CHAPTER 11
Review Corner
Ulquiorra9000: There is no way Noloty can win against Prodigy Lance, even in a brand new mech. So it has to come to this…
Strantor Military Academy,
Strantor, Lyran Alliance,
November 8, 3073
Noloty weighed in her situation. The Sagittaire was done for. It could not take any more hit. The critical damaged sustained by the engines had reduced the speed to mere 30 kph. She had no more ammunition for her cannons, and no more coolant to compensate the Sagittaire's enormous heat load. There is no way she could escape the Striking Tigers lance. The only thing left to do was to die with honor, the way she was trained in Bushido.
Noloty was all for dying for the Kuritans, but not by throwing her life as if it had no meaning. Would her death restored honor for the House of Kurita? She doubted it would. She failed her mission to destroy Strantor Academy, but the more she pondered, the more she believed that she did not fail DCMS. The order came from Black Dragon Society, not DCMS. And the more she thought about the Black Dragon, the more she wanted to dissociate herself with it.
So if fighting to the last breath was not the way to go, what else was there for her? A different DCMS unit? Would a DCMS unit accept a deserter? What about Solaris mechjock? Mercenary? That, if she could escape from the Striking Tigers lance. She had seen them fight, and barring miracle she had no chance against the Lyrans. But technically she didn't have a chance against Nachtschatten, a more experienced mechwarrior in a pristine battlemech. Yet she survived.
Miracle? No, she didn't need miracle. She needed smokescreen.
Smokescreen!
Noloty turned her head around and realized that she was literally in a smokescreen farm. Some abandoned reservoirs still held flammable agents. Trucks and trains littered the ground. Raw materials piled up against each other. All she needed to do was to lit them up, and put the wall of smoke between her and the Striking Tigers.
Easier said than done, but worth a try.
Overcome with hope, Noloty pushed the throttle as far as it would go. The Sagittaire limped in uneven gait, forcing itself to 32 kph. The radar screen blinked proximity alert. The Cougar and Shadow Cat were closing in at alarming speed, and in about 15 seconds the Shadow Cat's Gauss rifle would come into range. She needed that smokescreen now. She twisted right and shot her PPC at some sort of a giant tank. Whatever was stored inside went up in flames, creating a massive fireball and a thick blue smoke. Noloty dove straight into it, just as the Cougar jumped over a building and blasted its lasers, but the Sagittaire was already out of its firing solution.
Adjusting to the new development, the Mad Cat launched its missiles but the fire and smoke hampered the missile's guidance system. The warheads dove into the cloud blind, and struck more structures, bringing down more structures, creating more smokescreen for Noloty in the process.
Noloty kept her course inside the thick blue cloud. The Sagittaire's low but wide profile bumped into unseen things. Everytime it hit something Noloty was trashed inside the cockpit. Only her harness kept her attached to her seat. The blue smoke started to seep into the cockpit, making her retch and gag. Tears streamed down her face. She desperately ran all fans and air purification systems inside the cockpit to combat the smoke.
Seconds were eternal but ultimately the Sagittaire broke through the cloud. The acrid smell dissipated slowly. She pulled up the visor on her neurohelmet to scrub her eyes in an attempt to regain her vision. She quickly checked the radar to monitor their positions. There was only one big blob of heat signature in her radar. She suspected the Striking Tigers were still behind the smokescreen or getting another way around it. They might be out of range but with their speed they would reach her in a matter of minutes.
So she found another flammable to singe. She ran toward a pile of raw material amassed in front of a large conveyor belt. She fired her lasers at the heap, hoping it was explosive, which wasn't, but her lasers turned the material into embers. As she got closer the pile of material started to burn, slowly, but steadily, and when she came in close proximity with the heap, fire started raging.
Striking Tigers lance reappeared in her radar, led by the Uziel. There was a second of hesitation where Noloty wanted to turn around and unload everything she had at the Uziel in one last hurrah. But vengeance wouldn't get her anywhere, only wasteful death. If fate were kind, they would meet again in the future, and she would have her revenge. As of now, running was her best shot.
So Noloty reset her course to the scorching heap of raw material and fired up her jump jets. The Sagittaire soared almost 100 meters upward, clearing the top of the burning mound by a mere inch. It burst through the bonfire and landed a few meters away from the conveyor belt. The fire spiked the heat of the Sagittaire a few notches toward shutdown but Noloty kept a steady course, using the air drag to cool her mech down.
And she kept firing at industrial structures, creating a swath of fire and smoke, covering her path. Cargo trucks, tankers, cooling towers, even raw materials that looked like flammable materials. The Sagittaire was constantly overheating, but Noloty varied her path, letting her mech cool down before burning another structure.
