TEXT: BATTLECORPS
  A Race to the End
  by Loren L. Coleman
  
  BATTLECORPS
  A Race to the End • Page 2
  Gan Singh, Chaos March 
  12 October 3057
  It might be the last DropShip on Gan Singh.
  Their final chance.
  Wrenching at the controls of her JagerMech, Leftenant Kelly Van 
  Lou struggled forward against the tangled jungle that covered 
  most of the continent of Pandora. Shrill alarms wailed in her ears. 
  Broken fronds streaked her ferroglass shield with green smears as 
  sporadic laserfire burned through the leafy canopy around her. 
  Ruby-bright energy splashed armor from her BattleMech’s 
  shoulders, its arms, its chest. 
  She tasted the warm, dank air, poorly filtered by her cockpit’s 
  life support system.  
  Missiles corkscrewed in from her right, slamming into a palisade 
  of majestic cypress and thick-boled banyon strung with creeping 
  vines. A few warheads dropped low against her legs, shredding 
  the angular guards that protected her knee joints and lower actua-
  tors.
  Her stride hitched, stumbled, and then caught up as she shoul-
  dered her way into a marshy glade. Planting her spade-shaped 
  feet into the loamy, black soil, Kelly checked her HUD and found 
  Hauptmann Roland Mills—her company commander in the Third 
  Donegal Guards, and her friend—still limping along half a klick 
  behind. Well out of danger. Tightening up on her triggers, she 
  snapped up both long-barreled arms and went looking for trou-
  ble.
  Long licks of bright yellow-flame flashed out of her Jag’s au-
  tocannon as she spent hundreds of rounds into the greenery, 
  implementing her own plan of deforestation. Twenty-mills rid-
  ing over powerful, ultra-class Nova fifties, the hot metal chewed 
  through thick vines, splintered tree branches into kindling, and 
  rained pieces of shredded fronds over the ground. The powerful, 
  cutting streams walked destructive lines in a narrow arc, reaching 
  out, searching for either of the two ’Mechs in between her and the 
  DropShip. 
  She found the missile-casting Dervish when a leafy screen of 
  branches exploded under her devastating assault. Autocannon 
  slugs hammered in against its chest, as if drawn by the gauntlet 
  
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  and sword set over a Davion 
  sunburst. The insignia was 
  one Kelly knew well—had 
  called an ally only a few 
  days before, but none of that 
  mattered now. In scant sec-
  onds the proud crest of the 
  FedCom Corps had been 
  chiseled away to a battered 
  ghost of its former glory. 
  Too late to stop. 
  The Dervish’s chest caved 
  inward over the fusion reac-
  tor. Golden fire blossomed 
  inside the mangled cavity. It 
  spread quickly. The ’Mech’s 
  head split open as the war-
  rior ejected, rocketing up 
  and away from the dying machine.
  It was the last thing Kelly saw before the fusion-bright flare con-
  sumed the BattleMech. The force of the explosion blasted apart 
  trees and scorched a great deal of underbrush to instant cinders. 
  It rocked her JagerMech back on its heels as the ground trembled 
  violently.
  “Kelly!” Roland’s voice crackled to life over her comms system. 
  “Flash and smoke near your position. Can you see it?”
  “Not anymore,” she said, voice-activated mic picking up her reply. 
  Spots swam before her eyes, and she blinked away the afteref-
  fects of the glare. A few curly strands of her platinum-blond hair 
  tickled along the side of her face. No reaching them through the 
  heavy neurohelmet she wore, but a practiced head shake matted 
  them against the sheen of sweat on her forehead. 
  Whatever had been sniping at her with lasers had taken off. The 
  Dervish was also gone except for pieces and parts scattered around 
  a smoking crater. A leg, severed mid-femur, leaned up against a 
  bamboo thicket. There was a titanium strut impaled through a 
  nearby banyon. A few determined licks of flame crawled along 
  the scorched trunks of some ironwood, but she doubted it would 
  go much farther. The jungle was far too wet from the recent days  
  of rain.
  
