BROKEN BLADE

By Steven Mohan, Jr.

Melrose Valley, near the Defiance Industries Vehicles Facility

Outside Maria’s Elegy, Hesperus II

Lyran Commonwealth

28 December 2787

First Leutnant Danver McEdwards of the Thirtieth Lyran Guards pushed his battered Sentinel into a panicked lope as the world came apart around him. Heavy beams of ruby light smashed down into the hardscrabble earth and splashed outward in prismatic scattering; the lasers vaporizing dirt, rock, and ’Mech armor with equal efficiency. Someone had called in naval gunfire support.

And someone had done it wrong.

The laser fire rained down in the middle of the battlefield, indiscriminately toppling Combine and Lyran ’Mechs alike. It didn’t matter whose WarShip was up there, Kurita or Steiner.

Whoever it was, it was the enemy.

McEdwards glanced at his rear monitor in time to see a DCMS Dragon chasing after him. Suddenly the great machine was nothing more than a black silhouette against a wall of crimson fire.

And then it was gone.

McEdwards ran.

Ironically, the disastrous attack had probably saved his life. Before someone had opened up with orbital fire the Thirtieth Guards had been facing the Kuritan regiment in a long front that stretched across the south end of the valley. The DCMS had nearly managed to punch through the defenders’ line at a weak point, and McEdwards’s unit — First Company, Second Battalion — rushed forward to blunt the point of the Combine attack. Instead, the Kuritans had sliced right through First Co as well.

The fire from on high had broken up an emerging Combine victory and provided the perfect opportunity to slip away.

McEdwards watched a Panther stumble and fall, as the earth suddenly opened up beneath it. The ’Mech tumbled into the new crater, light the color of blood tracing across its exceptionally humanoid form. The Panther struggled half-way over the crater’s edge and then fell back, swallowed by hell’s fury.

There wasn’t any question of staying.

So focused was McEdwards on the danger behind him that he didn’t notice the danger in front until it was too late. A Thug stepped out from behind a dun-colored bluff and a flight of Bical-6 SRM’s rippled across the ovoid shape of his Sentinel’s body.

McEdwards staggered backwards, stumbling as his weakened left leg almost gave out.

The enemy machine stalked forward, pressing its attack. Before McEdwards could answer, violet PPC fire washed over the dilapidated armor shielding his cockpit. The temperature spiked, burning his lungs, and almost, almost, stealing away his consciousness.

This was the end.

Six years of nothing on Hesperus II and now this: blackjacked by a Thug.

The Thug took another step forward. It was painted for city fighting: sharp-edged camouflage pattern of concrete grays and asphalt blacks. The only visible color on the DCMS machine was the emblem on its left shoulder, a blue circle with a stripped tail down the arm, marking the ’Mech as a member of the 18th Algedi Regulars.

The Thug was a monster, eighty tons of muscular fighting machine protected by the latest Ferro-Fibrous armor and armed with a particle projector cannon mounted on each thick arm. Its massive head was centered on its torso, far below its powerful shoulders, giving it a brutal, primitive look. This machine was a schoolyard bully, designed to pound weaker ’Mechs.

Like his Sentinel.

The Thug raised its arms and McEdwards swallowed hard.

And then the sky opened up and a curtain of crimson light divided him from the DCMS ’Mech.

His mind unhinged by terror, McEdwards fled.

Tai-i Aiko Makita jerked her Thug to a stop just as soon as she heard the burst of coded chatter over the Lyran freq. “Picket,” she shouted over the ’Mech channel. She carefully scanned the battered and scarred rocks of Hesperus II, searching for the source of the radio signal.

Nothing.

During the confusion of the naval bombardment, she and six of her ’Mechs had slipped through the Lyran line, a fact unknown to the LCAF. Right now that secret was Makita’s principal tactical advantage, one she would lose if she allowed the picket to transmit.

“Found him,” shouted Chu-i Brian Smith. “Heavy Tank.” Smith stepped his Kintaro to one side, so he had a clear shot behind a jagged escarpment. Twin ruby beams sizzled through the hot, dry air, followed by a SRM. “Narc pod away.”

Makita immediately heard a ringing tone and loosed a flight of her own SRM’s. The missiles’ white contrails ran straight for the friendly Kintaro, then turned, arcing around the escarpment and following the Narc beacon right in.

Makita pounded her way over to Smith’s position, aimed her PPC’s at the terminus of his lasers, and poured megajoules of killing energy into the tank.

The transmission suddenly cut out.

“Cease fire,” Makita called out. She stalked forward.

What she found was the thoroughly mangled remains of a AC/2 Carrier caught in a half-turn.

The Carrier had never stood a chance. Makita’s force completely outgunned it. The tank’s commander had done the only thing he could, turned to run, but thanks to Smith’s quick reflexes that hadn’t worked either.

“Got him,” said Smith jubilantly.

“Hai,” said Makita angrily, “but not before he revealed our position. Come. Daylight’s shadows grow no shorter.”

She was answered by a chorus of hai’s.

Makita started running, and the rest of her improvised force followed.

