CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN
A Battletech Short Story
By Sentinel 28A
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Midterms were still kicking my ass, but I think I'm clear for now—just in time for finals. Anyhow, here's the next chapter. Lotsa 'Mech techie stuff in here, but that's part of the reason we like to play Battletech, right? It does serve a purpose. Kind of short chapter this time; the shooting starts in the next one. (I'm trying to stay one chapter ahead of posts.)
Hitomi Dunn, by the way, was inspired by two characters: one is Hitomi Ichinohei from Ninja High School, though this Hitomi doesn't carry a yo-yo and her surname, Dunn, is a tribute to Ben Dunn, the writer of NHS and an all-around cool dude. The name "Hit Me" actually came from a parody of Escaflowne (Studio Sokodei's "Nescaflowne"); I liked it so much I had to have a character like that. Louisa's commentary on the cooling vest was fun to write; I imagine this would be the subject of MechWarrior porn (Rule 34 applies; you just know it exists in the Battletech universe) and as unrealistic as present day fare. And as usual, I can't resist a Star Wars shout out.
And the name of Louisa's lance? Let's say the initial inspiration for Louisa Arla-Vlata was a certain Greenjacketed "Sharpe" shooter.
REVIEWERS' CORNER:
PacificUser: Glad you're liking it so far.
ACDoubleEdge: Yeah, you know what they say about plans! Yes, there will be some flashbacks along with the way about Louisa's past.
FraserMage: Yep. I thought it was about time the engineers got some credit.
Rogue: I hope Louisa did all right; it's tough not writing her as a Sheila clone. You'll find out how she does in the next chapter when the lasers start flying. As far as the reboot goes, meh. I know what I like.
MUSIC CORNER: "Kodoku no Angel (Soldier Girls)" from Bubblegum Crisis is good, as is "Spaceship in the Dark" from Project A-ko. For some reason I also like "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake.
It took three hours, and a lot of swearing and datapad signing, but it was done. Louisa was surprised at how much it took to outfit a reinforced company—all she had ever had to worry about before was her own lance. She knew her father Max kept the books for both regiments of the Sentinels, and wondered how he kept it all straight. Luckily, nearly all her warriors were veterans, and knew what to bring along and what to leave behind. Now all was ready to go.
Louisa had changed into her MechWarrior "uniform," which wasn't much: a cooling vest, boots, and shorts. The Sentinels actually issued their MechWarriors more than the average Inner Sphere warrior, who habitually wore little more than briefs or less along with the cooling vest; the Sentinels' shorts covered the warriors to their knees, with clear panels for maps and notes. It gave a measure of protection. Louisa shivered, even though she wore a parka over her outfit, as the chill found its way under the coat. It had stopped raining, and now was simply dark and cold. She'd better make this quick.
Her lance was drawn up in a semicircle on the edge of Task Force Valkyrie's assembly area, the three other MechWarriors of her lance also wearing parkas. Yurika Misumaru had greeted her with her customary glomp, but once Louisa gathered them around to issue the movement orders, even she grew silent and serious. Yurika piloted a Valkyrie, a 30-ton light fire support 'Mech. Her job was to cover the others and not get in close, though the Valkyrie, an old and venerable design, had enough armor to handle a slugfest if it came to that. Ebuillent to the point of annoyance she might be, but Yurika was solid as a rock in combat.
Yurika's ebuillence was balanced by the sullenness of Hitomi Dunn, the "low" MechWarrior in the lance, reserved for the least experienced MechWarrior. She was always like that until the firing started. Initially assigned to a different Sentinels battalion, she had started out in medium 'Mechs, but after losing two of those, found herself piloting light 'Mechs and with no lance commander wanting her. The reason was that Dunn was aggressive to the point of recklessness, and as a result she had acquired the nickname "Hit Me," a play on her first name, because of how many times her machine would get hit by enemy fire. In an effort to control her, Dunn had been assigned to Louisa's Alpha Light lance—with Louisa once more wondering either if someone didn't like her or where people were getting such confidence in her abilities. As it turned out, however, all Dunn wanted was an opportunity to fight, and she got it in the Snowbirds. She piloted a Spider, also a 30-tonner, but one with an almost feminine figure. The Spider was a scout with only two medium lasers for armament, but it was also one of the most mobile 'Mechs ever fielded; Dunn had become an expert at ambush.