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  Kelly throttled forward, cautiously. Suddenly, new warnings 
  screamed for attention as a rust-painted Vindicator shoved its 
  way through the bamboo, stepping out into the hole in the jungle 
  cleared by the explosion. She brought up her autocannon, but the 
  wailing cut off as the other ’Mech dropped its targeting lock and 
  paused, ready but waiting. An orange and black tiger striping cov-
  ered half of the BattleMech’s chest, like a pelt draped over one 
  shoulder, but no insignia that she could see. 
  Kelly paused, fingers caressing her triggers. The Vindicator took 
  advantage of her hesitation and dove back into the jungle thicket. 
  Northeast. Toward the DropShip.
  The last one.
  Roland had given her a moment to collect herself. “One of ours, 
  or one of theirs?” he asked now.
  “Ran across one of both,” she said. Then sighed. “It was a 
  Guardian,” she admitted, swallowing against a sour taste. “First 
  FedCom.”
  “Damn it, K.” He didn’t sound mad at her, but at the Fates in gen-
  eral. They had tried so hard not to engage the Guardians. “Well, 
  that tears it.”
  It was Roland’s one fault, Kelly thought. Holding onto an idea 
  of “us” versus “them,” or Federated Commonwealth versus the 
  Marik-Liao alliance. That might have been true six months ago, or 
  even six weeks, when the alliance offensive was chewing through 
  the Sarna March. But Katrina-verdammt-Steiner tanked that idea 
  when she called home all Lyran commands and the local defensive 
  network fell completely apart. So bad, in fact, that a few stragglers 
  got left behind in the confusion, including seventh company of the 
  Third Donegal Guards. 
  Roland’s company had been deployed to Gan Singh, to try 
  and coordinate with the First FedCom RCT. Only the Guardians 
  were already gone. All they found were a few forgotten war-
  riors—cast-offs or AWOL, didn’t matter—butting heads with local 
  militia-turned-mercenary. 
  The Donegal Guards company either missed the recall order, or 
  it had never been sent once General Hammerskjold decided to cut 
  his losses and return to Lyran space.
  Kelly could only wish him a prime location in the deepest circle 
  of hell.
  
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  A new silhouette flashed across her tactical screen as Roland 
  limped his Penetrator up from behind. It looked quite a mess with 
  its right leg fused into an awkward steel crutch and several lengths 
  of mossy vines draped over its ruined arms. 
  “What are we waiting for?” he asked. “Let’s go, K.”
  She very nearly smiled at his forced esprit de corps. But six 
  dead friends and four MIA in the last five days was enough to sour 
  anyone’s mood. From city to spaceport to remote landing zone, 
  Seventh Company had tried to make rendezvous with any number 
  of outbound DropShips. Always too late. Always forced back by 
  Capellan or mercenary outfits with greater firepower or a larger 
  expense account. 
  But not this time, she promised herself. Please.
  Throttling forward into an easy walk, she took the lead against 
  his best speed of thirty kilometers per hour. They struck along the 
  trail blazed by the fleeing Vindicator, and crossed their fingers.
  For the next ten minutes their luck held. No weapons sniped 
  at them from the dense jungle. Roland pushed his Penetrator up 
  toward forty kph as the trail made for easier travel. Kelly began to 
  hope.
  “Think we can afford passage?” she asked. Neither of them 
  speculated the DropShip captain might call allegiance to any one 
  faction of Gan Singh’s three-sided battle. These days it seemed 
  “every man for himself” was a predictable situation. 
  “We can barter against any ransom paid by the Third Donegal. 
  We can deal away what’s left of the Penetrator.”
  He’d never once threatened to put a debt against her JagerMech. 
  The Penetrator was a newer and much more valuable machine, 
  but hers had been in the Van Lou family for three generations. 
  Leased into Lyran service, but still hers. Roland would rather give 
  up a piece of Lyran state property, and suffer the reprisals, than 
  divorce her from a piece of family heritage.
  It was the kind of thing he did without thinking, and for that if 
  nothing else Kelly would stick by her hauptmann’s side no matter 
  what.
  That’s what kept her anchored at his side when the sky fell in on 
  them a moment later.
  