But eventually she reached the end of the industrial complex. There was no more thing to shoot. It was just an open field in front of her, and she could see the starport in the distance with a few dropships on the landing pads. She could make it to the starport in half an hour and escape Strantor, if, and that was a big IF, she could escape the Striking Tigers.
Plotting the course to the starport, Noloty watched her radar closely, waiting for any Striking Tigers mech to come out of the smokescreen. They never came. Her radar just showed a few big blotches of heat sources representing burning structures and vehicles, but no battlemech signatures.
"You think we lost them, Hamlet?" Noloty said with a long puff of relief. It was naïve to think that her crude exit strategy managed to hold the elite Lyrans, but the fact spoke for itself. "Either our plan worked, or they just let us go. I don't know. I don't care. We're going out of here. So stay with me. We're almost there."
The Sagittaire hobbled for more than 20 minutes until they were within a few kilometers away from the starport. Noloty opened a communication channel with any of the dropships, "Dropship Command… Dropship Command… can anybody hear me? Dropship Command…"
A few garbled messages crackled through the comlink, then somebody with a thick Canopian accent picked up the line. "This is Dropship Amityville. Identify yourself."
"This is Mechwarrior Noloty Malche, I need a transport off Strantor," Noloty said, leaving out her attributes as a Draconis Combine soldier. "I'm carrying a battlemech with me. Do you have a spot in your dropship?"
"For the right price, hell yea," the guy responded. "How are you going to pay?"
"I uh…" Noloty stammered. She had been living under the umbrella of Black Dragon Society for so long she didn't know how real life worked. "What do you mean by 'pay'?"
"What do you mean by 'what do you mean by pay'? You think the dropship belongs to your mother, Missy?" the guy snarled.
"But I don't know what to do! I don't have any money!"
"Well good luck with that!" the guy scoffed rudely.
"What… what other thing can I do to get onboard?" Noloty said, half pleading.
"What mech are you riding?"
"Uhm… a Sagittaire…"
"Sagittaire! Hell yea, I'll take that! Give me the Sagittaire and I'll take you anywhere in the 'Sphere!"
"But it's in a really bad condition…"
"I'll take a bad mech over easy money any day of the week! So do we have a deal?"
Noloty felt a hole just opened in her chest. She really liked the Sagittaire. Even though she was only piloting it for little more than an hour, she felt a strong emotional attachment to the mech, as if it was a 'friend' she never had. It felt like it was made and tailored specifically for her fighting style. They survived – and beat – overwhelming odds in spectacular fashion, and she was hoping she could have more of that in the future.
But giving it up was the only way out. She came this far, and to fail because of her affinity to a machine was beyond logic. It was just a machine. Yes, some people argued that battlemechs were more than just machines. In reality, they were, conjured by humans in drawing boards, made to battlefields through manufacturing lines. They were just tools to win wars.
"Well, fine, you can have my mech," Noloty whimpered.
"Alright, then, let's roll! We are the Leopard on landing pad B-3! Come on aboard!"
Undoubtedly the last stretch of the run was the most painful for Noloty, for she didn't want to part with her mech. But she knew she had to. The ramp into the belly of the Leopard seemed like the gate to hell. She slowly drove her mech up and secured it on the only empty mech bay on the dropship. She shut the mech down and sat there until the dropship bay closed.
"I'm sorry, Hamlet, but this is the only way," she whispered, holding back tears. "I will never forget you."
As the technicians secured the Sagittaire to the mech bay, Noloty opened the hatch and climbed to the platform. A bedraggled man in rusty-brown jacket greeted her, showing off his unkempt teeth as he grinned from ear to ear.
"Whoo-wee! That's a sweet ride you've got there!" he chuckled. "Are you sure it's a Sagittaire? I've never seen a Sagittaire like this before. Who did you steal it from?"
"Steal?" Noloty shot a dirty look at the man.
"What? Are you telling me you bought this mech? You don't even have money to hitch a hike!"
"It doesn't matter," Noloty snorted. "Just promise me you'll take care of him. He means a lot to me."
"Yea, I'll take good care of it, alright. My crews have 15 years of experience dealing with mechs during travels. It'll be shiny new when we reach… where do you want to go, again?"
"I don't know," Noloty sighed. "How about Luthien? Can you take me to Luthien?"
"Luthien it is!" the man laughed. "I told you, I'd take you anywhere within the Inner Sphere. Now get yourself comfortable. We have a long flight ahead of us!"
Noloty threw a remorseful look at the Sagittaire one last time before climbing up the stair.
END OF BOOK II
