TEXT: BattleCorps
  THE DRAGON OF 
  CAPH
  Jason Schmetzer
  
  BattleCorps
  The Dragon of Caph • Page 
  Contamination Zone 
  Caph 
  Word of Blake Protectorate 
  12 October 3068
  The Black Knight stumbled as it crossed the shallow stream, but 
  Adept II Epsilon Marcus Boylar clutched his controls and kept the 
  seventy-five ton BattleMech on its feet. Groaning screams of tor-
  tured metal shrieked from the damaged actuator in the Knight’s 
  left knee. Boylar felt the complex joint seizing; the Knight’s stride 
  was becoming lopsided as the right leg outdistanced the left. He 
  had to turn. He had to face him.
  He had to die.
  He’d never seen a BattleMech like this one before. The computers 
  tagged its mass at seventy tons. It was barrel-chested, predatory. 
  Its long arms—handless—ended in heavy energy weapons that 
  had decimated his Level II. Boylar slowed his Black Knight and 
  maneuvered it around an outcropping. Once he stopped moving, 
  the heavy haze of Caph’s atmosphere filled the space around him, 
  polluted death to anyone foolish enough to walk around without 
  a breather mask.
  He waited. The static on his comm channels was stronger than 
  ever, unfriendly ionizing radiation filling the ground and the air. 
  The Demi-Precentor had sent his unit out to investigate a rumor 
  from the locals. They always had rumors like this one, great aveng-
  ers who would sweep the world clean of the Blessed Blake’s holy 
  servants. Every world that’d joined the Blake Protectorate so far 
  had rumors like this one. They made good training maneuvers for 
  first-year Adepts.
  Except that this one was true.
  The haze across the stream shivered and parted, and there it was. 
  Painted a flat matte black, except for the vertical crimson blaze of a 
  stylized dragon. A Kuritan, Boylar figured, but who could tell these 
  days. Anyone and everyone with an axe to grind held it against the 
  unbreakable strength of Blake’s will. He raised the Black Knight’s 
  right arm and the Hellstar PPC mounted there. He fired.
  He missed.
  The black ’Mech pivoted and took four steps closer to the edge of 
  the water. Both sets of arms came up, as inexorable as the moon-
  
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  rise. Boylar cursed, jerked at his controls. His large lasers flashed 
  red warnings at him instead of firing.
  The black BattleMech fired, a trio of ruby large lasers that seemed 
  to join into one beam to tear through his damaged knee. The Black 
  Knight tipped and fell, smashing Boylar against his restraints and 
  bloodying his lip. He thrust the Knight’s left hand out, trying to 
  find purchase to push himself upright.
  The crackling scythe of a PPC amputated his left hand at the 
  wrist. The Black Knight fell again, crushing the emission bells for 
  his chest-mounted medium lasers. Boylar struggled, thrashing 
  the seventy-five ton BattleMech like a child’s toy, trying to right 
  himself. He felt the ’Mech slide, saw water splash against the sides 
  of his canopy.
  A shadow fell across his cockpit, and he looked up to see the 
  black ’Mech standing over him.
  “Who are you?” he asked over his external speakers. Maybe he 
  could get the other MechWarrior talking and buy himself some 
  time.
  “I am Drago,” the black ’Mech said. It raised its great clawed 
  foot.
  Boylar screamed, one final curse at Blake for betraying him, and 
  then the darkness took him.
  v v v
  Demi-Precentor III Epsilon Alice Haywood watched as the salvage 
  crews worked on the Black Knight. They’d already scraped what 
  they could of Boylar together for shipment back to Terra. Haywood 
  watched the sensors of her Grand Crusader closely, searching for 
  this wraith that had taken half of her command without warning 
  and without provocation.  Two other Word of Blake BattleMechs 
  stood with her, Acolyte Murtaugh’s Jackal and Acolyte Jensen’s 
  Toyama. The rest of the Level II, three squads of Purifier battlesuits, 
  were out scouring the landscape, trying to locate a trail to back-
  track the raider’s course.
  “Someone killed this ’Mech good, Demi-Precentor,” one of the 
  technicians reported. “Two limbs amputated, no head assembly, 
  most of the weapons destroyed. We’ll be a long time putting this 
  one back together.”
  
