CHAPTER 10
RUN WITH THE DEVIL
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The Colonel: Thank you, I appreciate it. Quoting Kelly Clarkson: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger (mentally, not physically. I'd rather have a weak man with iron will than an uberly awesome handsomely muscular teenage boy with weak mind).
Port Krin, Antallos,
Inner Sphere Periphery,
December 21, 3064
The sun just started to shine when Trystan, Saskia, and Osiris arrived at the destroyed hangar. Carbine construction mechs were still lined up in idle while their drivers just started reporting for their shifts. Labor workers were still congregating at the opposite side of the hangar, waiting for the instructions from the field coordinator.
Saskia still felt that stealing a construction mech was not a good idea. Trystan had not piloted one before, and even though he claimed he was a mechwarrior, a construction mech was different than a battlemech. How much different, she didn't know, but it was beyond the point. The young man had not piloted anything in more than a year. In addition, the pirates were in high alert. They were lucky if nobody saw them stealing a 30-ton mecha.
But Saskia hadn't eaten or slept in 2 days. Her brain had ceased functioning. She felt she could negotiate her way with the dropship captain, but not in her current condition. She was exhausted, hungry, and couldn't wait to go home. It was not like her to rest her fate in the hands of a stranger, but if Trystan believed he could do this, she might as well take a joyride.
Trystan, however, was certain his plan was foul proof. He had years of training in stealth and sniping, and Lei Fong's pointer about the Carbine's reset button gave him considerable boost in piloting a construction mech even for the first time. He tried to map out best way to get to one of the Carbines. Once he found his route, he motioned Saskia and Osiris to follow him.
Before they got too far, Saskia grabbed his arm and pulled him toward her. "Define path well, or see future forever denied!"
"I know what I'm doing!" Trystan whispered harshly. "Stay close to me. Osiris, watch the back."
Osiris replied with a sharp exhale. Trystan inched forward, moving from cover to cover. Once in a while he stopped and observed the situation. When he was certain the situation was unchanged, he continued tiptoeing until he arrived at the base of the farthest Carbine from the crowd.
"Wait for my mark," he whispered, then crawled toward the foot of the Carbine. He crouched by the left leg, examined the situation and the position of the drivers, then scurried around the foot to find the reset button. There was a metal cover by the heel, and when he flipped it up, a red button perched proudly underneath it. He mashed the button for 5 seconds, and a faint beep echoed, giving him an assurance that the computer had been returned to factory setting. He quickly climbed up the Carbine and slipped into the cockpit. The console was rudimentary, without radar, heat and armor tracking, and least of all weapon display. He punched the start button and the engine rumbled to life.
"Thank you Lei Fong!" he chimed as he signaled Saskia and Osiris to come and take a ride.
Saskia and Osiris looked all directions before making a dash at the Carbine. Trystan lowered the backhoes to allow them to climb. Saskia latched on to the Carbine's rear torso while Osiris climbed up to the top and hunkered down with his sidearm ready.
Trystan waited until his passengers settled in their positions then moved the Carbine forward slowly. The construction mech swayed from side to side as it walked. The long arms – with a backhoe at the end of each one – acted as balancing arms for the squat robot. At the corner of the hangar he stopped and turned the mech around to observe the workers. A few of them shot suspicious stare at him, but after a while they continued with their morning rituals.
"So far so good," Trystan let out a long sigh. "Keep it up for a few more miles, and we're home free."
The Carbine moved again and started picking up speed, now entering the busy streets of Port Krin. Saskia frantically turned her head around to watch for pirate battlemechs. A few of them scattered on the streets, but nobody paid attention to the wandering Carbine. Saskia hated being proven wrong, but this time she was glad that Trystan's calculation was correct. Perhaps he did consider everything thoroughly. She began to credit him with more respect than what she gave him the first time they met.
But deep in her heart Saskia knew that if something was too good to be true, it probably was. Two battlemechs that looked like beer cans started following the Carbine. Their chubby appearance and stocky legs was an indication that they couldn't run fast, but it was their gigantic cannons on their right flanks that made Saskia nervous. She had yet to be familiar with technology in this planet, but she knew a construction wagon didn't have a chance against military-grade weaponry, let alone two.
"Trystan!" she banged the canopy of the Carbine. "Company!"
"Oh crap!" Trystan winced in lamentation. Everything went smooth up to this point, and he started to believe that they could escape Antallos unnoticed. He turned the Carbine around and groaned in agony, watching two Urbanmechs lining up their autocannons at him. Slow but lethal, the chubby battlemechs had more than enough firepower to shred the Carbine in one shot.
"Stop the Carbine!" one of the battlemechs hailed them through the external speaker.
"Yes?" he replied, his voice was riddled with anxiety.
"Who are you? Where are you going?"
