not just my mech but the mech of my family for now three pilots. They were painting it with lurid neon glowing paint from strange hoses and the paint was splashing back up at them. As it all mixed, like paint does, it got all oily and dark and must've multiplied or risen like yeast in dough. Some of it splashed back up in oranges and reds, but most of it was the slick oily black color. But the paint was acid paint, and now Eltanin was melting into the ground.

Apparently their artistic vision was not satisfied as now they turned to paint the Colonel's Warhammer as well and did a very quick and thorough job of it. Then they turned and fled towards the south gate. I felt each throb of the ground as their steps fell in unison, but it was my pain that was throbbing with them. Each step was more painful until they passed and then it receded like a tide.

My vision cleared. My pain hadn't gone away, it was there still in the background, but my medipack had hit me with a dose of something. Morphine this time? I laughed. More drugs! I love drugs! I chuckled more and then began to roll around in a real schoolboy fit of the giggles. I could sense that the rolling was very painful and my mind was registering, dimly, the injury caused by it, but the situation was too hilarious to stop. What the hell just happened? Whatever had happened, it was still too funny to concentrate on.

The morphine haze soon subsided and then I saw the scene for what it really was. Eltanin, my brother's mech and my father's mech and my mech, was blasted into a thousand burning, melting, white-hot fragments before me. Completely destroyed and where the hell was I? Laying on the grass? I was surrounded by metal shards from the remnants of the cockpit and perhaps shoulder, had been rolling on them in fact and getting burned by them and cut by their cruel corners.

I looked around and saw Kellie and Sara's mechs disappearing through the south gate, where a third mech awaited them but my eyes were too blurry to identify its trim silhouette. As they turned and passed out of view behind the firebase wall it hit me how completely I'd been had. I'd damn near fell in love with that traitorous bitch.

Merc mechwhore! I will kill her. Slowly and painfully, Sara. You'll pay for destroying the last link I had with my brother. Vengeance is a dish best served very very hot and you'll get it alright.

Worse yet, she'd been in it with Kellie Orion all along. I read her dossier and knew she had been in the court of the Steiners. Why hadn't I put two and two together? But she wasn't the most likely possibility, and Sara was farther from likely, given the history both had with the Colonel. Zanshin was the logical traitor, but now I felt guity for suspecting him. He was as guileless as a child… or maybe a clanner. He longed for the straight fight, man to man, hand to hand, fair and balanced where strength and courage won the day.

I surveyed the wreckage of the late David Grenadine's Warhammer. It was a total loss. Nothing remained. The sisters of betrayal had made very sure he was dead. Hell, it's a miracle I'm alive! Somehow I had ejected in that final blaze but it hadn't looked like an ejection, or…

I looked around and realized I was still tied into my seat, or what was left of it, by one strap. No, I had only partially ejected, and that half-malfunction had probably saved my life. I looked myself over. I was covered liberally in serious burns, and was as bald as a newborn baby from head to toe. My clothes were melted or burned mostly away and clung to my body like scar tissue. I had several very bad cuts, probably shrapnel wounds, and probably the shrapnel was still in there. The worst of it was on my legs. Shirt, belt, equipment still fairly intact, though scorched.

The pitter-patter of little Raven feet alerted me to Cadence's arrival and I looked northward to see his profile. He froze in mid stride at the corner, one long crow foot paused in the air, and then turned and darted for cover behind an eastern shack where he half crouched. His mech looked side to side, and appeared to even cock it's head slightly to the right. After a time, he stood up and I could hear more approaching mechs. Huntress and the rest of Bravo came around the opposite corner in a tight formation, ready for battle.

I unbuckled the one remaining restraint and stood up. Now the pain started to really kick in, but I ignored it and moved away from the carnage of my mech, trying to get their attention. Cadence darted forward now to go join the rest of the team and he noticed me walking and came to a stop.

"Sir! Are you alright?"

The external speakers were so deafeningly loud that I winced and staggered to the side. Good grief! Turn down the vidscreen you good for nothing kids! You'll go deaf! Don't sit so close or you'll go blind! Gregor and I had loved watching the mech battles on the screen and had always been far too eager to really experience it up close.

Well this was close enough for me this time Dad, I got burned and deafened this time! And guess what, Gregor died just like you! And now Eltanin is gone! Wow the time sure does fly, doesn't it?