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  “And killed the pilot,” she murmured. “Varth?”
  The Purifier commander’s reply was immediate. “Tracks to the 
  east, Demi-Precentor. Toward Rehope, perhaps?”
  “That’s two hundred kilometers,” she spat. “Boylar had orders 
  to go barely ten klicks from this spot.” She turned her Grand 
  Crusader and surveyed the trees and the ridges above them. She 
  gestured with one of the large pulse lasers that replaced the 
  ’Mech’s hands.
  “Murtaugh. Get up on that hill and have a better look around.”
  The Jackal dove into the trees and disappeared. Haywood con-
  tinued to scan the area, noting the heavy tracks made by the Black 
  Knight. Scouts had already reported the corpses of the other 
  ’Mechs of Boylar’s command, half a kilometer into the woods. All 
  shattered, all the pilots killed. The same claw-footed tracks they 
  found here at the riverbank.
  And shards of black armor. Samples of it were on the way to the 
  compound for analysis.
  Haywood turned away from the wreck of the Black Knight. She 
  closed her eyes and whispered a prayer, trying to get the sensa-
  tions out of her mind. The officer in her raged at the treatment of 
  her troops, but her soul screamed for the things she’d never be 
  able to feel again. The caress of Boylar’s lips. The feel of his skin 
  against hers, hot, sweat-slicked. The way he laughed when she 
  tickled him. A new warmth spread through her, from her heart 
  outward. She ground her teeth, holding back the scream that filled 
  her mind.
  She would make them pay. By Blake, she would catch whoever 
  did this and make them pay.
  “Demi-Precentor,” Murtaugh said. Haywood looked up and saw 
  his Jackal skylined on the ridgeline, most of a kilometer away. 
  “There’s nothing on the other side of the ridge to indicate a field 
  camp. I can see where the rest of the unit was ambushed, but no 
  sign of their attackers.”
  Varth cut into the conversation. “There are only signs of one 
  ’Mech down here.”
  “One BattleMech against six?” Murtaugh said.
  “I’m only reading the signs,” Varth said.
  
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  “Enough,” Haywood said. “I want answers, not arguments.”
  Jensen moved his Toyama across the stream, following the 
  tracks made by the unknown attacker. “Let’s just follow these,” he 
  said.
  “And get ambushed like Boylar?” Murtaugh said. The Jackal took 
  a few steps back toward the stream, but then stopped. Haywood 
  watched the thirty-ton ’Mech pivot at the waist, its fat PPC barrel 
  tracking something beyond the ridge.
  “I’ve got a signal,” he said.
  “Jensen, move,” she said. “Get up there and support him.” She 
  slammed the throttle against its stops and maneuvered the Grand 
  Crusader past the Black Knight’s hulk. “We’re coming, Murtaugh. 
  Wait for support.”
  “I’m painting something in the trees,” he said. “Just under 750 
  meters away.” He paused. “It’s moving this way, Demi-Precentor. 
  No response on IFF.”
  Haywood shouldered a stand of trees to the ground and shoved 
  head. “Keep an eye on it but do not engage alone.” She glanced at 
  her tactical display. “Varth, keep up as best you can.”
  The Jackal retreated a few steps, putting the ridgeline between 
  the unknown and its thinly-armored legs. Haywood knew from 
  experience that Murtaugh would be sweeping with his PPC, try-
  ing to get a lock at extreme range. This was the kind of sniping the 
  Jackal was built for. She clenched her jaw in frustration, cursing 
  the adepts who’d designed her ’Mech so slow.
  “More information, Murtaugh,” she said.
  “I can’t get a solid MAD reading,” he reported. “Something 
  heavier than sixty tons, but I can’t narrow it down any further.” A 
  burst of static belched across the airwaves as he fired the big PPC 
  mounted on the Jackal’s shoulder.
  “Damn it, Acolyte, I said don’t fire!”
  “Just trying to slow it down,” he said.
  “Follow your orders!”
  Jensen’s Toyama was a hundred meters further ahead of 
  Haywood’s Grand Crusader, a virtue of its greater speed. Varth 
  and his Purifiers bounded along in the Grand Crusader’s wake, 
  