"I'm just uh… getting fuel for the Carbine," Trystan made something up and prayed the Urbanmechs would buy it.
"Pump station is on the opposite side. Where are you taking the Carbine?"
"The opposite side? I thought it was going this way. Well I'm on my way then…"
"Power down and exit your mech!" the Urbanmechs weren't fooled.
"Uhm, fuel is critical, if I turn the engine off it may not get on again, and you'll have to haul it to the shop," Trystan made desperate attempt to get around the Urbanmechs. Why do they have to be Urbanmechs? he ground his teeth in despair. Why can't they be securitymechs with puny weapons like Guards?
"This is your final warning: You have 20 seconds to exit your mech! If you fail to comply, we will open fire!"
"You can't destroy the property of the Band of The Damned."
"You have 10 seconds to prove yourself right!"
Trystan knew that if he surrendered, he would drag Saskia and Osiris to his grave. The only chance he had was to turn the construction platform into a weapon. The Carbine was twice as fast as the Urbanmechs, so he had an advantage. But was it strong enough to kill 2 Urbanmechs? One, maybe, but not both.
Unfortunately there were no other alternatives.
"Don't shoot! Don't shoot! I'm coming out!" Trystan coined submission but instead put the Carbine in full gear, and extended its arm, turning the excavator into a joust. He aimed the backhoe at the cockpit of the closest Urbanmech and floored the accelerator. The Urbanmech jolted as the backhoe smashed the plexiglass and crushed everything inside the cockpit, including the mechwarrior.
But the other Urbanmech reacted just as he thought it would. The massive autocannon-10 blasted in point-blank range, and the Carbine's left arm was sheared clean at the shoulder. The arm and its backhoe spun in the air before ravaging a train of vehicles. The Carbine lurched from the sudden loss of mass, and without neurohelmet Trystan had to compensate the stumble manually. It was not an easy work; his piloting skill had deteriorated from being dormant for more than a year. He strained and heaved the joystick as hard as he could. The Carbines leaned on one leg for a few seconds. Its structures groaned in twisted agony. But Trystan persisted, holding the joystick with iron grip, until the Carbine stabilized and regained balance.
However the Urbanmech had a chance to get a hard lock on the Carbine, and unleashed a salvo of small laser. Superfluous for most military-grade armor but devastating for industrial mech, the energy beam bored into the left torso and torched the hydraulic actuator for the remaining excavator. Smoke billowed from the rear, and the excavator lost power, rendering the Carbine into a walking box.
Out of desperation, Osiris took a stance and fired his sidearm at the Urbanmech's cockpit, hoping that a sheer dumb luck would allow his bullets to penetrate the Urbanmech's canopy and kill the mechwarrior. But his 9-mm parabellum just ricocheted off the plexiglass without putting a scratch.
But when all hope seemed lost, another battlemech appeared from the blind spot of the Urbanmech. It swayed and staggered comically, like a toddler trying to walk for the first time. The Urbanmech pivoted to face the new mech but every single weapon blasted, turning the front armor of the Urbanmech into drooping jelly. The ballistics ripped the torso apart. Tongues of flame burst from the gutted chest as the Urbanmech backpedaled, then slammed into a building.
Trystan didn't have a chance to breathe when he recognized the new battlemech. He hadn't seen it for more than a year but there was only one mech with a boxy upper body and its cockpit entrenched on the right torso, giving an allusion of Blemyes from ancient Nubian folklore. The rapid-fire multi-barreled automatic cannon on its left shoulder convinced him that he was, indeed, looking at his long-lost battlemech.
"I save your ass twice!" Lei Fong's voice rumbled from the external speaker. "You owe me big time!"
"Lei Fong?" Trystan replied. "How did you get my mech?"
"Your mech?"
"That's my Thunderbolt! How did you get your hands on that mech?"
"You're not the only one that knows how to reset a mech to factory setting," Lei Fong gloated. "You can't get out of this city without a battlemech. Rather than watching you die, I thought I'd just provide you one…"
"Why didn't you tell me you know the Thunderbolt is around here?"
"I didn't know you care!"
"I did care! It is mine! Mine! I got with with blood and sweat at Sarna March!"
"Yeah well it's not my fault that you never told me about it!"
"Trystan, shift mind toward more pressing concern!" Saskia banged the canopy again to get Trystan's attention. "More are coming!"
Trystan turned the Carbine toward the incoming battlemechs, and his heart jumped to his throat upon seeing two Ragnarok mechs trotted on the highway. Their Lava guns perched proudly atop their right torso next to their demon-shaped head, waiting to get into range. The Urbanmech recovered from Lei Fong's assault and limped its way back toward the two Ragnaroks, but for unknown reasons the lumbering battlemechs fired their Lava guns and engulfed the unsuspecting Urbanmech with superheated plasma. The poor Urbanmech exploded in bright colors.