Rounding out Louisa's Alpha Light was Richard Habersohn, who laughingly referred to himself as the "token male" of the otherwise all-female lance. It hadn't been planned that way and just happened, but Habersohn didn't seem to mind. A little older than Louisa, he had quickly become her right-hand man: if Yurika was always happy and Dunn always angry, Habersohn was squarely in the middle. He was just simply dependable, with a temper if riled, but otherwise easygoing. In Louisa's absence, he had commanded the understrength lance, and done well; he was considered a senior MechWarrior, able to get his own lance if he wanted. So far, he had turned down the opportunity to stay with Alpha Light, because the other openings would have required leaving the Snowbirds—which Louisa was glad of. She needed Habersohn's steadiness. In her naivete, Louisa never suspected there might be other reasons why Habersohn stayed with the lance, and those reasons might be his red-haired lance commander. A torch he might carry for her, but Habersohn was all business now. His Black Hawk was a captured Clan OmniMech, capable of being refitted at a moment's notice with a variety of weapons, but he preferred the standard variant: a murderous array of no less than ten extended-range medium lasers, Clan versions that hit harder and at longer range. The heat burden on the 50-ton 'Mech was enormous, but even heavy 'Mechs couldn't shrug off a salvo like that; Habersohn was the heavy hitter of the lance.
Louisa knew that Habersohn would be doubly burdened this night, because she would have to fight the company, leaving him to control the lance. Luckily, he had the experience and the coolness under fire to do it, so he accepted the job without hesitation and with much relief on Louisa's part. With a final "good luck," she shook hands with Habersohn, hugged Yurika, and fist-bumped Dunn. It was a ritual of Alpha Light, and it had kept all four of them alive for the past three years. They worked as one entity now, a bond forged in battle.
Louisa walked to her own 'Mech, joining a tech who waited with a red-lensed flashlight. Together, they made a slow circle of her 'Mech, a 50-ton Nightsky. Designed as a supplement to the successful, 45-ton pre-Clan War Hatchetman design, the Nightsky was a fast, dependable machine designed exactly for the kind of missions that Alpha Light specialized in—long range scouting and raiding. It had only laser weapons, which the Sentinels had modified slightly: three ports of medium pulse lasers dotted the sleek, slablike torso, while the left arm had a single extended-range large laser jutting over the hand. Mounted above the bifurcated canopy was the snubnosed snout of a small pulse laser. Combined, the Nightsky could do a lot of damage, but what enemies feared was fitted over its right hand: a single four-ton slab of sharpened metal. The hatchet could tear a 'Mech apart or smash into an opponent's head, making the Nightsky a lethal fighter at close range—and Louisa liked to get in close. Unlike the other 'Mechs and tanks of the task force, her machine had not seen action yet, and still gleamed in its color scheme of light blue over gray. It was supposed to camouflage the 'Mech, but since it was virtually impossible to disguise something that stood two stories tall, all the scheme really did was break up the Nightsky's silhouette. The other 'Mechs and tanks had spot welds and bare metal where armor plates had been put back on and damage hurriedly repaired. Finding nothing from their inspection, Louisa signed yet another datapad for the tech, then, as he held the rope ladder steady for her, climbed up the twenty feet to the cockpit of her 'Mech. She took off the parka and stuffed it into a tiny locker behind the ejection seat, and, freezing, dropped into the seat and quickly shut the canopy, which sealed with a hiss. The Nightsky's fusion engine was already running, so the cockpit warmed quickly.
Now came another prebattle ritual as she strapped in, fastening the five point harness around her torso and making sure the spurs on the back of her boots fitted into their attachments on the ejection seat; they would keep her legs from flailing around and being shattered if she had to eject from the 'Mech. With that done, she grabbed her helmet from the top of the seat and put it on; the Sentinels had long since switched from the massive, thick neurohelmets worn by Louisa's adopted grandparents to lighter, less bulky helmets. She took the leads from the helmet and plugged them in to ports on the left side of the seat, and closed her eyes as the expected, thankfully brief wave of nausea passed. That was the result of the 'Mech taking Louisa's own sense of equilibrium and transmitting it to the complicated gyro that lay in the Nightsky's belly; without the gyro, all 50 tons of 'Mech would crash to the ground with its first step.
