Chapter 3
Kell Hound Headquarters, Arc-Royal
Arc-Royal Defense Cordon, Lyran Alliance
26 July 3135Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. – Ambrose Bierce
"You want what?"
"My own command," I repeated, frowning at Hilton. He sat haughtily behind my father's desk, which had been cleared of all his possessions. The sight of him there and all that was my father's gone sickened me.
Hilton gave me a disbelieving look then burst out laughing.
"A command? Do you honestly think I'm going to give you a command, girl? You're mad!"
"Were I of the Clans, I would be a warrior now," I said coldly. "I have the training, I have the…"
Hilton's eyes darkened with rage and he slammed his fist down on to the desk, rattling a cup of pens as he interrupted me.
"We are not in the Clans, girl!" he shouted. "And you will not get a command here!"
"Fine. Then I'll just go somewhere else. I bet the Lancers or the Roughriders would love to have the daughter of Thomas Kell with them. Even the Dragoons might take me."
"Go then," spat Hilton. "It's not like you're needed here."
I bristled at that.
"What exactly is that supposed to mean?"
"The Kell Hounds are mine to command and as long as I do as such, you will never find yourself in a 'Mech ever again. Unless, of course, you would do something for me."
My eyes narrowed as I understood what he was talking about.
This slime ball of a man still wanted me in his bed! Despite all of my words, he still hadn't gotten the fact that I'd rather die than lie with him.
"Go to Hell, Hilton," I spat before turning on a heel and storming from the office. Guy turned towards me where he stood just outside the doorway, his brown eyes showing nothing of what he thought.
"I sense it did not go well."
"Neg," I spat as I began to stalk down the corridor. The Jade Falcon fell into step just behind me and I felt comforted knowing that he was at my back. There were many who despised the Clansman and had spoken out against my father taking him as a bondsman but Guy had proved himself to be a loyal man.
After nineteen years as my father's bondsman – as well as a friend – you would think some people would stop hating him.
"Now what?" I asked Guy as we walked into the large room that held the Kell Hounds simulators. I tried not to look at them and remember that it was my cousin's updates that had made them so much like an actual 'Mech cockpit instead of the meager copies they had once been.
"We can only wait now, Victoria Kell," said Guy. "There can be nothing done against him until he does something wrong."
"Stravag," I spat angrily.
"Indeed."
Glancing sharply at Guy, I said, "So we wait."
"Aff."
"Joy."
"Not the word I would use."
"It's called sarcasm, Guy," I growled as I began to stalk towards my room.
"I know."
"Grah! I can't take this!"
"Come with me," said Guy, placing one hand on my shoulder and steering me back in the direction we had just come from.
I blinked and looked curiously up at him.
"Guy?"
"You have anger to release, Victoria Kell," said Guy as he led me along. "To fight is an excellent way to do as such."
I frowned then a small grin started at the right side of my mouth.
"Guy," I said softly, "are you suggesting a match in the SIM's?"
"Indeed. I would prefer to be in an actual 'Mech but as you well know, your father did not allow such things."
"Right. Winner cooks dinner."
"Loser cooks dinner."
"Okay, loser cooks dinner and winner helps clean up."
The Jade Falcon looked down at me oddly then sighed and said, "Well bargained and done."
I grinned and stepped away from him, using two fingers on each hand to press the buttons that opened the SIM's as Guy moved across the room to the spare cooling vests that were now being stored nearby. He tossed one at me then pulled off the light gray wool jacket that I could barely ever recall seeing him without. The jacket bore the emblem of the Kell Hounds on its right breast, which made it a clone of the jackets some of the MechWarriors wore. But a small, very crudely made patch with a green falcon depicted in a stoop was sewn on the underside of the left cuff, which set his jacket apart from all the others.
I had made that patch when I was five after Guy had told me about where he had come from. That was why I was so enamored with the Clans. Because of him: my teacher, my friend, and my ally.