Standard tactics after a break out was to turn and attack, shattering the enemy’s line and sending him fleeing. But the standing orders for Operation Broken Blade were different. Any unit that punched through was ordered to proceed immediately against the nearest DefHes facility.

To wreak havoc on the very heart of the Steiner war machine.

So Makita set off at a dead run.

It still surprised her to be piloting a Thug, or that her force consisted of previously almost exclusive Terran Hegemony ’Mechs…or that the Lyrans fielded their own number of such designs. But how many soldiers were wooed away from the Star League before Kerensky’s Exodus with most of the Star League Defense Force? And how many of them found their rides ‘reassigned’ to other soldiers. Serves them right…can’t trust such turncoats.

She brought her attention back to the here and now as her massive Thug bounded across the broken, rocky landscape at a stately 65 kph, barely two-thirds of the speed of the Lyran Sentinel that had escaped her grasp in the horror and confusion of the naval attack.

Many of the ’Mechs in company with her were faster, but she kept them in a tight formation. They were going to encounter the automated defenses soon. Better to husband her meager forces than to go off on a headlong chase that might very well lead to ambush and disaster.

They were no more than a knife’s edge from disaster anyway.

It hadn’t started that way. Broken Blade was a daring operation designed to smash the Lyran war machine with a single devastating blow. Defiance Industries’ massive ’Mech and Vehicles Facilities on Hesperus II were the key to the Commonwealth’s military power. Destroy Defiance and the Commonwealth would not long stand. And with the Cameron’s dead and their Star League Defense Force gone there was nothing to keep the Draconis Combine from taking its rightful place at the head of the Inner Sphere.

To accomplish this the DCMS had assembled an awesome force: a squadron of WarShips escorting DropShips embarked with four ’Mech regiments led by the Fifth Sword of Light. The ’Mech’s would slice through the Lyran defenders dirtside, while the WarShips pounded the factories from above. It was a beautiful concept.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t quite worked out as planned.

Lyran resistance at the jump point had been much heavier than expected. The Kuritan WarShips had managed to slog through the Lyran naval forces and get close enough to Hesperus II to destroy a few orbiting factories, but that was it. They couldn’t get into position to engage in a heavy bombardment of the real prize, the Defiance facilities.

Things had gone little better for the ’Mech assault. Three regiments led by the Gold Dragons had moved against the ’Mech facility only to discover that the Lyran defenders fielded an astounding number of powerful assault ’Mech’s, all built on this very world. The main thrust of the ’Mech assault staggered under a punishing counter-attack led by a brace of Lyran Zeuses and Atlases.

Both the naval forces and the Jade Dragons had found themselves engaged in a bloody stalemate.

Only the 18th Algedi Regulars were actually advancing.

Makita’s reverie was interrupted by a flash of emerald light and the armor on her right knee flashed from green to yellow on her wireframe schematic. What the— Wait. There. The rock. She targeted a massive boulder with both arm-mounted PPC’s and simultaneously released a double flight of SRM’s.

The actinic flash of violet lightning carved deep furrows in the rock’s surface, followed a second later by multiple missile impacts.

The boulder erupted into an incandescent orange fireball that rose twenty meters into the air, showering her force with a hard gravel rain.

“Good God,” Ohno swore over the ’Mech channel, “what did you use on that thing?”

“That wasn’t me,” said Makita. “Secondary explosions. We’re into the automatic defenses. Watch yourself.”

“Hai,” said Ohno with feeling.

As if his word were some kind of signal the valley floor came alive with the emerald and crimson crossfire of multiple lasers hidden among the rocks, missiles arcing in from magazines sunk into the hills, spent shell casings bouncing everywhere — a thousand kinds of death left by the Lyrans to welcome them to Hesperus II.

McEdwards’s company commander, Hauptmann Grün, had left standing orders for all badly damaged ’Mechs to fall back to the DefHes Vehicles Facility. The goal was to get wounded ’Mechs patched up and back in the fight. And those machines that couldn’t be fixed were to remain in place, using their weapons as a last ditch line of defense. The facility was to be protected at all costs.

As McEdwards limped his badly damaged Sentinel over a rise he saw that it was too late for that.

The Combine had already hit the Vehicles Facility, probably from orbit. The factory was housed in a massive structure built of reinforced concrete. It was so big that it looked squat even though its ceiling reached thirty meters into the sky. (The building had originally been used to build assault ’Mech’s before security concerns forced the ’Mech Division into a facility hollowed out of a mountain.)

The building was so big that it was rumored to have its own weather patterns. Once, when the AC went down, storm clouds had formed inside the building and the Day Shift had been treated to a gentle spring rain.

The massive building still stood, but something had brought down part of the building’s south wall, leaving a pile of gray rubble in its place. McEdwards shuddered. Another sign of the end.

The war was only twelve months old, but it was already clear it was going to be a bloody, nasty business. That should’ve been obvious even before the war began, back in ‘85 when the Free Worlds League had violated the Ares Conventions and nuked an entire continent.

After that the atrocities had stacked up, each one worse than the last. Bandits attacking Bone-Norman. The Combine taking Gram and Trolloc Prime and then smashing the Bolson Shipyards at New Kyoto. And, worst of all, the DCMS slaughtering civilians by the thousands on Skondia just to draw out LCAF forces.

