Yeah, yeah, I’ve read all the relevant psychological journals(Harold Wolff et al) which stated categorically that brainwashing was impossible from the perspective of completely reordering a person’s fundamental beliefs. Problem was, those studies were still based on 20^th to 25^th century technology, and in many cases used case studies with techniques that stretched back to the Spanish Inquisition and even to the Roman Age.

Even today, behavioural scientists are adamant that brainwashing is impossible, even with advances in bio-electrics, radio stimulation of the brain, electronic destruction of memory, stereotaxic surgery, psychosurgery, hypnotism, parapsychology, radiation, microwaves, and ultrasonics.

I wish I could stick them inside a cell on Terra and let the Wobblies reprogram them from stuck up ivory tower types into religious fanatics. Alien technology, the horrors we had inadvertently unleashed from Einstein, was about to change everything.

-The Word of Blake Contagion, Frank Meronac

 

Terra

Chaos March

Time, Date Unknown

“Is he ready?”

“No, not yet.”

“But he is here, correct?”

“Aye, he is. In the hands of the Word of Blake.”

“But they do not know what they have caught. It is still possible to retrieve him.”

“Good. Do we have any agents involved?”

“Only one. He has already implemented a slight modification to their initial plans.”

“And any more changes might tip off the Blakists.”

“But we have other means, don’t we?”

“The Resistance.”

“Use them.”

 

The recordings just did not stop. No matter that he had tried to cup his shaking hands over his ears, plus using bits of food as makeshift earplugs. The messages went into his brain again and again, and even though he recognised the technique for what it was, it did not reduce its potency any.

He felt as if he was going mad.

“Blake shall redeem humanity.”

“The salvation of the Inner Sphere lies in the holy writ of Blake.”

“Technology is sacred.”

“Submit to our benevolent rule.”

Benevolent indeed! Frank Meronac wanted to laugh at that last recording being blared into his cold dark cell, but his stomach hurt too much from the severe beating of the night before. It was so bad that he couldn’t even swallow more than a few mouthfuls of his single meal for the day before he vomited the food back up. Well, at least he was used to beatings, instead of in the first few days, when he had literally had stuff poked up his ass.

Frank shivered at the memory of the electric prod. Unlike most people, it wasn’t the humiliation, but rather the pain which was more unbearable. But as Clarice often complained about him, he never had much pride at all. It was the same reason why he had meekly accepted beating after beating in the past.

The thought of Clarice focused him slightly. Frank wanted to give Victor Steiner-Davion a good kick in the head for sending him on this fool’s errand in the first place. So what about the reward if he was just going to get killed on Terra?

The moment he had arrived in system, white clad Blakists had seized him and all his belongings, which thankfully did not contain anything that would have given him away. There had been no warning, no way to escape. They had given him some form of injection, and the next thing he knew was the cell and the prison in complete darkness, along with what seemed to be a very thin pair of shorts and a shirt that definitely did not keep him warm. Obviously, somebody had tipped them off.

One thing he didn’t quite get was why they continued to refer to him as William Horry. So maybe the Wobblies didn’t know who he exactly was, but it was still pretty bad. Frank suspected that if they knew who he really was, it could have been a great deal worse than electric prods up the ass, as evident from the even louder screams of agony from the other cells.

Well, at least they did seem to be screaming louder than he was.

Frank had no wish to endure what those other suckers were going through, but he was beginning to suspect they would give him that sort of treatment if he continued to resist. He was going to confess that, yes, he was a religious subversive from the Unfinished Book movement, he was dreadfully sorry for stepping on Blakist territory, and… would they please accept him into their movement of toaster worshipping?

Laughing at his own private joke would have given him away, and Frank was sure they had infrared cameras in the pitch dark cell watching his every move. He wasn’t sure how they would do it, but he had gathered from sessions with his interrogator that they were watching him. All the time.

He had tried feeling around the cell before, but that had only brought him another severe beating when some goons had just rushed in and bashed him silly. He didn’t attempt that again, after he had been beaten so bad he had tasted blood in his mouth.

The floor of the cell was wet after it had been flooded to wash away his vomit and uneaten food. Frank was quite sure he didn’t stink, but the cold water was numbing his senses. He could barely feel his own hands and feet.

At this point in time, Frank just wanted the entire ordeal to stop. By Blake, he couldn’t even tell what day it was. What a minute, “By Blake”? The brainwashing is getting to me, Frank concluded miserably. He realised he hadn’t seen anything for a long, long time. Not even a tiny beam of light.

If he guessed right, there should be another interrogation and brainwash session soon., since he could barely remember the previous one. He would give up, swear allegiance to the Word of Blake, and hopefully get himself into a better position to escape. But there were also doubts about this course of action. Frank was sure he wasn’t the first one to think of this, and who knew what else the Wobblies have in store?