As I pulled my long-sleeved shirt over my head, revealing the thin sleeveless one I wore underneath, I glanced back at Guy. He had dropped his jacket by the side of the SIM he would be using and his shirt, which was of a thicker material than the jacket, had joined it. So now he was buckling his cooling vest over a broad, well-muscled chest riddled with scars – a few that I had put there myself in practice spars. My cheeks flushed with heat then and I bent to pick up my own cooling vest and buckled it hastily without looking at him.
Did I forget to mention I once had a very bad crush on him when I was thirteen?
"Are you prepared?" asked Guy as I gave the vest a downward tug to settle it.
"Aff," I replied before unlacing and toeing my boots off, tossing them over to join my shirt. I grimaced down at my pants then shrugged – they were made of light material and the heating system in the SIM's wasn't really up to par with those of a real 'Mech according to some of the pilots who'd been in them. They were good but not that good.
Climbing into the SIM, I settled myself into the command couch then reached back up to the shelf above me to grasp the neurohelmet. Pulling it down, I settled it over my head, shifting it a bit until I could feel all of the sensors touching my head. After that I buckled it to the shoulders of my cooling vest then plugged both into the system, careful to keep snarls out of their cables as I wound them into their proper places.
Goosebumps rose all over my body as the cold liquid began to circulate through my vest. Frowning suddenly, I reached out and turned on the COM system, patching it in to Guy's SIM number.
"Guy," I asked slowly, "are these SIM's really like a 'Mech?"
There was a long moment where I assumed Guy was patching in to my own SIM then his voice came over my COM.
"The coolant should be much colder."
That made me chuckle as I pulled the nearly useless safety webbing across my chest then leaned forward to start the SIM running. The machine hummed to life underneath me and through the wall I heard Guy's start up as well.
"So," I asked, "what shall we play on today?"
"I leave it to you to choose," came Guy's response.
"Right." I frowned and tapped on my console, bringing up the folder that held the various locations that could be played in. As I scanned through them, looking for one to load up, I keyed in a sequence on another keyboard that would hook my SIM up to Guy's alone.
"How about we play a match on Twycross?" I asked after a moment of cycling through the planets in the system.
There was a long pause then Guy said, "In the Great Gash?"
"I figured one drop on one side and one on the other. Sound okay to you?"
"Aff."
"Okay," I said, pulling the planet up and logging in the location, which was in the middle of the Windbreak Mountains at the edge of the Plain of Curtains. Then I set up a drop zone on either side of the Gash then tapped the COM on again. "Log up a 'Mech and we'll get this party started."
There was silence from Guy but I could just barely hear the sound of keys tapping through my COM, so I figured he was pulling up the 'Mech logs. I pulled up my own and cycled through them. I frowned and sorted the list by tonnage, flipping through them until I came to the heavy class.
There was a beep from my console then and I glanced up to find a holographic Vulture hovering near my targeting reticule. I recognized it as Storm, the Vulture my mother has logged into the system not long after she had married my father and joined the Kell Hounds. Smirking, I flipped up to the 75-toners and pulled up the one Marauder in the system.
"Tally ho," I murmured as the SIM hummed and completely loaded up the planet. A second later I was staring out through the ferroglass of the Marauder's cockpit (whose name was Tally-ho, hence my earlier comment) and was dropping down onto Twycross. "You there, Guy?"
"Aff. I am hot dropping onto the planet."
"Right," I said just as I heard the clicks of the jets that were keeping my 'Mech from falling like a rock to the ground only moments before disengage. I gripped the controls then, waiting for the shock that I knew for a fact the SIM was going to give me once the Marauder hit the ground. It came and Tally stumbled before the neurohelmet fed my sense of equilibrium into the gyros and the Marauder straightened up. I waited until the 'Mech was firmly standing then slowly eased the left throttle forward to start Tally going then leaned up and flicked on the long-range sensor sweep.
The walls of the Great Gash loomed on my secondary viewing screen and on the other side of it, a small pulsing dot was labeled as 'SIM 12'. I smirked and pushed Tally's throttle as far forward as it could go. The big seventy-five ton war machine lumbered its way up to 80 KPH and rushed towards the Gash. On the view screen, the 'SIM 12' dot was easing backwards whilst mine – which was labeled 'SIM 11' – was rushing towards it.