Wanton, unspeakable destruction. Honorable combat transformed into murder. A thousand years of civilization traded away for a fleeting advantage in battle. That’s what McEdwards saw when he looked at the damage done to the Vehicles Facility.

Naked, brutal barbarism stalked the Inner Sphere.

Today it had found Hesperus II.

He sighed, a long wavering sound that left him feeling weak and sad, and then he hobbled down toward the factory.

It looked more like a field hospital than a state-of-the-art defense facility.

The lawn in front of the factory was covered with bodies on stretchers and more still in black, nylon bags. Medics moved from stretcher to stretcher, treating those not yet beyond help. Healthy soldiers and factory workers mingled near the building’s ship dock where scores of Hunter tanks sat on the ground or on massive trailers, waiting to be shipped to LCAF units.

McEdwards was startled to see there were almost no ’Mechs. Badly hurt machines were supposed to fall back and he’d seen plenty of his mates absorb grievous blows. And yet, all he saw was an Archer flat on its back, a badly-damaged Zeus nearly stripped of armor and missing its left arm, and another Sentinel, clearly hurt, but perhaps with a little fight left in it. Had the rest fallen?

Two damaged medium ’Mechs to defend the factory.

McEdwards hoped Hauptmann Grün had a helluva plan.

Without thinking he reached over and touched the haft of the short sword mounted on the ’Mech’s bulkhead. The sword had been in his family for generations beyond count, a treasured symbol of the McEdwards’ tradition of keeping the peace. The sword was a symbol of honor, of bravery.

Of civilization.

The haft felt strange to the touch. McEdwards glanced over. And realized that the polished silver blade had shattered, breaking in two. Probably during the attack by the Thug.

Something lodged in his throat.

And at that precise moment the scorched strands of myomer holding his left leg together finally gave out. One instant McEdwards felt the ’Mech going over and the next his vision grayed and his jaws clacked shut.

It happened that fast.

For a moment he just lay there, unable to summon the will to move, just staring through the starred ferroglass of his canopy at the rocky landscape now tilted up at a crazy angle.

McEdwards blinked hard a couple times and shook himself out of his stupor. He undid his safety restraint and managed to force open the Sentinel’s access hatch. He pried himself out of the charred and broken remnants of his cockpit and worked his way painfully over the left shoulder joint to the AC/5 Ultra Autocannon and then to the ground.

The long barrel of the cannon was smashed against the hardscrabble deck. The fall had happened fast, but apparently not so fast that McEdwards hadn’t managed to get an arm out to brace himself.

As McEdwards surveyed his ’Mech he realized that was about all the good news there was. Aside from the fact that his left leg was a mess, a long black scar sliced through the Sentinel’s ovoid torso. It would take only a few good hits for an enemy to punch through to his gyroscope.

It would only take one to punch through the fractured armor of his cockpit.

A young MechWarrior approached and saluted, a leutnant judging by the insignia clipped to his cooling vest, though absent the rank McEdwards would’ve guessed him to be a cadet. McEdwards fumbled for a name. Gavin something.

McEdwards returned the youngster’s salute. “What happened here?” He jerked his head at the hole in the building.

“Kuritans took out the orbiting factories. There’s debris strung out half-way across South Whitman. Some of it came down here.”

McEdwards chewed on that for a moment. The fact that the Combine navy hadn’t gotten close enough to finish the job meant that the laser fire he’d just danced through had to have come from an LCAF WarShip. Exactly how much of First Co had been taken out by friendly fire?

“Can you take me to Hauptmann Grün, Leutnant, uh . . .”

“Hill,” said the boy. “Leutnant Gavin Hill, as you please, sir.”

“That’s fine. Take me to Grün, would you?”

“Sir.” The boy licked his lips and turned to point.

McEdwards’s gaze followed the boy’s finger to one of the black nylon bags lying on the green, green grass.

“The Hauptmann is dead.” He jerked his head toward the silent Zeus. “That was his,” he said, as if that explained everything. “You are the senior officer.”

A warrant in Steiner blue ran up and saluted. “Sir, we have a report from one of our pickets. Enemy ’Mechs moving this way.”

McEdwards huddled around a comms set with young Hill, the warrant, and a fortyish woman in a yellow hard hat: Tricia Coleman, the factory’s Day Shift Shop foreman. My command staff, McEdwards thought sourly.

A thin patina of dust coated everything, a mix of metal and rock particles blasted into the air by errant fire. The dust coated his mouth, dried his mouth.He placed the handset to his lips and said, “Second Battalion, actual, this is First Leutnant McEdwards.”

Hauptmann-Kommandant Krieg’s deep voice emerged from the speaker. “I’m busy here,” he growled. His statement was punctuated by the high-pitched whine of lasers followed by an autocannon’s staccato rattle.

“Yessir,” said McEdwards. “I’ll make this fast. We have a force of enemy ’Mechs moving towards the factory.” He released the send button and met the warrant’s gaze. “Did you get a count?”

The warrant shook his head. “Our guy’s report was cutoff mid-way, but at least a lance. Maybe more.”