Then there was the sudden sound of the cell door being slammed opened, and the shuffling of feet. Frank felt hands close around his arms, and he could not fight his way free however much he struggled. One of his handlers clouted him across the face several times, and Frank felt blood running from his nose, as well as an intense pain all over his face. He ceased his struggling.

They dragged him out of his cell.

 

ROM Adept Marcus Chua was waiting for their latest guinea pig in one of the many rooms in Alcatraz, otherwise known as the Rock. Inside the room was a chair. Facing the chair was a holocube, and above the chair were several devices, all pointed towards the general area of the head of a person sitting in the chair. Highly advanced behavioural modifying technology, the Rewrite project had been started more than ten years ago, almost immediately after the Word of Blake captured Terra.

More equipment were strewn around the room, along with dozens of flashing lights that reminded Marcus of the heretical festival called Christmas. Several white robed scientists worked on the equipment, constantly fine-tuning this or that little gadget. There would be little room for error. Subjects for these experiments were not exactly easy to come by.

Tests had at first been carried out on members of the order itself, mostly True Believers who switched to the Toyama sect after going through the procedure, thus proving its success. Then work had begun on neutrals captured from all over the Inner Sphere.

Step by step, they had improved on the technology, but the final few steps, of turning people with only the slightest sympathy, or even hatred, for the Word of Blake into its most fanatical adherents had only sped up recently when one of their agents had returned from the recent Periphery expedition, kicked out by the mercenary soldiers after they had identified him as a secret agent. But he had managed to uncover enough information.

The agent’s eidetic memory with details of alien knowledge of nervous programming and technology had been of supreme use in speeding up the research and development process. That had been the first leg in their final sprint.

Breakthroughs in deciphering the secrets of the human brain and its exact functions, achieved by the judicious use of Terra’s 6 billion population, as well as almost complete understanding of the reactions and actions of people under certain conditions, provided the other leg.

And now, they were at what Precentor Cunningham described as Stage One, where the subject would be moderately hostile, and Stage Zero would be the ability to turn complete and bitter enemies like a clan warrior, or even the hated Focht, into a Blakist fanatic.

Marcus couldn’t wait for it to be completed. There were other benefits to the technology, of course, like neural programming to reduce training time, when they could just implant skills, memories, and even behavioural patterns into recruits, turning them into real soldiers in mere instants. Using it to pull information and data out of enemies without resorting to narco-interrogation that could have fried a valuable warrior. There were even experiments centred on increasing the brain capacity in use, thus heightening intelligence and creativity.

The possibilities were endless. The future of humanity would be assured when they succeeded.

The door to the lab opened, and William Horry, an Unfinished Book subversive, was pulled in by several guards from the pitch black corridor. The prisoner screamed in agony as a guard snapped a torchlight directly into his eyes, which had not seen any light at all for the past three weeks. It removed any resistance the man had left.

The guards took off their night vision goggles, and then strapped the subject into the chair. They secured his wrists with steel bindings, ensuring that he could not escape. From the look of the prisoner, he did not seem as though he could get away from the chair even if he was not tied down. Blood ran down his face, and he was badly bruised all over. He wasn’t unconscious, but close to it. More electrodes were attached to his face and body.

Precentor Cunningham, the head scientist of the project, looked over Horry once with a critical eye, then nodded to an acolyte. A slight humming sound indicated the activation of the Rewrite machinery, and then the procedure started with beams playing on and around Horry’s head, while wild images flashed across the holocube. Horry began twitching, and his mouth snapped open. His eyes became blank, and the veins on his arms showed the tension in his entire body. They could see that he was trying to close his eyes, but the electrical signals being slammed into his body through the electrodes were preventing him from doing so.

Cunningham prepared to leave the room, “Well now, there’s nothing left to do but wait. It’ll take about twelve hours, so why don’t we just take a break? The subject is securely tied in, and I don’t foresee any problems. We can always use another terminal to modify the program if needed.”

“Lead the way then, Precentor.” Chua said as he followed the rest out, locking the door behind them securely. The security cameras in the room would monitor the progress of the brainwashing, and ensure that nothing unexpected happened. The current status of the experiment would be sent to another lab elsewhere on the continent as backup. Nothing should go wrong.

 

Deep within the electronic bowels of the Alcatraz prison, there was an intruder. The uninvited trespasser swam amongst the data currents, picking out as many interesting data bits as possible.

“Hurry up with it, Rodriguez,” said a man from their small van parked on a deserted street in San Francisco. “Don’t tip off the Wobblies that we’re into their systems. Replacing the remote jack module would be… difficult.”