I knew Guy was going to hit me the second Storm's LRM's locked onto me but I was fully prepared to charge out fighting. My thumb was resting lightly on the firing stud that would fire the Gauss Rifle Tally's dorsal gun was equipped with, ready to let loose with it.
Tally lumbered into the Gash and I slowly eased down as I made my way into the center of it. The simulator's had the complete stats of planets in its system; therefore, whatever was on the planet in reality was in the simulation. Which meant that the Black Widow's Daishi, which had fallen during the Great Refusal War between Clan Wolf and Clan Jade Falcon, should be lying in its grave in the Gash.
And it was.
I slowly Tally to a complete halt and stared down at the wrecked hulk. Neither Falcon nor Wolf had taken the machine from the field and it had become Khan Natasha Kerensky's grave and tombstone in one fatal swoop. Seeing the war machine whose name meant "Stalking Death" in such a state made one highly aware of how easily it could be oneself lying dead in the wreck instead of the Wolf Khan.
Shivering a little, I carefully angled Tally around the wreck, bowing my head as my war machine passed. I knew that I wasn't in the presence of the Black Widow's actual grave but still…even in the simulator, I felt a chill of fear at the realization of my own mortality and the tingle of being in the presence of something great.
Leaving the Black Widow's Daishi behind me, I eased Tally up to half her speed and moved on through the Gash. I kept a close eye on Guy's dot then swore as the warning siren that heralded weapon's lock rang through the SIM. With a jerk of the left throttle, I made to dodge right but the wave of LRM's Guy had loosed were too close. The missiles crashed hard into Tally's left side, knocking her torso a bit cock-eyed and hauling off half of the armor there. I pulled up my armor damage screen and cursed at the mess of yellow that took up the left half of the war machine. Luckily there wasn't any red there, which meant the armor was still fairly intact. All in all, it could have been worse.
Switching back to long-range sensor, I thrust Tally up to her full speed and came around the corner with my fingers on the stud for the Gauss Rifle and the one that would fire the war machine's four lasers – two Clan ER Medium's in her beam rack, a Clan Heavy Medium in the left arm, and another Clan Heavy Medium in the left torso. As I came around the corner of the Gash, Storm loomed in my HUD. I shifted the weapons joystick and dropped the holographic targeting reticule on the Vulture, which was backpedaling and turning left. Shifting Tally a bit to the left compensated for this and I pressed the two firing studs as one with a snarl.
The lasers in the beam rack and the left arm missed but the other two scored shots in Storm's armor. The one hundred kilogram nickel-ferrous mass that was the Gauss slug slammed into the Vulture's right torso and spun that part of the machine as far around as it would go.
I pulled up the enemy armor damage screen and grinned as I saw dim yellow on Storm's left side and a small patch of red on its right torso. Flicking back to my sensors, I checked the weapons display screens out of the corner of my eye even as I pushed Tally up to full speed and hauled my ass out a piece. A laser turned dirt half a kilometer behind me into smoke while the autocannon the Vulture was equipped with tore up the ground just behind my Marauder's feet. One of the autocannon's shots clipped the back of Tally's left foot and she stumbled, making me shift to the right to compensate. The seventy-five ton war machine staggered but remained upright and I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned her back towards Storm, turning her torso about to try and find him.
A salvo of LRM's crashed into Tally's side halfway during my turn, turning armor to worthless scrap and sending alarms ringing through my cockpit. Cursing, I kept moving in my turn until Storm came under my crosshairs. The gold circle burned red thirty seconds later and I viciously punched the button that fired the Gauss Rifle in the dorsal gun. Above and slightly behind me, the Gauss Rifle rattled and spat out another nickel-ferrous round that sped towards the Vulture with near perfect accuracy. The Gauss slug slammed into Storm's leg, right where it was connected to the lower half of the war machine's chassis.