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  The Dragon of Caph • Page 
  taking advantage of the path she was clearing. All of them moved 
  as quickly as possible, trying to get in range.
  They were all too late.
  “He’s painting me!” Murtaugh’s voice was higher but there was 
  no trace of panic. “Seven hundred meters!” 
  Haywood looked up from her path and saw a single ruby laser 
  flash past the Jackal. Murtaugh ducked the ’Mech away, like a 
  man would dodge something that passed too close to him. The 
  thirty-ton machine began to crouch.  She heard Murtaugh engage 
  his comm system, opening a channel and span of dead air. She 
  saw the ruby flash again, saw it flicker through the air but stop 
  against the Jackal’s round chest. She saw the back of the ’Mech 
  explode outward as the large beamers drilled completely through 
  the BattleMech’s armor and structure.
  She heard Murtaugh scream, and then nothing but dead carrier 
  signal.
  “I am Drago,” she heard through haze and static. The persistent 
  crackle of Caph’s background noise cleared. “Remember me.”
  Haywood called the remnants of her Level II back to base.
  v v v
  The frosty mug chilled the tips of her fingers, but Haywood didn’t 
  let go. She wrapped her fingers tighter around the glass, trying to 
  remember each tingle, each stab, as the blood in her fingertips 
  cooled and traveled up the veins of her hand. She squeezed hard-
  er, until her knuckles cramped and she pried the cool claw of her 
  hand from the mug.
  “It’s a new myth,” Adept Pearson said.
  “He’s no myth,” Jensen said. The acolyte sat across from 
  his adept, beside the ROM adept. His own mug of ale was un-
  touched, slowly sweating a ring of condensation around the 
  base of the mug in the napkin. They were in a pub in Dallas, a 
  mining outpost fifty klicks from Aswan. The locals were avoid-
  ing them, which wasn’t surprising. The locals always avoided 
  them.
  “What I’m saying is,” Pearson continued, “no one’s heard of this 
  guy any farther back than a year or so.” He looked at the two epsi-
  
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  lons. “Most of these rumors, they’re decades, even centuries old. 
  This one’s recent. Brand new, in fact.”
  “So you’re saying it’s true, too,” Haywood whispered.
  The last time she’d been in Dallas, it had been with Boylar. They’d 
  come here to be away from the II for a while. Just the two of them. 
  They’d taken rooms in this very pub, she realized. She hadn’t been 
  paying attention before, but Boylar had gone downstairs for a ci-
  gar, afterwards. She smelled the same inky scent now. 
  “We already knew it was true, damn it,” Jensen said. He snatched 
  his ale from the table and downed half of it. Driblets ran down ei-
  ther side of his mouth, and he wiped them away with the sleeves 
  of his robes. “Blake’s Blood, man, you saw what he did to Boylar 
  and Murtaugh.”
  “Actually,” Pearson said, frowning at the dark spot forming on 
  Jensen’s stomach, “I didn’t see.”
  “They’re dead,” Haywood said, before Jensen could speak.
  “Then there really is a Dragon of Caph.”
  Haywood drew her personal communicator from a pocket in the 
  folds of her robe. She laid it on the table and activated the tiny 
  storage cache. Drago’s boast whispered across the booth. Pearson 
  stared at it like a child would stare at a toy.
  “Drago. Dragon. It’s true,” Pearson said. His face lit up. “You re-
  alize, Demi-Precentor, that you’ve just disproved a myth!” He laid 
  his hands flat on the table and laughed across them. “This is ex-
  actly why we’re creating our Protectorate, don’t you see? To bring 
  enlightenment to the people!” Jensen stared at him. “What?”
  Before he could reply the door to the pub opened and one of 
  Haywood’s infantry acolytes entered. The gray-clad trooper 
  paused only long enough to locate his commander before he 
  walked up and presented her with a noteputer.
  “Adept Varth’s compliments, Demi-Precentor,” he said, and 
  walked away.
  Haywood slid the noteputer around and activated the screen. 
  She recognized the alphanumeric codes as being from Murtaugh’s 
  battle ROMs. She pressed a key and played a pre-recorded section 
  until it froze. An angular, black-painted BattleMech was centered 
  on the screen, glimpsed between two stands of scrubby trees. The 
  