At least a lance, McEdwards thought. Maybe more. Against two medium ’Mechs. He glanced back at his damaged ride. Scratch that. One medium ’Mech.

“You’re just going to have to hold, Leutnant.”

McEdwards brushed sweat his forehead with the back of his hand. Damn, it was hot!”Sir, we have only one medium bravo mike against a lance plus of—”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Krieg gruffly. “We’re barely holding the line as it is. If we pull back they’re going to punch through. Better to take our chances with your medium ’Mech and the automated defenses.”

McEdwards cycled through all the possible things he could say and finally settled on, “Yessir.”

“Godspeed, Leutnant. Krieg out.”

The channel went dead.

“Surely, ah . . .” The warrant swallowed hard. His face had lost all color. “Surely we’re going to withdraw.”

McEdwards glanced at the warrant. The man was a comms specialist, not a warrior. He looked at Hill and Ms. Coleman. Both were silent, their faces tightened into grim expressions.

“You can’t expect us to stand and fight,” said the warrant. “Not against a lance. It’s suicide.”

No. They could retreat. And what would they give up? A thousand years of civilization, McEdwards thought, traded for a fleeting advantage in battle.

McEdwards glanced at Hill. “Is your Sentinel working?”

The boy nodded. “Yes, sir. I would be happy to surrender it to you, if—”

“No, you keep it,” said McEdwards, glancing back at his own machine, “I’m not quite done with mine yet.”

McEdwards drew a deep breath. The sweet smell of spent munitions mixed with the acrid taste of smoke. The perfume of war. He glanced at Coleman. She was a pretty woman, but there was strength in that face, too. “Will your people help, Foreman?”

“Just tell us what to do,” said Coleman in a cool, level voice.

“Sir,” said the warrant his face twisted with dismay, “You can’t seriously think—”

McEdwards cut him off with a raised hand. “Do you have an ETA on the enemy ’Mechs?”

The warrant pursed his lips, but said, “Maybe twenty minutes.”

“More if they’re slowed down by the automated defenses,” said Hill.

McEdwards glanced at the hole in the building and then he looked back at them. “OK, here’s what we’re gonna do.”

Makita sprinted through a sea of laser fire, driven by nothing more than the need to escape. She heard the angry rattle of autocannon fire and saw Carter’s Mercury fall out of the corner of her eye.

She’d abandoned her Ares-5 fire control system, giving herself over to instinct, firing on the run, her only aim to disrupt the endless rain of death that fell all around her.

She saw a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye. Her heat sinks were still cooling from a double PPC blast, but she wheeled and let lose with a flight of SRMs.

The nearby turret shuddered, but didn’t stop its turn. Her attack had bent the laser’s barrel, though. The turret stopped suddenly, the dark end of its barrel pointed straight at her cockpit. Makita saw a flash of emerald light and then the gun erupted into molten orange flame as its own misdirected energy tore it apart.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Smith firing his pair of Magna medium lasers.

She covered twenty klicks like that, sprinting past the automated defenses where she could and engaging where she had to, until the laser fire suddenly stopped.

“Hey, I’m suddenly clear of fire control radar,” said Smith.

“Must be close,” muttered Makita. She glanced at her rear monitor and a cold chill suddenly wriggled down her spine. “Where are the rest?”

“I saw McDill’s Crab go down,” said Smith. “And Ohno.”

“And Carter,” said Makita remembering his Mercury crashing to earth. “Jigoku. We can’t be the only survivors.”

Smith said nothing.

“Well, then we shall have to be enough,” said Makita firmly. She strode toward a small rise. She looked up over the hill.

And saw it.

The Defiance Industries Vehicles Facility.

Guarded by a massive Zeus. The same class of ’Mech tearing apart the Fifth Sword of Light.

She blinked.

Perhaps “guarded” was too strong a word. The Zeus was missing its left arm and her sensors told her it was dead, no heat signature at all.

A wounded Sentinel lay on the rocky ground, propped up on its damaged autocannon. She noticed the long ugly scar that stretched across the ’Mech’s ovoid body and the blackened armor near the cockpit. Makita realized this was the Sentinel she’d nearly killed before the naval laser fire had knocked her aside.

“What do you think?” Smith asked.

Makita’s eyes marked many things: the pile of rubble that had once been the building’s south wall, the collection of black bags spread across the perfectly manicured lawn, the clutter of paper and gauze and scraps of bloody cloth, the light tanks secured to flatbed trailers with steel tie downs . . .

All of it, every single sign, pointed to a hurried retreat. Makita could close her eyes and almost see them scrambling to evac the wounded, but leaving behind their damaged ’Mechs, their light tanks.

Their dead.

It all made sense. Perfect sense.

Somehow she knew it was a trap. She felt it like an itch deep down in her belly.

Makita licked her lips and centered a reticle made of crimson light over the Zeus’s chest. The reticle turned golden, a sweet tone sounded, and suddenly a flight of SRM’s was away.

Count one and impact.

The massive Zeus shuddered but did not fall, the rippling blasts of the missiles’ warheads echoing off the mountains that ringed the valley.

And suddenly Makita was up and over the rise, charging toward the assault ’Mech, her powerful eighty ton stride shaking the ground.