I fell to my knees and threw up. It was mostly water, but the spasms were fiery agony while they lasted. Gregor, you were right about not eating before combat. He was always right about pure combat. Gregor was a master of the actual implementation of the fighting. Skilled hands and lightning fast reflexes. Me, I was the thinker, the strategist, he was the shooter, the marksman. Was.

I struggled painfully to my feet and looked up. Even though the whole episode had seemed long, it had probably only been a few minutes at most. Had the infantry even taken the tower yet? I thought not.

The other mechs seemed to be communicating and finally Solaria's Griffin stepped forward and put down a hand. It took me a while to step onto it and get a good hold and then she lifted me to the cockpit and I had to suppress every pain instinct in my body as I tried to get off the damn metal hand and onto the head but finally did. She had already popped the cockpit seal and was looking up expectantly.

"Sir? Are you gonna be okay?"

I nodded and stepped onto the ladder and descended, ignoring her raised hand completely. When I reached the bottom I tried to speak.

"Water."

Nothing came out, but she got the idea and reached for her provisions, finally producing a canteen which I focused on and grabbed with both hands. I first tried to drink with the cap on, then spun it off and tried again. It was blessedly cool and sweet and possibly the most delicious thing I ever had. Damn, this is good. I should get third-degree burned more often!

"Is he in there Solaria?" came Huntress's voice over the comm.

"I'm here all right."

"He's pretty bad though. We need to get him to the medics quickly." Solaria looked at me with a mixture of concern and admiration. Underneath it all, I sensed there was deep pity, and that pissed me off just a little and comforted me as well, damn it all.

"Yes, you do, but first we plan. Cadence, you get on that Awesome as soon as you can. I need a mech. Crack it. Some techs are lazy and leave secure entry documents right there with the mech, especially stupid rebel mongrels. We need the lasers and cannon online. Have the infantry secured the tower?"

Solaria turned and sat back in the seat and keyed a new comm channel to include the infantry leader and repeated my request.

"Affirmative command, but we haven't gotten anywhere in the system yet. We're still rounding up enemy troops and securing the stations. The techs are still outside."

I reached over and keyed the mic.

"Sergeant this is Leftenant Strovski, make control of those turrets your highest priority and get the techs on the artillery piece immediately. Cadence will spot for you if you get it online. There are three hostile mechs well within range that are fleeing and we need to take them out if we can. In the meantime, sweep the building and ensure that there are no explosives left behind. I'm expecting a trap so be thorough and quick."

"Yes sir. Is the Colonel alright?"

"The Colonel is dead Sergeant, and we will all join him if you fail at your tasks."

I released the mic and keyed off the relay. Solaria was staring up at me with wide, very frightened eyes, her mouth pulled down at the corners in fear and trepidation.

"Solaria," came Huntress's voice "get Vance to the personnel carriers for medical attention. We'll move the base of operations inside when the tower has been swept. I want you and Zanshin to get the vehicles inside safely. Jump over the wall again and escort them around to the south entrance but be wary of mines. They are too vulnerable up there on the north side. Cadence, I'll come with you to the Awesome for now."

A few minutes later I was in the back of the infantrymen's APC with the medic. Such is the life of a mercenary. She was a brute of a woman, possibly in her mid thirties, with a layer of fat over the muscle that gave her a stocky, bulldog-like appearance. Her bowl-cut hair didn't help her feminity much either. My medipack had injected me with more morphine now and it was beginning to screw with my mind again. I felt sleepy and rested at the same time, like when you stretch after a good nap and feel like what you really need is round two.

My cigarettes were nowhere to be found, which was irritating. Burn a man's smokes, will ya? I wanted one and opened my eyes to watch the medic, nurse, bulldog, whatever, applying burn salve to my right arm. She had bandaged me up good on the legs and was working her way up, it looked like.

"I don't suppose you have any cigarettes on you," I checked her nameplate, "Corporal Helios?"

"No, I don't, but I'll hit the techs up. Johann smokes. Let me finish up here first. Is the pain still okay?"

I nodded. It hurt like a sonavubitch actually. Like when your lips get cracked and you're afraid to lick them or move them or they'll split like a cooked bratwurst, except this was over my entire body in patches. To state it bluntly, I was mad. And thus did the war-god Vance damn the sisters of betrayal. The nurse, medic, I corrected myself, had a new pair of boots and pants on the floor next to me, and I could see some of my gear there as well. Who knew how much of it still worked though.