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  There was very little warning. A glimpse of smoke through the 
  tree canopy from one of the Pandora jungle’s many logging slash 
  burns. A tremble in the ground that might have been artillery fire, 
  might have been the first powerful flare of a DropShip’s fusion 
  drives lighting off. A screen of ironwood bounced back their active 
  sensors until the last moment. Then they pushed through, and 
  into the chaos of battle.
  The DropShip was there all right, ninety meters high, its drive 
  flare washing its underside in white-hot fire. It squatted on the 
  blackened fields of a deforested plateau. Seeker-class, and paint-
  ed a familiar blue-gray. Kelly Van Lou needed only the briefest 
  glance to recognize the shamrock crest of the Donegal Guards and 
  the scales of justice that were the personal insignia of Third regi-
  ment. 
  A good thing, because a brief glance was all she got before a 
  crossfire of lasers and autocannon converged on her location. 
  The lasers scorched the soil at her feet while hard-hitting slugs 
  beat a damaging tattoo across her Jag’s lower waist. The fire had 
  come from two machines painted the blue and gold of Federated 
  Commonwealth RCTs. A Behemoth assault tank and an Enforcer. 
  Their second salvoes went after a Panther painted dark, cerulean 
  blue. Nothing she recognized. Another mercenary, or a wayward 
  Capellan perhaps. 
  All told there seemed to be about a dozen ’Mechs and half that 
  number in vehicles jousting over the black-scorched ground. The 
  DropShip laid out suppression fire from its upper weapons bays. 
  PPCs stabbed down at the non-allied BattleMechs. They left the 
  FedCom warriors alone. Wave after wave of long range missiles 
  pounded machines into scrap and battered the ground into ruin. 
  More than a few, Kelly felt certain, would spread Thunder muni-
  tions out into an ad hoc minefield.
  Kelly stepped in front of Roland’s Penetrator, protecting it while 
  holding her fire. FedCom RCT forces had the advantage on the 
  field. And so long as a mercenary did not target her, she would not 
  target them. Dialing over to the protected frequencies of the Third 
  Donegal, she waited to see what sense her captain could make of 
  the situation, listening in as he identified himself.
  “Captain Mills?” The reply washed out in static as the lightning 
  blasts of several PPCs ionized the local atmosphere, one from a 
  nearby Caesar. It made communications difficult. “We…no Mills 
  listed…deployed to Gan Singh.”
  
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  Deployed or not, Roland’s name should be on the Guards TO&E. 
  And Kelly recognized the voice, even through the communications 
  haze. “Jollena?” First mate Jollena Marksower, from the Lamprey. 
  “Jolly, it’s K. Kelly! And Roland. You have two tired Guardsmen 
  here looking for evac.”
  Only one of the Lamprey’s ramps was still down. Secondary bay. 
  Big enough to hold a couple of BattleMechs, if they could get them 
  aboard.
  “K?” There was a pause. The nearby Caesar turned its weapons 
  toward the Guardsmen, and Kelly drilled out return fire with her 
  autocannon as a way to shove it back.  “Kelly Van Lou, what in the 
  Archon’s name are you doing out here?”
  “Taking a sightseeing tour! What the hell does it look like?” Kelly 
  had heard the shock in the veteran spacer’s voice. How badly had 
  wires been crossed if their own DropShip crew did not know what 
  forces were on planet? And where was the captain? “We need a 
  safe route to board, and good covering fire.”
  The same Vindicator from earlier dodged out of a tight situation 
  and ran back toward Kelly’s position. It hesitated as she drew her 
  crosshairs over it, lighting it up, then deliberately turned its back 
  on her to challenge a pursuing Jenner. Over an open channel, an 
  accented voice let them know “If you want a piece of the DropShip, 
  form up southwest and get ready to cover our drive.”
  “We’re getting more than a piece of it,” Roland said coldly. “Stay 
  out of our way and we may find room for you.” 
  It wasn’t exactly their call to make, of course, but Kelly approved. 
  A tentative agreement was better than nothing. The DropShip crew 
  had already made some kind of pact with the FedCom, after all.
  “Suit yourself, then.” It sounded more like a threat than an allowance. 
  Then again, a hot battlefield was not the best place to make new 
  friends.
  “K,” Jollena finally returned, “pull up northwest and come straight 
  in at the ramp. We’re out of here in five, so move it now.” 
  “Straight at the ramp?” she double-checked.
  “Move it!”
  