“Tai-i, what’re you—”

“Cover me,” Makita snarled.

It took ten seconds to cross to where the Zeus stood, plenty of time for a hidden enemy to open up on her.

But none did.

She reached the Zeus and hit, arms extended, fingers splayed to spread out the impact, careful not to damage either of her arm-mounted PPC’s.

The Zeus took the momentum of her charge and toppled backwards. The Zeus’s fall fractured the rocky ground, kicking up a cloud of dust. The sound of the great ’Mech hitting the earth was like the sound of the end of the world. It echoed against the building and then settled into silence.

Nothing else happened.

She signaled for Smith to join her and he lumbered up over the rise, stopping at a distance that allowed them to cover each other, though against what was unclear.

She was still certain there was a trap here, but she had no idea what it might be.

But if she moved against the factory she could do a lot of damage. And she might just pull an Atlas or two toward her position, giving the Eighth Sword of Light a better chance to punch through and hit the ’Mech facility.

She keyed in the command channel and said, “This is Tai-i Makita, proceeding against the Vehicles Facility.” Then she stepped through the breached south wall and into the factory.

The facility was spooky.

It was illuminated by immense lamps placed in the high roof, the light tinged yellow by the accumulation of time and welding dust. A parade of half-completed tanks sat frozen on a massive conveyor line that looked like the silent fossil of some great Sauropod, long dead. Nothing stirred, not a single worker remained. More evidence of a panicked retreat by the Lyran forces guarding the Vehicles Facility.

Except.

The high-pitched jump tone that warned of enemy fire control radar filled her cockpit and she saw multiple hot spots on her thermal sensors. Makita didn’t really believe she and Smith were being stalked by a battalion of ’Mechs. All the heat signatures were motionless and the only footsteps that broke the silence were those of her Thug and Smith’s Kintaro. No doubt someone had engaged the AGART system of the partially assembled tanks and turned on every fusion reactor they could find.

Still, that didn’t sound like people lost to panic, did it?

And between the WarShip attack and the hard flight through the sea of laser fire their armor wasn’t in the best of shape.

“Be careful,” she said. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Hai,” said Smith, and the tension in his voice told her he felt it, too.

She glanced down at the facility schematic, provided courtesy of the ISF, and raised one massive arm to point at a three-way junction of aisles. “Looks like we turn right here.”

“Hai.”

They stalked past an incredible collection of industrial equipment: yellow bridge cranes mounted on rails in the ceiling, jib cranes set on thick steel columns rising from the reinforced ferrocrete floor, weld robots, precision machining centers, and a whole collection of machinery she couldn’t ID.

They came to another junction and turned left this time, moving fast, staying on plan.

The schematic was sketchy and incomplete and there was always the chance that it was wrong altogether, but it was best they had. It showed the Reactor Testing Room at the north end of the building.

Their objective.

Each fusion power plant had to be tested before installation and since this was a factory, efficiency mattered. There would have to be a bulk tank of deuterium somewhere close to the RTR.

It wouldn’t be hard to turn the pressure vessel into a bomb. Place a fusion reactor close to the vessel and set it to overload. The nuclear reaction Makita was planning to set off wouldn’t be self-sustaining — once released the plasma would cool far too fast for that — but the initial explosion would be big enough to knock down the building’s north wall and irradiate the whole factory.

Even better, the spray of golden plasma would start a fire, feeding on everything in its path. When she was done House Steiner would have to knock down and bury the charred and blackened skeleton of their Vehicles Facility.

Just the kind of destruction she’d been charged with overseeing. A grim smile touched Makita’s lips.

Just as a nearby jib crane swung around and smashed her Thug in the right shoulder. The blow caught her in mid-step and for a moment she teetered on the edge of falling.

Then the steel arm smashed into her again.

And this time it knocked her down.

Makita managed to get her left arm out in front of her, absorbing most of the impact, but crushing the barrel of her PPC.

She saw a trace of motion behind her and glanced down in time to see Smith’s Kintaro turn and—

“Don’t,” she shouted.

—melt the jib crane down into glowing slag with his two medium lasers.

“Cease fire,” she shouted.

Smith dropped his right arm and turned his great machine to face her. “I-I don’t understand. We were attacked.”

Makita reached down and pushed herself up with her right hand. “The jib must be radio controlled. We weren’t attacked by the crane, Chu-i. We were attacked by the person holding the remote.”

“But—”

“Someone’s here,” she hissed. “Every shot you take telegraphs our position. And there’s no need. It’s a jib crane. All we have to do is walk away.”

The giant Kintaro bowed from the waist, looking like a repentant samurai. “Hai. Of course you are right, Tai-i. Forgive me.”

“We shall speak no more of it,” said Makita. “If this is the best our enemy can do, we are indeed fortunate. He will try to distract us, Chu-i, but we shall not allow it. Our objective is the RTR. We shall obtain it.”

“Hai,” Smith barked.

“Come.”

The two ’Mechs started forward again, their heavy footfalls echoing through great caverns of machinery. Twisted shadows cast by industrial robots marked the aisles, belts paralleled their path and then veered suddenly away, the abrupt hum of a compressor kicking on pierced the silence.