Fifteen minutes later, I finally got my cigarette. I'm not sure where she got it from, but whoever it was apparently liked to smoke ground horseradish. They were bitter, stale, and awful… and I loved every minute of it. I didn't stop smoking for nearly twenty minutes while the painkillers and salve did their work. I could move with discomfort, and if I wanted to reopen some wounds, I could move fast and with power. Hopefully they would heal a little better before there was need of that. I'd have nasty scars on my legs and arms, and it felt like a bad one on the right side of my scalp.

I had three cigarettes left and was fully purposed in my mind to smoke them linked in the chain when the comm crackled.

"Vance, this is Cadence, I've hacked the Awesome and it's coming online now."

I made my way to the front of the APC and sat down next to the driver, who was also smoking, and reading a lewd adult magazine. Then I opened a channel so I could make my reply.

"Excellent. I'll be right there. Huntress, what is our situation with the firebase?"

"It's all ours, which is good news. Three mil, and it looks like we'll be splitting the high pay among fewer warriors."

"Small consolation though. We'll discuss it further when I get there. Vance out."

The driver continued smoking until I punched him in the shoulder.

"Lets go pal, I ain't walkin' to the mechbay like this."

Cadence had indeed cracked the Awesome. It would make a fine replacement for Eltanin. Although the technology was old, it was a reliable and well-armored assault mech. Three particle projection cannons, the old kind that lacked the impressive range of the new ones, or the damage of the clanner PPCs, but still deadly. The older PPCs were more energy efficient than the new ones, and if you knew how to use them and could close the range, just as effective. They were also tried and true, easier to repair, and when you considered heat, tonnage, and weapon mounts, probably the best bang for your buck in the Inner Sphere arsenal besides the bread and butter medium laser.

Mostly importantly of all, PPCs were weapons with which I was very familiar. This mech would do very nicely. I scanned it for damage but it didn't show any on the front. Then I frowned as I realized it had no other weaponry. The laser and missile mounts had been stripped clean. That would be a disadvantage, certainly, if I faced infantry or vehicles. Not that any sane infantryman will face an assault mech. But why were the mounts stripped? I didn't see anything else mounted in their place. Well, we may find out when we take it out for a test drive.

I lit one of the last three cigarettes I had been given and gazed around the mech bay. Twelve berths, all empty but this one. I made a mental note to get our salvage teams in here to pilfer the ammunition, spare weapons, and armor. There were three scout craft and another APC as well, no, scratch that, the APC was missing its engine. The scout craft could prove to be useful, they were five-ton hovercrafts, one-man jobs that had recklessly high top speeds, paper-thin armor, and a high mortality rate for the driver. If speed was what you wanted though, and scouts usually did, then they were great machines for the job.

"Well sir, it's coming up and online, I'm reseting the neurohelmet so you can recalibrate it and reset the entry commands. You sure you're gonna get to keep it?"

"I'd like to see them try to take it."

I grinned and Cadence grinned back. I knew he didn't want it, but wasn't sure who he thought would try to relieve me of it. Most mechwarriors liked their own mechs. Diane was the only dispossessed mechwarrior around, and she wasn't fiesty enough to take it from me, by force or by legal means. Besides, I had lost my mech in combat and was a lance commander and we still had a job to do.

Then again, I had underestimated Sara and Kellie, it simply wouldn't do to make the mistake of underestimating a mechprincess again. No, better to trust the ones who wear their hostility on their sleeve. You don't need to worry about a knife in the back from a femme fatale like Huntress, but I would need to mistrust any vulnerable beautiful women, because they could lull you with the vulnerability and plant that beauty between your ribs like a stiletto. Sara… I refocused on the Awesome in front of me. If I were to revenge Eltanin, I would need this machine to do so.

"Cadence. What's with the weapons loadout? 3 old PPCs? It looks like its got the new engine, and sinks, but I see old PPCs and no secondary armament." I took a deep drag while he furrowed his brow and looked up.

"Yeah I know. That would make it eight tons short on equipment. I think there are extra heat sinks. Does it normally have them on the arm?" I shook my head.

"Well then, its got a few extra and it's using the new double heat sinks to boot, with the lightweight fusion reactor, which means the torso is short on space and big on targets, probably they pulled the weapons to make room. But you're wrong about the PPCs sir. Sure, the one in the right arm is old, but both torso PPCs are newer versions."

Hmm. Mixed PPCs. I didn't like that nearly as much as all one type, but I wasn't in a position to be picky. It would still fulfill a command role just fine.

"How recently was all this done?"