"Cowards! Why don't you pick someone your own size…" Lei Fong positioned the Thunderbolt between the two Ragnaroks and the Carbine.
"Lei Fong, are you crazy? You can't fight two Ragnaroks with a Thunderbolt!" Trystan yelled in panic.
"Don't insult my skill, you mercenary brat!" Lei Fong scoffed. "Just because you're a mechwarrior and I'm a tech doesn't mean I can't take this piece of junk to battle!"
"Lei Fong, goddammit! Run! Run!" Trystan screamed from the top of his lung, watching in horror as the Ragnaroks started firing missile salvoes at the Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt thick armor stopped the missiles on their tracks but the impact sent the mech reeling. Lei Fong's poor piloting skill couldn't help the mech to stay on its feet. The Thunderbolt fell flat on its butt.
"Running sounds like a good idea!" Lei Fong was discouraged. He pulled the Thunderbolt up and broke into a sprint, tailing the Carbine. The Ragnaroks fired their Gauss rifles, but Thunderbolt was already out of their firing arcs. The nickel-ferrous shells slammed into a building.
"What were you thinking, taking on two Ragnaroks?" Trystan groused as he snaked his ways between buildings. "Do you have a sense of tonnage? Those two demons outweigh you by 135 tons!"
"Well Natasha Kerensky…"
"You are NOT Natasha Kerensky! Even Natasha Kerensky wouldn't waste her life taking on two Ragnaroks on a Thunderbolt! Next time leave the mech fighting to me!"
"Says he who needs his ass pulled from the grinder twice!"
"And I am eternally indebted to you," Trystan softened his tone. "Let's leave this place quick!"
The two mechs avoided artery roads and picked back alleys to avoid contacts with pirate mechs. The pirates were alert, and once in a while jump-capable battlemechs tried to snipe them from the buildings. But they were discouraged by the Thunderbolt so they just shadow the two and relay the position to set up a roadblock. But Trystan just turned several blocks away and took a different route.
They kept up the pace until they arrived at the dropship landing pad. Trystan crisscrossed his way between towering dropships until he arrived at the old Union-class that he visited the day before. The bay door was open, so he pushed the Carbine inside, followed closely by Lei Fong in the Thunderbolt. He powered down the engine and jumped out of the cockpit, just as the captain of the dropship lunged at him with his crews holding wrenches and power tools in threatening manner.
"Our deal was for you to arrive at noon with cash!" the dropship captain snarled.
"I can't get 300 grand of cash in a day, so I bring you 1.5 million instead," Trystan said as he pointed at the Carbine. "That is your payment."
"This? 1.5 mil?" the captain sniggered. "I don't think so. It's a busted junk!"
"Even if you junk it, it costs more than 300 grand, and you know it," Trystan persisted.
"I don't want junk! I want cash! That is the deal!" the captain snorted. He looked at the Thunderbolt. "I can get away with that, though."
"That is the package," Trystan growled. "You are not to touch it! That is our deal!"
"What is the problem here?" Lei Fong arrived. "Why are we not lifting off?"
"It seems that the captain and I see our deal in different perspectives," Trystan replied.
"Oh for crying out loud, Trystan! Do you or do you not have a deal with these crooks?"
"He does, one he's trying to cheat," the captain replied. "Now get these things out of my dropship, or I will call security."
"A necessity overdue, expired by the demon's arrival," Saskia tuned in as she pointed at two lumbering battlemechs making their way toward the dropship. "Ragnaroks."
The dropship captain looked at the Ragnaroks with mouth agape. "Who are you?"
"They are coming for the Thunderbolt," Trystan fibbed. "There is no time to take it out of your dropship, so you have two choices: take the Carbine as your payment and fly this dropship, or let the Ragnaroks retrieve the Thunderbolt by force. That means they will pillage your dropship to get the Thunderbolt."
It didn't take long for the captain to make his decision. "All hands to your stations! We're lifting off!"
The crews immediately scrambled the ports and consoles inside the dropship to start it up. The door rumbled close just as the Ragnaroks came into range. Missiles and Gauss shells hammered the door, but the armor was strong enough to stop the assault.
"Hold on to something!" the captain yelled as the dropship quaked in the advent of lift-off. Trystan found a guard rail and hooked his arms around it. Saskia, Osiris, and Lei Fong did the same. Every part of the old dropship rattled as if it was about to break into pieces. Steam and sparks burst from broken conduits, but amazingly everything stayed in place together.
"We are not leaving Gilvy!" Saskia shouted in Trystan's ear.
"Saskia," Trystan cringed, "I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, we barely escaped the pirates…"
"We are not leaving Gilvy!" she yelled again. "You gave your words! See the dropship land at the escarpment!"