Somewhere, somewhere, amidst all this junk was a soldier or maybe a factory hardhat with an overdeveloped sense of duty. Makita’s eyes did a little dance right to left, rear monitor to thermal sensor, looking for the enemy.

Finding nothing.

She stumbled, feeling something holding her right leg back. She jerked the leg forward and then pivoted around on her left leg. A welding torch thrust at her like a sword, its tip glowing incandescent blue. The torch was wielded by a massive robotic arm mounted to the deck.

Makita raised her right arm and centered her PPC. Manmade lightning crackled and popped, vaporizing the business end of the weld robot’s torch arm.

Makita glanced down. The robot had been aiming for her knee. The welder hadn’t done much damage to the delicate joint itself, but it had cut long black furrows in her armor.

“With respect, Tai-i,” said Smith, “I thought we weren’t supposed to—”

“It is perfectly plain that our enemy knows every move we make,” she snarled.

Her eyes flickered across and down, her gaze brushing past her thermal sensor and to—

Jerking back.

One of the reactors was moving. The deck shook with the heavy footfalls of an approaching ’Mech.

Her head snapped up.

A Sentinel stepped past a ferrocrete wall and opened up with its powerful AC/5, the autocannon chipping away the armor around Smith’s cockpit.

Smith roared and raised his right arm.

The Lyran ’Mech ducked clear an instant before the lethal red beams hit.

Smith pounded after him.

“Iie,” Makita shouted, but Smith’s blood was up, and he plunged after the smaller ’Mech. Darted around the wall.

Makita hobbled after him, favoring her right knee while she tried to push her slow Thug to catch up.

She made it to the wall in time to see the Sentinel taking a wide turn around another corner, Smith’s Magna lasers slicing through the other ’Mech’s already damaged rear armor.

Alarm bells rang in Makita’s mind.

Smith moved to cut off the smaller Sentinel, angling for a tighter turn around the corner.

“Wait,” Makita shouted.

But it was already too late. Smith’s Kintaro leaned forward in pursuit. It took a step and its massive foot slid out from beneath it. For a moment the giant samurai looked like a comedian doing a pratfall, arms out sliding across the floor as it fought for the balance. And then it disappeared into some kind of sunken bay.

Makita could see lines where its feet had dragged through the grease someone had smeared on the floor.

Trap.

She stepped forward, careful to follow the Sentinel’s path. The great Kintaro lay on its right side amidst more mysterious equipment. The ’Mech’s fall had managed to crack open a giant pressure vessel and a foul black sludge was leaking out.

“Report your status, Chu-i,” Makita barked.

“I, uh, I— Sorry, Tai-i,” answered Smith. “I think . . . I might be able to get up.”

Makita realized there was lettering on the side of the leaking pressure vessel: WASTE TREATMENT. Safe in her Thug’s cockpit she couldn’t smell the sour stink of hydrogen sulfide, but it would be there. Along with the odorless presence of methane.

“Get up,” she shouted, “get up, NOW.”

Just then the Sentinel appeared and fired its small laser at the leaking tank.

The bay exploded into a molten orange tower of fire, the flames tinged blue by burning methane. A wave of heat pushed Makita back. She glimpsed the Sentinel racing toward an external freight door. She actually took a step forward, intent on following and destroying the Lyran ’Mech, until she realized that’s just what they wanted her to do.

Makita clenched her jaw and brought her Thug to a halt. For a moment she watched the Kintaro writhe, listened to Smith’s screams as the fire roasted him alive in his cockpit. She shuddered. It was a horrible way for a MechWarrior to die: trapped and helples, skin charred to a crisp, lungs burning from the inside—

Unable to do anything to save him, she turned away and resumed her mission.

Makita stalked forward, careful to avoid the reach of cranes and industrial robots. Twice mechanical arm had reached out for her and both times she had slagged them with her remaining PPC.

She wasn’t worried about the Sentinel. If it appeared, she’d stand her ground and go toe-to-toe with the forty-ton ’Mech, but she wouldn’t be drawn away from her objective. Not any more.

Perhaps the Lyran commander understood that, because she hadn’t seen any sign of the Sentinel since the ambush at the Waste Treatment Plant. So much the better

She came to yet another intersection and stopped. She glanced down at the schematic and saw that she had at last reached the main north-south aisle. The long ferrocrete avenue hugged the facility’s eastern wall. It was a supply avenue, linking up with freight doors at 100-meter intervals, so that parts and material could be brought into factory and moved efficiently to point-of-use.

All it meant to Makita was that she had a clear shot to the north end of the factory and the deuterium bulk tank.

She took a step forward.

Her life was saved by a faulty timer.

She heard a pop and jerked back as a section of racking to her right started to fall. A moment later the rest of the spoilsport charges went off like a string of firecrackers rapidly popping off, followed closely by a rain of broken and twisted steel.

Makita quickly stepped her Thug back, narrowly avoiding the deluge of racking and cranes and turret assemblies. As the crashing echo died away, Makita found herself facing a barrier of wreckage. If she hadn’t moved when the first charge had gone off, she would’ve been buried in a steel grave.