"Hard to tell. I checked it carefully, and there was a locator beacon on it," he pointed to a small, cylindrical metal object at his feet. "which I removed, but it was in such an obvious spot that I got suspicious. So I used Pi's comm gear to scan for any transmitters and found a second one. There aren't any other bugs that I can tell, and it hasn't had structural work in… my guess is years." He appeared to consider my cigarette smoke for a moment before continuing.

"Let me pull up the maintenance log. Looks like we've got a total tonnage of seventy-eight or so. So yeah, she's riding a little high in the water." He was now punching around on his notebook computer furiously.

"But everything else seems to be the same. It's got a faulty left shoulder joint, not passing its diagnostics, and the self destruct circuits aren't responding… lets see… some yellow flags in the left arm myomer bundles but you won't be needing that much. She looks battle-worthy sir."

I nodded, cast my cigarette butt to the floor, and began my painful ascent using the handholds. I could feel my skin cracking in a few spots to let blood and plasma mix with burn cream, and stain my bandages, but I couldn't care less. I was enjoying the pain actually. If you feel pain it means you're alive, that your nervous system is transmitting signals to your spinal cord, and from there to your brain. When you're wired hot on pain you can react faster, you can think better. You have to, because your body thinks that it is dying.

"Sir, don't you want some food and water?"
"Bring it up with the neurohelmet, I'm gonna start getting aclimated. Have you calibrated the comm gear?"

"Fifteen damn minutes ago, you know that's the most important part of the mech!"

I smiled and grimaced. Mechnerds are my favorite kind of mechheads, hands down. But I had to admit it was possible he was right. If you can't coordinate and communicate with others, you're ineffective on the battlefield.

I entered the cockpit from the base of the mech's hunched shoulder, it was actually a side-mount. I had learned that in the academy but I had never boarded an Awesome in the flesh and it caught me a little by surprise, but it was a welcome one. It was ajar and I let myself through the hatch, small, armored, double-thick and decided against sealing it behind me. Cadence would soon be up.

My tactical vest had been ruined by the fire, but I had one of my pistols and a spare clip with me yet. The new boots were too tight and I took them off, which I would regret if forced to eject again, but I did it anyways. The pants were alright, but the shirt was tight and I took it off as well, reattaching the holster for my pistol onto my bare chest. Well, bare if you didn't count the three large bandages on it where my skin was pink, red, or black underneath. My medipack was putting a steady stream of painkiller into my bloodstream at this point, and I wondered if it was getting low yet.

For not the last time that day, I cursed the names of Kellie Orion and Sarasvati Rinaldi and vowed to stop their breath if I could. Preferrably after I had them begging for mercy and humiliated.

"Huntress, this is Vance. I'm bringing the Awesome online now. It will be at least fifteen minutes until I can move out. What is our situation?"

"They've got control of the firebase, but the cannon is defunct, probably has been for some time. I informed Captain Siampa of the situation and she wants to conference with you, myself, and Kith about our next move."

"Excellent. That was my next item on the agenda. Contact me as soon as you have a link. I'm going to get adjusted to this monster."

Cadence appeared at the cockpit hatch then and unslung the backpack he had with him, producing the neurohelmet. I felt the adrenaline in my veins now. This snake had a new skin, and it was time to get comfortable in it. This snake also had the taste of blood on its fangs, and the scent of its prey. I was eager, or maybe the right word was hungry.

One more shred of humanity stripped from me this day. Could a mercenary afford sentiments like love and devotion? Could a snake? Nobility and fair play, the great ideals of civilization were not something I could have the luxury of any longer. I had nearly been killed in the name of them today, and I was the last of my line. Never again.

I brought the fusion reactor online, only barely listening to Cadence inform me of the startup procedure and the mech's security settings. Then he left and I sealed the hatch. This was my mech now, I'd change them all, and I'd also kill them all. All who opposed me… If I couldn't vaporize Sara with the PPCs I'd smash her mech with my armored fist, the useless and unarmed left stub where a missile launcher once made its home. If not that, I'd run her down and trample her with eighty tons of steel. An eighty ton snake was I. Unukalhai… unukalhai… unukalhai…you are my snake.

Coiled and ready. The fusion core was alive and hot. I finished my water, set it aside. I was alive and hot. I donned the helmet and took the controls. Time for battle, time for death, time for revenge.

Are you ready Unukalhai? I am Cor Serpens, and now you obey me and only me. We strike fast and without warning. From the darkness. The darkness there and nothing more.

Unukalhai obeyed, and we rode forth into the bright dawn of a war-torn planet.