MoMech
By Sideman

“Twycross? You remember that friggin sewer?” Tink’s voice crackled across the closenet tactical channel that linked the four ‘mechs. “You see this stuff on the holovid when you’re a kid, and you think it’s all exotic worlds, new cultures, see the galaxy…look at this friggin desert…this is a part of the Galaxy I’d just as soon have never gotten to see.” His voice was full of static. Denis checked her scope, saw the blue arrowhead that was Tink’s Raven blinking in and out at the extreme limit of her sensor range, almost three kilometers away. She peered ahead through the shadows of Meridian Canyon, but his Raven was invisible among the rocks and rubble that littered the canyon floor.

“Hang back, Tink,” she told him, for what seemed the hundredth time. “You meet our friends that far out, you’ll be chunks by the time we reach you. In this canyon, you can only run one direction if the shit hits the fan.”

“Roger that, Denny…I’m going up east out of the canyon, get some elevation and see if I can see anything.” Her contact stopped flickering, grew steady as he slowed down and allowed the rest of Ruger Recon Lance to catch up. He resumed his rant. “Anyhow, it all seems so exotic till you find yourself on some rock, no air, guarding an aluminum mine, bored to tears. Then you realize that most of the fighting going on isn’t about ideals, or cultures, it’s about stuff, it’s about who has what somebody else wants. There’s no ideals, no crusade. We smoked the Jaguars, and now even the Clanners are just another competing interest in the big game of money and stuff.”

Tink had been preaching for most of the three days they’d been on patrol. Denis let him rail. It kept them all awake, and she’d discovered early on that Tink was a bitcher at heart, and nothing would ever change him. He was tough in a scrap, and loyal as a bulldog to those he counted friends, but he could always find a way to complain. She’d tried to shut him up on their first patrol a week ago, and he’d turned sulky all day, only to start in on a brand new tirade the next morning. His bitching and moaning had become as comforting and familiar as the jostling tread of her ShadowCat as it ate up the rocky desert between Checkpoint Delta and Meridian City.

“So anyhow,” he continued, “I signed up fifteen years ago, and where did they send me? You guessed it, the Periphery, guarding ore shipments from pirates in a Trebuchet that belonged in a museum, I was…hang on, Ruger Lead.” She noticed how easily he switched from her first name to her call sign. “I have a possible contact, bearing zero-five-zero, on a direct intercept with your position, designating contact Romeo One.”

She checked her sensors, came up with nothing. “Ruger Two, I am neg on contact, repeat negative on contact. Get me a visual, go to passive and get in close.” She toggled her sensors over to passive only, limiting her range of detection but also making herself much harder to spot by an enemy. “Ruger Three, Ruger Four, passive sensors and find cover. If Romeo One is a valid target, I want to give him a nice surprise.” She checked her scopes, saw the icon for Mikie’s Bushwacker go from a solid green wedge to a green dashed circle, a circle that steadily grew as her targeting computer became less and less certain of his exact location. Within a second, the green wedge for Li’s Bushwacker did the same. “Ruger Two, let me know what you find.” She moved her ShadowCat into the shelter of a rock overhang that jutted out from the canyon wall and expertly brought the forty-five ton machine into an easy crouch. From where she sat, she could cover every possible entrance to the ravine. Hidden in the rocks, they would be invisible unless Romeo One literally stumbled over them.

“Ruger Lead, Ruger Two.” Tinker sounded annoyed, and disappointed. ‘I have visual, it looks like vehicles, repeat civilian off-road vehicles. I count six of them. I can’t get a lot of detail at this range, request active burst.” A half-second illumination with the Raven’s powerful Beagle and active sensor package would tell him enough to decide if the trucks needed to be stopped and inspected, or allowed to pass.

“Ruger Two, light them up.” She checked her scope, saw the blue wedge that was Tinker’s Raven light up as he lashed the six trucks with every wavelength in the book. Six yellow diamonds popped up representing the trucks, their positions relayed to her ShadowCat by the Raven’s powerful tracking system. “I have position on the trucks, Ruger Two.”

“Roger, Ruger Lead…can I get some back up here? I think we’re gonna need to board and search these guys, I’m picking up a lot of high frequency signals, well above civilian frequencies. Sounds like our boys are smuggling some pretty decent communications and targeting gear in their ugly little trucks.”