She stood staring at the pile of broken equipment. Her advance along the main north-south aisle was effectively cut off. She might be able to cut her way through with her remaining PPC, though it would take some time and she was wary about walking through all that crap with her damaged knee.

Besides that’s what they’d expect her to do. No telling what awaited her on the other side of this barrier.

She glanced down at her rear monitor and her eyes fixed on one of the roll-up freight doors.

Perhaps there was a better way.

Makita turned and strode back to the door. She raised her Thug’s right arm and slagged the door with her PPC. Then she punched through the shards of the broken door and stepped outside.

Enough. Enough of that damned factory. She would proceed northward outside, avoiding all the clever Lyran ambushes and booby traps. Then she would enter the building from the north, find the deuterium tank, blow it, and be done.

She glanced at her rear monitor. She was already a couple hundred meters north of the factory’s ship dock, so she didn’t have to far to—

She saw a flash of orange light.

Makita pushed her ’Mech into a sprint, running to her right, away from the factory where she was boxed in. A flight of missiles rippled against her right side.

The tanks. It was the tanks on the shipping dock, letting loose with their FarFire LRM’s. She could see the launch flashes from the tanks’ low-slung box launchers.

Makita charged forward, running a zig-zag course in an effort to disrupt the missiles’ solutions, all the while blasting the Hunters with her PPC.

A tank erupted into an orange fireball and she targeted the next even as her Thug shuddered from a missile blow. The tanks weren’t moving, making them easy targets. If she could just take out enough before her armor gave out.

She sprinted towards a low outcropping of rock. She could use it as an improvised revetment. And it was close enough she could bring her own SRM’s to bear. She could open up on the Hunters with her own missile barrage and sharpshoot them with her PPC.

Missiles fell all around her, shaking the earth and gouging out craters in the rocky ground. For a split-second her weakened knee joint locked up, and she stumbled. She nearly went over, knowing it would mean her life if she did, and then somehow she regained her balance and made the outcropping.

She crouched down behind the rock formation listening to the heavy whump, whump, whump of missiles hitting brittle sandstone. She didn’t have much time before her barrier shattered.

She stepped past the outcropping just long enough to release a double flight of SRM’s then stepped back. It took only a three-count before she heard a satisfying ripple of explosions.

She sighted in on a tank’s missile box and set up a shot with her PPC, exposing only her right arm to counterfire. Lightning crackled and the box exploded into a towering fountain of fire.

That turned out to be enough for her friends in the tanks. When she stepped out from behind the outcropping to fire another salvo of missiles, she saw men and women fleeing.

Men and women in yellow hard harts.

Makita howled with range and charged after them, firing all the way. The first PPC blast dropped the fleeing factory workers, cooking them where they stood. Her successive blasts were aimed at the Hunters’ missile boxes and they transformed the ship dock into a garden of fire of death.

When she reached the tanks, none had survived. All the ship dock was burning.

Makita saw the fallen Sentinel she had confronted during the naval battle and realized with a start that she was nearly back where she began.

Enough of these foolish cat-and-mouse games, it was time to—

The Sentinel stepped out from behind the southeast corner of the building, took aim with its autocannon, and fired. Makita staggered backwards as the Ultra flensed armor from her right knee.

She raised her right arm and blackened the ferrocrete of the building’s wall, but not before the Sentinel had ducked back behind the corner.

Enough.

Makita charged forward. She would make this foolish Sentinel pay and pay dearly and then she would finish the job she’d come to do.

Makita reached the building’s corner. The Sentinel was racing toward the safety of the next corner, but in this case the massive size of the building had worked against him.

Makita lined up a shot with her lone surviving PPC and poured angry fire into the Sentinel’s rear.

She must’ve hit the gyroscope, because the medium BattleMech suddenly fell, sprawling on the hardscrabble earth, face first.

She stood over the crippled ’Mech waiting for the pilot to emerge. After a minute the hatch cracked open and the Kisama pulled himself out. He knealt on the wide flange of the left shoulder, hands clasped behind his head.

“No, my friend,” she snarled, “you will not get off quite that easily.”

She bent down and batted him with her right arm. All her fury and frustration powered that blow and his body skittered across the earth and was still.

“NO!”

She glanced at her radio. The voice had come from an open frequency.

An alarm warbled, signaling that she had been targeted. Where was the danger.

That was when she glanced down at her rear monitor. It was the fallen Sentinel, the one she thought she’d dealth with before. Somehow it was still working. It poured laser fire into her right knee. She wheeled around intending to slag the downed ’Mech, but the turn was too quick, especially after the careful surgery the Sentinel had just performed with his small laser.

Makita’s abused right knee finally gave out and her Thug went down hard on its right side.

An infantry squad dressed in desert cammo fatigues pulled her from her Thug. She cradled her right arm in her left. She could see where the bone’s broken edge had pushed up against her smooth, brown skin. Compound fracture. Agony pulsed in her damaged arm, but her mind made it a distant agony, like it was happening to someone else.

The Lyran squad leader pressed his needler into the small of her back and marched her toward the factory. None of them spoke.

And the squad leader’s grip on his weapon never wavered.

Makita had no doubt what would happen if she flinched, if she stumbled, if she made any move at all.