I looked and grinned when I saw that the Vulture was now dragging its right leg, the armor completely slagged from the joint connecting it to the body of the war machine and the myomer muscles shredded. Hurriedly, I checked the damage where I'd been hit earlier and cursed when I saw that the right arm and the beam rack were completely slagged to hell and back. One of the two Clan ER Medium Laser's in the beam rack was still functioning at 40, which made it about as useful as a baseball bat against Storm, and the right arm was not only slagged but no longer there.
"Damnit," I cursed then harshly grabbed the throttle and jerked Tally around to begin circling the limping Vulture. The fifteen ton heavier Marauder was actually the slower of the two at eighty klicks to Storm's eighty-five but with it's damaged leg, the other 'Mech wasn't going much of anywhere fast.
Storm's torso turned slightly and the Clan ER Large Laser in its right arm came to life, slashing a line down Tally's left side. Melted armor ran in long lines down my 'Mech's side but beyond that, the laser hadn't struck anything vital. Swinging my torso around, I began to zap Storm with my two Clan Heavy Medium Laser's and sole Flamer, peppering it every now and then with the Clan Machine Gun the dorsal gun sported.
As I circled around and got set to fire off the Gauss Rifle again, sirens wailed a lock-on and I looked to see the missile pods of the Vulture smoking. A second later the salvo took to the air and I swung Tally about, trying to dodge as many of the missiles as I could. Only about seven or eight of the twenty missile salvo hit and slagged enough armor off the left side and back to set the armor display flashing red.
"Savashri!" I swore vehemently before moving Tally away from the limping Storm, who was powering up its laser again. My fingers flexed and above me the Gauss Rifle let loose with another slug at the same instant I fired my remaining lasers, Flamer, and Machine Gun.
Guy's laser demolished what remained of my already battered Heavy Medium Laser and overheated the other one. A glance at the enemy damage screen showed that all of the armor on the Vulture's right side was gone and it would take a miracle to do any damage with what remained of the laser and LRM on that side.
The whine of weapons lock made me jerk Tally to the left but that was exactly what Guy had wanted me to do. The spray of LRM's brutally battered at the Marauder, sending armor off the torso streaming in ribbons down its sides. My check of my own damage screen showed that it had also murdered my Gauss Rifle and I swore before turning the still functioning Machine Gun and Flamer on Storm.
Guy's autocannon rattled to life then, peppering Tally's lower half with its slugs. I aimed the laser in the right arm at his Vulture's leg and fired in as quick a succession as I could, trying to dodge the autocannon as I did so.
The lower half of Storm's leg sparked then gave out, causing the war machine to totter before it collapsed onto its side. I started to cry out in victory but a final spray from Guy's autocannon cut me off. The slugs hammered into the lower half of the Marauder's chassis and suddenly I was falling.
It took me the moments in which the SIM shut itself down to figure out what had happened.
He'd slagged down my armor with his first shots then by a stroke of pure luck the last round from his autocannon had taken out my gyros!
Shaking my head ruefully, I unplugged everything and replaced the neurohelmet before climbing out of the SIM, stripping off the cooling vest as I did so. Guy smiled at me as he tugged on his shirt again and I glared at him. We replaced the cooling vests in silence and gathered up out discarded clothes, replacing them as we began to walk again.
"Okay, what do you want?" I finally asked when I grew tired of the man's persistent smile. Although Storm had gone down first, Tally had over all had the worse damage of the two war machines.
Hence, I lost our little bet.
Guy just smiled and replied, "I will let you decide what it is you shall cook."
A slow, sly smirk spread across my face at that and I purred, "Oh, you have no idea what you just put yourself in for, Mister!" With that, I stalked off towards the kitchens, fully prepared to cook one of my father's more famous dishes that had quickly had my mother refusing to allow him to cook ever again.
Guy blinked after me and I dimly heard a passing Aidan say, "Be prepared to have your taste buds assaulted," before I passed beyond hearing range.
Cackling, I entered the kitchens and set about staking myself a place in which to prepare Guy's 'prize.'