As much as Trystan hated to make another pickup, he had to do it. He made a promise. He grabbed Saskia's hand and started making his way toward the bridge, sending gesture to Osiris to follow him. The vibration of the dropship made it difficult for them to walk, and a few times they bumped into each other. He took enjoyment in rubbing skin with her, but her blind obsession (or devotion) over her zoid turned him off.
And as a matter of fact, Saskia was mesmerized by the contact too. His skinny yet taut physique reminded her much about Royce, her deceased lover. They shared similar traits, from the blonde hair to the velvety tan skin with rigid muscles underneath it. If her mind wasn't occupied with her zoid, she would gladly explore the boy more. But her zoid demanded her attention now, and she tossed her desire in favor of her zoid.
As they arrived at the bridge, Trystan approached the captain, "We need to make one more pick up."
"I am not coming back to Port Krin," the captain replied non-chalantly.
"We are not going back to Port Krin. The pickup is at the Free Zone."
"No."
"I didn't pay you to snub me like this!" Trystan grumbled.
"You almost destroy the dropship!" the captain blurted. "You need to pay for the damage, but I will eat the cost. So just get back down to the main hangar and shut up. We are not making another pickup!"
"Osiris, perhaps the captain needs a little more persuasion," Trystan said.
Osiris drew his sidearm and put it on the captain's temple.
"You think this will make the dropship land?" the captain sniggered. "Who will lead the ship if you kill me?"
"I will," Saskia tuned in. "I shall see the bounty divided evenly among crews, absent you taking the most chunk of it. I assure you, they wouldn't have it any other way."
The captain shot a nasty stare at Saskia, but the reflection of light from her eyes was enough to see that she was dead serious. He slapped Osiris' gun off his temple, then instructed his crews to follow Trystan's direction. Trystan led the dropship to the escarpment and told them to land near the ledge.
As the dropship touched down, Saskia ran toward the door, but Trystan grabbed her arm.
"Do not get out," he warned her. "We don't know if it was still there waiting for you."
"Gilvy would not fail me!" Saskia hissed, unsure of what Trystan was actually suggesting.
"Then call it. Have it come to you."
Saskia didn't understand what Trystan was doing, but she was beyond reasoning. The separation anxiety had eaten her from the inside, more than hunger or dehydration. She walked up to the door and hurled the biggest scream she could muster, "Gilvy!"
Half a minute passed without activity, then the monster zoid pulled itself up the escarpment. It was weak, drained from the hydraulic fluid that motorized its limbs, but it dragged its feet toward the dropship with its remaining strength. As its head entered the dropship, it emitted a series of excited growls, almost like chuckling.
Saskia was exhausted beyond measure, but seeing her zoid again in high spirit energized her.
"Come on boy, we leave for home!" she led her zoid to take a place inside the dropship. "Tuck wings! Fold tail! See yourself settled in cramp space!"
Lei Fong didn't blink for a full minute, watching the Gilvader twisted and turned by itself without a pilot in the cockpit. He turned to Trystan, desperately pleading for explanation. "What the hell is that?"
"I have no idea," Trystan shrugged. "It's how I found them."
"Was that the thing that fell and destroyed the hangar?"
"Hm hm."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I tried, but I told you my comset was not working."
"You could've told me when we met! Why did you hide this thing from me?"
"I didn't know where your allegiance lied. You could've given it up to the pirates."
"Give up a sentient machine? To the pirates? Are you nuts?!" Lei Fong screamed with a glint of joy in his voice. "I'll give up everything to get my hands on that thing!"
"Aren't you glad you come with me?" Trystan said with a devious smirk.
"Shut up, Nordic jerk!" Lei Fong quickly returned to his sarcastic self. "Now get this thing to lift off before the pirates catch up with us!"
"Hey, I'm not your slave anymore so you don't get to order me around," Trystan grumbled. "You may even work for me in the future." He turned his attention to Saskia. "Saskia, are you settled?"
"Good!" Saskia raised her thumb.
"Osiris, have the captain lift off. We're set to go!"
Osiris could only look at the Gilvader with disdain. It was the very objective of his mission, and now he accomplished it, he couldn't report back to his superior. The only chance of glory at the dusk of his career slipped right through his finger, and it aggravated him so much he was thinking of shooting his own gun up his mouth.
But somehow deep in his heart he was glad he didn't have to go back to Star Captain Benten.
Author's Note:
Part 1 is complete. At this point the story has compiled 350+ hits with 16 reviews. Thank you all for reading and R-R-ing. If you like this story drop me a line or two so I know you've been following the story.
If you know my deviantArt account you wanna check it to see some illustrations of scenes from this story.
I may take a break for a week or two to catch up with reading other stuffs but I'll get back as soon as I can.