“On our way.” Denis looked down at her scope, punched up for an overlay of the latest satellite-imaged topographical map, trying to find the easiest way through the canyon to where the six yellow diamonds sat in a perfect double column. She could really get used to having Tink’s Raven in the Lance. He could target and transmit targeting data, all at the same time, giving her ShadowCat and the two Bushwackers a neat little map of the battlefield. It was almost too easy.

Target and transmit…too easy.

She pushed the throttle full open, making the ShadowCat leap ahead as if it were on springs. She frantically toggled to active sensors, looking for incoming, at the same time calling for Tinker.

“Tink, get the hell out of there! You’ve been painted, pull back to our position and let’s get the hell out of this canyon! They put a Beagle probe on the back of a flatbed, and God knows what’s headed our way right now!”

She heard the sound of Tinker’s medium lasers over the commlink. “They can’t target me if they’re dead, Denis.” She heard an explosion over the commlink, closely followed by the actual sound.

“Shoot while you’re running Tink, we’re coming up on your six, just get clear of this canyon!”

Her sensor scope told the story. She saw Tink’s blue wedge, the five (suddenly four) yellow diamonds of the trucks circling and evading, and moving in from the east at Mach two, more incoming than her sensors could track. The computer gave up and designated them as a single target.

“Tink, I show incoming, LRMs, get clear!”

“Neg, Denis, you get yourselves clear. There’s no way I can kill these four little bastards in time to get out of here before they hit and if I don’t kill them all, you can bet one of them…” She heard the whoosh of SRM’s. “…will stay on my ass long enough to keep me targeted. But you can bet your ass I’m gonna kill these four little bastards.”

Denis checked her display, saw only a single out jutting stand of rock stood between her and Tink’s position. All four of us can take out the trucks with plenty of time to get clear before the LRMs hit…if we can only get there in time. She hit the twin pedals that activated her jumpjets and felt herself jammed against the command couch as her ShadowCat rocketed up on twin lances of superheated plasma. She cleared the rocks, landing hard, and saw Tink’s Raven, the remaining trucks circling and weaving around it. He was trying to track all four, but they were too small and too fast. “Li, Mikie, get your asses here.” She let the crosshairs of her targeting display glide over one of the fast-moving trucks. They flashed gold, and she triggered the paired long-range lasers mounted on the Shadowcat’s right arm. The truck caught fire, but continued to circle Tinker’s Raven.

She heard a high whistling sound just as she saw Li and Mikie come around the corner. “Too late, get clear!!” she yelled, but it was too late. The canyon erupted around them, Tink’s Raven silhouetted for a split-second before it was consumed in the firestorm. Denis hit the jump pedals, trying to get clear, but the shockwave sent the ShadowCat spinning through the air. She caught a glimpse of Li’s Bushie exploding below her, and nearby, Mikie’s Bushwacker toppled over, it’s cockpit blown away. Did he manage to eject, or was that a direct LRM hit? Then her questions stopped as the ShadowCat was slammed against the rock wall of the canyon and the magnetic containment of her fusion reactor collapsed. In a nanosecond, a billowing storm of plasma and superheated gases joined the fireball of the LRM strike, collapsing the canyon walls and burying everything beneath a million tons of rock.

Colonel Chris Hart stared at the screen, watching as Meridian Canyon collapsed in upon itself yet again. She backed up the recording to the point where Sgt. Germaine’s ShadowCat came barreling over the rocks, trying to take out the trucks before the missiles arrived. She saw Denis’ lasers torch one of the trucks, then toggled for the slow-motion advance. Millisecond by millisecond, she watched the LRMs hit, counting each impact. Within half a second, she’d counted two-hundred separate detonations. That’s where she lost track, the battleROM from Lance Corporal Sandoval’s Bushwacker rocking and cutting out as his entire cockpit rocketed skyward. The playback rocked nauseatingly until Sandoval’s chute deployed and the rockets dropped free. By the time the view steadied enough to see anything, there was nothing left to see. Nothing but the mound of smoking rubble that choked a three-hundred meter stretch of Meridian Canyon, a huge burial mound for three of her Mechwarriors.

Her Mechwarriors. And her friends.

She started the battleROM through the sequence again, setting the playback for loop, trying to find some way to explain how three of her best Mechwarriors had been incinerated and a fourth critically injured by a force of locals, farmers and yokels.