Next Louisa checked her instruments, which glowed reassuringly red in the darkness, so as not to ruin her night vision. She closed her eyes again and felt around the cockpit, identifying each control and button by feel—a habit taught to her by her father, in case she should ever lose the instrument panel lights in darkness or if she was suddenly blinded. That done, Louisa sighed and plugged in her cooling vest to a port in the right side of the cockpit. Instantly, cooling fluid flowed into the tubes on the vest. She shivered so hard that her teeth chattered: the cooling vest was absolutely vital in a cockpit that could top a hundred and twenty degrees in a battle, with waste heat from an overworked engine and laserfire bleeding into the small chamber. It was bad enough even when the temperatures were mild; in the winter, or in cool fall rains, it was almost intolerable. Louisa was glad for the sports bra she wore beneath the vest and remembered one night when she and Yurika had attended a bachelorette party thrown for another female MechWarrior, one which Yurika had basically had to drag Louisa forcibly to. They had rented a pornographic holo for laughs, and all the women had collapsed in uproarious mirth when the holovid showed a female MechWarrior becoming aroused by her own cooling vest—Yurika had commented that a cooling vest was about as much of a turn on as being felt up by a snowman. Louisa had to smile at that one.
She spoke into the microphone pickup in her helmet. "Alpha Light Greens, check in." Green referred to Alpha Light's nickname, the Royal Green Jackets. When the Sentinels had first been formed by Calla Bighorn-Vlata, each lance had been given a nickname of a famous regiment from Terran history. Alpha Light had been named for the rifle regiments of Napoleonic War-era England, men who fought between the French and English lines, snipers who killed officers and formed picket lines.
"Green Two." Habersohn.
"Green Three." Misumaru.
"Green Four." Dunn.
"All up. Break." She switched to the company net. "Task Force Valkyrie, this is Green Six. Radio check."
"Wolf Six, check." Louisa saw Priss Musashiya move into view. Her Awesome was exactly that, almost twice the size and three times the breadth of her Nightsky, an ugly-slab sided 'Mech designed for lethal efficiency rather than aesthetics. The Awesome's top speed was half of Louisa's 'Mech, but the designers had figured the Awesome would never have to run from anything. The rest of Musashiya's 'Mechs were no less impressive: Faye Mido's Mauler, with towering missile batteries on either side of the cockpit, arms ending in laser cannons, and a chest studded with four autocannon ports; Ed Redrock's egg-shaped Flashman, all lasers and rounded edges; and most impressive of all, the Masakari of Kagome Sentinel. Both 'Mech and MechWarrior were formerly Clan; Kagome had been captured in an earlier battle and, being a unBloodnamed Clan warrior, had taken the name of the regiment that had captured her as her own. As for the Masakari, it was 85 tons of mechanized murder, with its main armament quad particle projection cannons capable of sawing smaller 'Mechs in half in seconds. Having the assaults along might slow TF Valkyrie down, but it also gave them plenty of firepower.
"Bunny Six, up," came the voice of Roland Pryce. He had four tanks, and like the assault 'Mechs, they were nasty in their own way. Pryce's Demolisher featured over and under massive Autocannon/20s, which all MechWarriors feared as "head-choppers," able to take off the head of an opposing 'Mech with a single shot. Behind him was Trina Smith's Schrek, with a triple-mount PPC turret; Molly Connell's Peltast LRM Carrier, nothing but a solid wall of missle ports; and finally Ash Weltjens' Ontos, with a octuple battery of medium lasers equally suited to taking on 'Mechs and infantry—if they ran into Manei Domini, the Ontos would give the cyborgs pause. Pryce's callsign referred to the nickname of his platoon, the Doom Bunnies, a name they had been stuck with during the Clan War.
"Red Six, standing by." That would be Carl Fencer, whose four Lynxes idled on deflated hoverskirts. The Lynx was thinly armored and only had the turret containing three medium lasers, but their job was essentially to act as battle taxis for the infantry, to get in quickly, drop off their troops, and get out again. Only Fencer's Lynx had infantry, the platoon of David Harris, who had been overjoyed that Louisa had picked him to come along. The other three were stuffed with provisions and ammunition for the 63rd Infantry Battalion.
"Shovel Six. We're here." Behind the Lynxes were the four Aardvarks, nearly hidden underneath the mobile bridges above them; the only part that stuck out was the snout of the 165mm demolition gun, designed for use against concrete pillboxes and other obstacles. The demolition gun was of limited effectiveness against mobile targets, since it lacked any sort of targeting computer, but the engineers always talked about what would happen if a 'Mech got hit by it. Louisa shuddered: just seeing the huge opening of the barrel was enough for her.
Well, that's it then, she sighed. They were ready. Now only one order was left to give. She took a breath, held it, and let it out, controlling her voice to sound steadier than she was: "Valkyrie, form up and move out." Louisa pressed down on the pedals, and the Nightsky moved forward. The operation had begun. It was 25 kilometers to the river, another ten to Clarkston, and then less than five to the 63rd Battalion. 40 kilometers didn't seem like much on the map display, especially since nearly half the distance would be made well within her own lines, but to Louisa Hill 5423 might as well be on one of Virentofta's three moons.