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  image jittered with the ungainly seediness of high magnification, 
  but it was enough for Haywood to see the ’Mech clearly.
  “A Nova Cat,” she murmured.
  “A Clanner?” Jensen asked. “Here?”
  “At least his OmniMech,” she said. Pearson leaned over the table, 
  trying to see the image.
  “How interesting!” he said. “We’ve long postulated the Clans 
  would cause their own myths in the coming years. Tides of change, 
  and all that. Maybe this will be the first proof that this theory is 
  correct.”
  Haywood looked up slowly. She blinked, long enough to erase 
  the image of Boylar’s killer from her eyes, and opened them to 
  see the young, animated face of Adept Pearson. She blanked the 
  noteputer screen and cleared her throat.
  “What branch are you in?” she asked when the ROM agent looked 
  up.
  “Mu branch,” he said.
  “What division?”
  Pearson 
  glanced 
  from 
  Haywood 
  to 
  Jensen 
  and 
  back. 
  “Anthropological Extrapolations,” he said. “Adept Gerard’s division.”
  Jensen chuckled under his breath. He shouldered Pearson out of 
  the way and stood. Pearson slid back into the booth, but Haywood 
  stood as well. He looked up at her.
  “What are you going to do?” he asked.
  Haywood clutched the noteputer to her chest. “Blake’s will,” she 
  said. “This Clanner has killed His servants. We will find him, and 
  deliver Blake’s true justice.”
  “You’ll what?”
  Jensen slapped the slender ROM agent on the back of the head. 
  “We’re going to kill the bastard,” he said. He turned and started for 
  the door without looking to see if Haywood would follow or stay.
  “You were right, Adept,” she said, staring at nothing. “We’re go-
  ing to disprove a myth.” She dropped a C-bill on the table to cover 
  the tab. “We’re going to slay the Dragon.”
  
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  The Dragon of Caph • Page 
  v v v
  Haywood marched her Grand Crusader to the exact place where 
  Murtaugh had died and stopped. If she looked down, she could 
  see her BattleMechs’ wide feet covering the scorch marks where 
  the technicians had cut up the Jackal for scrap. The wiry grass, 
  somehow immune to the filth corrupting the ecosystem here, was 
  singed but still springy. She brought her comm system online and 
  set it to broadcast in the clear.
  “I seek the Nova Cat,” she said. She raised the Grand Crusader’s 
  arm and fired a burst from the left-mounted large pulse laser. The 
  green bolts, scintillatingly bright even in the daytime sky, flashed 
  across the treetops for kilometers. “Is he too cowardly to face 
  me?” She fired the right laser, and repeated herself.
  And did it all again.
  And again.
  The sun was sinking in the sky when a reply crackled across the 
  tortured airwaves. “I am Drago,” he announced.
  Haywood watched her display, waiting for her powerful com-
  munications array to pinpoint the bandit’s position. A Clan-made 
  OmniMech should stand out even on Caph, she knew. But there 
  was nothing.
  “Face me,” she said. She lowered the Grand Crusader’s arms, 
  letting the lasers cool.
  “I am facing you,” Drago said. His signal was weak, distorted by 
  the constant background interference. “And your other BattleMech. 
  And your infantry.”
  She looked at the cluster of blue icons on her display, all behind 
  and below her, halfway down the ridge.  “You have killed many 
  more than we,” she said. “Surely you don’t fear the few of us.”
  “We’re moving up,” Jensen said. His signal was distorted, as if he 
  were far away, instead of barely two hundred meters. She turned 
  the Grand Crusader, to watch the rest of her forces move up. A 
  flicker of motion on her tactical display caught her attention.
  “Blake’s Blood,” she whispered.
  A black-painted Nova Cat clambered from a hidden passageway 
  in the ridge wall barely a hundred meters from Jensen’s position. 
  