She briefly considered making a break for it. Better to be cut down from behind than what was going to come next. After a moment of reflection she was shamed to discover she didn’t have the courage to end her life.

So she kept walking, at a steady, careful pace.

They led her into the factory and deposited her in an empty office. After a few minutes a grim-faced doctor appeared. He cut her cooling vest free and gently probed her broken arm. Her breath caught as tendrils of molten pain laced through her arm.

She vomited, all over herself and a little on the doctor.

He didn’t react at all. He merely took firm hold of her arm and jerked.

Suddenly the world flashed nova white followed immediately by absolute darkness.

The first thing Makita noticed when she came to was that her arm had been bandaged and where there was agony before, now there was only a pleasant warmth.

The second thing she noticed was the Lyran officer standing before her, legs splayed, arms clasped behind his back.

He was young, his head completely shaved, and not bad looking. He had a thrown on a Steiner blue uniform shirt, but he still wore MechWarrior shorts. He must’ve just come from the battlefield. A smear of grease marked the line of his jaw and the sour tang of sweat hung heavily in the air.

And something else, something strange.

He wore a sword at his hip, what looked to be a broad, short blade. It was hard to tell for certain because the tip of the sword had been snapped off.

“Konnichiwa,” she said steadily followed by a polite little bow of her head. She would show no fear.

It was the only power she had left.

The young MechWarrior nodded. “I am First Leutnant Danver McEdwards of the 30th Lyran Guards. What is your name Tai-i?”

“Makita. Aiko Makita.”

He nodded. “Very good, then. You should know, my comms team just copied down a message from our force commander. The DCMS ’Mechs are withdrawing to their DropShips.” He paused and a grim smile touched his lips. “And the Vehicles Facility still stands.”

Makita blanched. Withdrawing. Meaning there was no hope for escape or rescue. She imagined the things they would do to her. They would use her.

Break her.

She swallowed in a dry mouth.

“What is to become of me?” she said in a calm voice she hoped did not betray her desperate interest in the subject.

“You murdered fourteen factory workers,” said McEdwards savagely, “and a boy who was trying to surrender.”

Makita remembered the young Sentinel pilot down on his knees, his hands clasped behind his head. She licked dry lips. No doubt the Lyrans were going to make her pay for that.

Then she remembered Smith burning alive.

“That’s no better than what you did to Chu-i Smith,” she said darkly.

McEdwards’s raised his eyebrows. “The Kintaro pilot?”

She jerked her head down in an unsteady nod.

His mouth tightened into a grim line. He favored her with a curt nod.

Makita frowned, unsure of what he meant by the gesture.

A pair of soldiers entered the room, their weapons drawn. Makita suppressed a shudder.

So it was about to begin.

“Get up,” said McEdwards.

Makita tried to rise, but she suddenly felt she couldn’t make her body obey. Her legs and arms were leaden weights, heavy with terror.

McEdwards frowned. “You will be given a clean uniform.” His eyes flickered down to her tee-shirt. It was soaked with sweat, leaving little to the imagination. “The arm will be hard. I’ll send a female medic to help you. And we’ll get you something to eat. After that you and Chu-i Smith will be returned to your unit.”

Makita blinked, unsure she had heard right. “W-what?”

“After you stalked away from the Waste Treatment Plant, we activated the fire suppression system. We recovered Smith from his Kintaro. He is badly hurt, but he is alive.”

Makita shook her head, hearing the words, but not really understanding them.

“You are a prisoner of war,” said McEdwards stiffly. “You shall be treated with every right and privilege accorded to you by your status under the Ares Conventions.”

One of the guards hauled her to her feet.

This had to be a trick, Makita thought. Give the prisoner hope. It would make the torture that much more devastating later on.

The two soldiers led her away. She was quite surprised when they really did give her a clean uniform and something to eat.

First Leutnant Danver McEdwards strolled out of the Vehicles Facility, his hands clasped behind his back. He came upon a field medic wrestling a body into a black nylon bag. He held his hand up and the woman stopped what she was doing.

“I’ve got it,” he said softly.

An uncertain look crossed her face. Then she nodded and stepped away.

He knelt and studied the body.

It was Gavin Hill, the young officer who had piloted his Sentinel, so bravely.

“I am so sorry,” McEdwards whispered, “I thought I was taking the dangerous role.”

Hill’s body was broken and bruised by the Thug’s blow, bones shattered, face swelling into an unrecognizable purple-red mass. Leutnant Gavin Hill would have a closed casket at his funeral, no doubt about it.

It wasn’t too late to make Makita pay for what she’d done to him. McEdwards didn’t have to return her to the 18th Algedi Regulars. She could be made to pay and pay and pay. He let loose a deep sigh, zipped up the body bag, and stood.

A thousand years of civilization traded away for a fleeting advantage in battle. No, he wouldn’t hold her. He’d honor his promise to make her part of the prisoner exchange. He couldn’t stop all the atrocities, but he could run his own little corner of the war with honor and decency.

He pulled the claymore from his hip and held the shattered, blackened blade up to the light. It would never be quite the same again, but maybe, just maybe, he could fashion the blade anew.