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  The Caesar and a blue-and-gold painted Rommel also shifted 
  in that direction, but not so close to prevent the Guardsmen from 
  moving. Roland led. Kelly stalked at his side, uneasy. 
  “It would be a lot easier if you brokered a truce between the 
  FedComs and the mercs,” she said over an unsecured channel. 
  She warned off a too-close Panther with a quick stream of light 
  autocannon fire digging in at its feet. “Make a second trip. Offer to 
  send back a larger DropShip.”
  “Not happening, Kelly. Way too much bad blood now.”
  Kelly nodded. “Captain feel the same way?” she asked. 
  “Just get up here,” Jollena ordered. “We’ll deal with the mercs next.”
  It all hung on one word. Next. Not later or eventually. Also with 
  the obvious cease-fire arranged between the Lamprey and the 
  Guardians, and the way in which the mercs had tried to warn them. 
  It all added up. 
  After a week of non-stop fighting and several days of only being 
  able to trust the men and women at her side, Kelly’s paranoia had 
  grown acute. Sharp enough to recognize the trap being laid out for 
  them as they moved into range of the DropShip’s weapons. The 
  last DropShip on Gan Singh.
  Every man for himself.
  “Roland. Roland, fall back now!” The dry, metallic taste of fear 
  crept into her mouth. Slamming her throttles against their reverse 
  stops, she backpedaled the JagerMech. 
  Almost too late. The DropShip’s weapons hammered down 
  around their position as the Caesar and its support tank pushed 
  forward. A pair of PPCs slashed at the legs of Kelly’s ’Mech. Aligned 
  crystal steel melted and splattered over the already-scorched 
  earth of Gan Singh. 
  Missiles hammered around the Penetrator, but not so bad as the 
  Thunder-deployed minefield would have been had they walked 
  into the Lamprey’s waiting embrace.
  “Kelly?” Roland staggered back, getting out from under the 
  DropShip’s weapons. “What?”
  “Cast-offs. AWOL.” No difference now. “They’ve quit the Donegal 
  Guards and they’re not going to want us telling tales about them. 
  Treeline, now!”
  
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  Her commanding officer was not one to bandy about with the 
  order of rank when good advice was being given. Kelly let him slip 
  behind her, and used her autocannon to push back at the charging 
  Caesar, buying them seconds only. 
  With more BattleMechs sliding up in their direction, the two 
  Guardsmen might have made a bad end of it if not for the mer-
  cenaries. The Vindicator and a Blackjack also painted with the 
  Bengal pelt suddenly turned in their direction and sprinted inside 
  the Caesar’s line of retreat. They savaged the Rommel, blasting 
  one set of armored treads clean off and freezing the turret inside 
  a ruined track. Then they turned up from the Lamprey, and came 
  at the Caesar from behind while Kelly pushed forward to catch the 
  RCT machine in a pincer.
  The seventy-ton machine held on for a few long heartbeats, then 
  broke for the DropShip in a circuitous path that avoided the scat-
  tered Thunders and left the slower mercenaries behind. All of the 
  RCT machines fell back, heading for the final ramp. 
  The scattered mercenaries, with two of their small number out 
  of position now, let them go. Within moments the DropShip had 
  buttoned up and was blasting itself clear of Gan Singh. 
  Kelly Van Lou watched it rise into the air, soon losing itself be-
  hind a white tuft of clouds. Her breath came short and sharp, 
  and had nothing to do with the hot, humid air in her cockpit. It 
  had everything to do with the hollow pit deep in her gut. If the 
  Donegal Guards could turn on each other, she wondered, what 
  was left for the now-estranged Lyran Alliance and Federated 
  Commonwealth?
  As if in answer to her silent question, her communications board 
  lit up on an unsecured channel. “We picked up some garbled 
  transmissions.” The accented voice from before. The Vindicator’s 
  MechWarrior. With a moment to weigh it, he sounded Slavic. 
  Maybe a native of Gan Singh. Maybe not. 
  “There may be a DropShip set down on the northern coast of 
  Pandora. Near the city of Myros. The last DropShip on Gan Singh,” 
  he said tiredly as the remnant mercenaries gathered near their 
  position.
  Of course it was. That was the nature of battle and politics, after 
  all. Always one more chance. If you were smart or lucky, or both 
  at the same time. “Working together for this one might be in our 
  common good,” Kelly said, then waited for Roland to make the 
  final call.
  
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  “It’s a ten hour push,” he said slowly. “We can do it without sleep 
  if you can.”
  “Sounds like a plan.” The Vindicator turned away to the north-
  west, and struck out with a determined stride. 
  Roland switched over to a secure frequency. One reserved for 
  Third Donegal Guards, Seventh Company. Maybe the last time 
  they’d use it. “Did they just become one of ours?” he asked. “Or 
  did we become one of theirs?”
  “Right now,” Kelley answered, “I think we all belong to Pandora. 
  And Gan Singh.” She pushed into an easy walk, keeping pace 
  with the limping Penetrator as she switched back to a common 
  frequency. “Maybe it’s time to see what’s left on this world,” she 
  said.
  “What we have to work with.”
  
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