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  The Omni shook its bulbous shoulders free of clinging vines and 
  scabrous dust and twisted at the waist. The heavy barrels of its 
  PPCs came up.
  “Jensen!” she screamed, too late.
  “’Mech!” an infantryman shouted.
  Drago fired.
  Twin Clan-made PPCs spewed high-energy lightning into the side 
  of Jensen’s Toyama. In the six hundred years since BattleMechs 
  were invented Mankind had created few weapons more dead-
  ly than the Clan PPC, and the destruction they wrought on the 
  Toyama was proof of this yet again. Both ravening streams seem-
  ingly ate into the armor over the seventy-five-ton ’Mech’s chest, 
  spreading traceries of static across its entire torso, before diving 
  into the rents and touching off the ammunition for the big missile 
  rack embedded there. The entire upper half of the ’Mech disap-
  peared in an explosion.
  Haywood, still screaming, fired. Her lasers took the Nova Cat 
  in the belly, melting and fusing armor. Black paint blistered and 
  peeled back, exposing primer-gray metal and then scorch marks. 
  Her missiles exploded across the Omni’s shoulders, tearing at 
  yet more armor. Her scanners, close enough to punch through 
  the interference, painted a multicolored picture of the spectral 
  OmniMech.
  The Nova Cat was stripped, still battered from its fight with the 
  rest of the unit.
  “Varth!” she called. “Charge it. It’s damaged! We can take it!”
  “But Jensen—” Varth said.
  “Damn you, get your men moving!”
  The Nova Cat staggered out of the cloud of debris kicked up 
  by the missile barrage and charged down the hill, away from 
  Haywood and the Purifiers. She started the Grand Crusader down 
  the treacherous slope, letting the ’Mech’s wide feet and eighty 
  tons of mass create a path for her. Her cockpit shivered as the mis-
  siles recycled. A ping announced the lasers’ readiness.
  She made it four steps before the missiles finished loading. 
  Haywood dragged her reticle over the Nova Cat’s back and 
  pulled her triggers, loosing forty more missiles after the Omni. 
  
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  One flight missed wide, obliterating a stand of scrubby, gangre-
  nous trees. 
  The other scattered explosions across Drago’s back, wrecking 
  the nearly-pristine paint there and shoving it several steps for-
  ward.  The Nova Cat slowed, turned, and twisted around to face 
  her. The three-barrel arm came up and red light flashed.
  All three of the powerful beams slashed at her torso armor, one 
  on her left side and the other two dead center. She had a moment’s 
  worry for the delicate extra-light engine beneath the tough armor, 
  but it held up well enough. She raised the Grand Crusader’s arms, 
  but the Nova Cat moved out of her lasers’ effective range.
  “Varth!” she shouted.
  “He’s faster than we are,” the infantry Adept said. “We’re trying 
  to close.”
  “Faster than me, too,” she murmured. Without Jensen, Drago 
  was faster than all of the remaining Blakist forces. She had to find 
  a way to turn him around. She had to slow him down, keep him in 
  range. She had to make him angry.
  “Run, dezgra,” she called, taking a chance. “Run back to your 
  mother.”
  The Nova Cat stopped.
  “Get ready,” she told Varth.
  The missile launchers pinged their readiness, but Haywood wait-
  ed, watching the Nova Cat. If he turned, she wanted a clear shot 
  at the savaged armor on its front side. If he continued to run, she 
  wanted to move to the small landing below her for a better firing 
  position. Her fingers twitched on the triggers, but she held back.
  “In range,” Varth said.
  The Nova Cat turned just as a cluster of slender ruby lasers 
  erupted out of the woods. The Purifiers, secure in their mimet-
  ic camouflage, fired and fired again, sweeping in to strike at the 
  Nova Cat’s weakened armor. Each of their lasers carried only a 
  fraction of the power of the ’Mech-mounted versions, but there 
  were many of them.
  The Nova Cat charged forward, lasers flashing. The squads of 
  Purifiers scattered, but at that short range the Nova Cat’s scan-
  ners must have picked them out of the background. The laser 
  
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  flashed again and again, until finally she heard Varth calling for 
  anyone to respond over the open channel. She fired her missiles, 
  watched them scatter harmlessly behind the OmniMech. The la-
  sers flashed again, all three beams, and Varth’s screams were cut 
  off in a wash of static. 
  Haywood charged forward, pushing her ungainly BattleMech as 
  fast as it would go. She watched the range drop: three hundred 
  meters, two hundred. Her lasers tore at the armor over the Nova 
  Cat’s arm and chest. She watched green coolant from shattered 
  heat sinks spill out onto the tortured landscape. Her eyes widened. 
  She flicked her HUD to infrared.
  The Nova Cat glowed with unholy light.
  Haywood loosed another barrage of missiles and watched them 
  spiral in, exploding and tearing at the weakened protection over the 
  Nova Cat’s heart. A diamond-bright spear appeared on the infrared 
  display—she’d nicked the fusion engine’s shielding.  She grinned, 
  squeezed the triggers, sending another wave of green laser light into 
  the wounded ’Mech. Another splash of coolant littered the ground, 
  wilting the springy grass as it fell. Heat rose in waves from the bat-
  tered machine, but it advanced. The two big barrels of the PPCs rose. 
  They aligned themselves with Haywood’s cockpit. Sparks danced 
  among the overheated capacitors. Haywood saw them surge.
  The Grand Crusader fell.
  Haywood’s head slammed against the console, her neurohel-
  met slipping loose. She hung from her restraints, watching the 
  one broken buckle that had let her head loose swinging below 
  her. Slowly she reached out and manhandled the Grand Crusader 
  onto its back. The neurohelmet fell back against its frame and she 
  tightened the straps. She had to get up. 
  It took her two tries, but she staggered the eighty-ton ’Mech 
  to its feet. The Nova Cat hadn’t moved, hadn’t even lowered its 
  weapons. Haywood frowned, squinted, tried to focus. The HUD 
  had slipped back to vislight. She toggled for infrared. The Nova 
  Cat was an inferno.
  It had shut down.
  A shout of triumph echoed in her cockpit. She raised the Grand 
  Crusader’s left arm and triggered the large pulse laser there. 
  Nothing happened. She squeezed the trigger again, her eyes 
  searching her console. Still nothing. 
  
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  A red wireframe schematic blinked at her. The laser had been 
  damaged when she rolled the big ’Mech over. She snarled a curse 
  and started the Grand Crusader moving. The right arm weapons 
  she held in reserve. 
  “Silly child,” she broadcast. “Even first-years know to watch their 
  heat curve.”
  There was no response.
  “I don’t know what you’re doing here. I don’t know how you got 
  here.” She stopped the assault ’Mech, barely three meters away 
  from the frozen Nova Cat. “I don’t care.” She raised the Grand 
  Crusader’s useless left arm and pushed the Nova Cat down. The 
  powerful PPC-arm snapped off as the seventy-ton OmniMech col-
  lapsed. Haywood guided the Grand Crusader forward, putting 
  the ’Mechs large right foot on the Nova Cat’s angular chest, and 
  leaned forward.
  “Blake knows you can fight,” she said. “Maybe where you come 
  from that’s all you need.” She ground the Grand Crusader’s heel 
  down, shattering armor and driving the armored heel into the mas-
  sive gyro. It exploded, shooting shards across the small clearing.
  “On Caph,” she said, switching to her external speakers, “you 
  need something more. Here, and in the rest of the Protectorate, 
  you need a will.” She pushed down again, shattering the supports 
  for the Nova Cat’s compact fusion engine. It collapsed, automati-
  cally damping itself. The ’Mech was dead. She raised the Grand 
  Crusader’s right arm, aimed carefully. She wondered if this was 
  how Boylar must have looked, just before Drago killed him at the 
  stream. Had he looked at the barrel of a weapon, as Drago did?
  “Blake’s will be done,” she said, and fired.
  
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