Hierro ‘Rod’ Rodriguez grunted as he stared at the screen while hammering rapidly away at his keyboard. He knew damn well what he was doing. They had only managed to get into the Wobblie planetary datanet by inserting a remote module into one of the many underground data cables that connected installations with each other. There were periodic checks on those data cables to ensure that there was no tampering, of course, but they had just managed to get the module in, allowing him access to the Wobblie systems. The module would have to be removed before the next check in a week’s time, but for the moment they should be safe enough.

Rod himself was one of the most proficient hackers in the Resistance, and he prided himself on his abilities, highly sought after by almost every other group opposed to the Wobblies. He had been a computer undergraduate who had descended into the shadows after he had uncovered evidence of the Blakist’s misdeeds, and they had tried to silence him.

Comstar Precentor James Taffel had saved his life, and Rod had stayed with the Comstar warrior’s group ever since. This particular mission was one of utmost importance, and could be a real shot in the arm in obtaining data that could hopefully be taken off-world as impetus for Comstar to finally do something about the growing threat of the Toyamas.

As an added bonus, they had received a tip off that some captured Comstar personnel were also being held in Alcatraz, and Taffel had made their rescue an immediate priority for their action cell.

Rod was in the system to find out more, and perhaps modify the internal orders if possible. He easily found the data he needed, and started copying as many files as he could, while engaging several other search programs to seek out items of interest.

Ahah! There was a routine prisoner transfer to be carried out the very next day. Rod quickly seized all the names of the Comstar personnel held in the Rock and swapped them into the transfer list. It was the only way, because the Rock was impregnable.

“Got them, sir!” Rod reported. “Tomorrow, transfer convoy from Alcatraz to Phoenix at 1100 hrs. I’ve got their manifest list, the vehicles and escorts involved, and the route. This gives us a real chance at intercepting the convoy and getting the people out. But this also means we won’t be able to get the remote module out in time.”

“Never mind about that. Anything else?” said Taffel, looking over Rod’s shoulder, his face lit by the light from the screen. “Don’t stay in too long. Getting caught now would wreck everything.”

“No worries, sir,” replied Rod smugly, “I’ve burrowed so deeply into their security systems that they think my programs are one of them. Wait, there’s something related to the Rewrite project!”

“Take a look at it.” Taffel instructed.

Across the screen flashed several interesting bits of data.

“They’re reprogramming somebody right now, with about an elapsed hour and eleven more to go,” Rod typed in several commands, “Want me to throw in a monkey wrench? They left a global access passage for others to modify and monitor the process off location. I can get in there.”

“Be my guest,” Taffel nodded, then said after a moment, “In fact, use the skills modules we lifted from the MIT labs, all of them.”

Rod answered with a snort of pure disgust. They had seen from their stolen information what the Rewrite program was about, with initial tests turning relatively sane Blakists into cold blooded killers. The first, final, and only criteria of success for the program was for the subject to kill another human being,  preferably somebody the subject knew, without hesitation. Even the slightest moment of doubt would have meant that the programming to remove all morality from the subject had failed, and the subject would be terminated.

Then they had found out about the other applications of the technology after a raid on MIT and Taffel had been adamant that they uncover as much of the data available. Rod rather thought Taffel’s willingness to hijack the current brainwashing procedure of this William Horry for the skills implantation program was a cruel decision.

The skills implantation set Taffel had ordered was a veritable super soldier program. The Blakists had divided the skills implanted into various skills associated with different roles, like mech combat, aerospace fighting, battle armour operation, vehicle operation, infantry combat, reconnaissance, black ops etc, because it had been found that implanting too many skills at once often caused burnout, resulting in a brain-dead test subject.

But that was exactly what Taffel was doing. He had ordered Rod to throw in everything, and Rod could understand that because there was still another 11 plus hours to go, and if there was nothing to replace the original Rewrite program, the lack of stimuli would be too suspicious.

But Rod felt obliged to mention it. “Boss, that much will kill the guy. Or be fried at the least.”

Taffel was grim as he replied, “He’ll be dead anyway if he gets turned. I’d think he’ll thank us if he does flatline. I know this is pretty bad, but if this fails, we’ll have messed up one of the Wobblies’ projects, and if it succeeds, we might just have gotten some useful data on the skills implantation procedure. And maybe, just maybe, we might even get a useful agent out of this.”

Rod tore his eyes away from the screen, “Say what?”

“Put him into the list of people in the convoy, and list him as being sent to somewhere else for additional testing. I got a hunch. It’s not logical, I know, but there’s this gut feeling I’m getting, and I’ve learnt not to ignore my gut.”

Rod refrained from making a snide comment about Taffel’s gut and his love of food as he carried out his orders. He also refrained from commenting on his commander’s cold blooded decision to condemn this innocent man to a fate that was perhaps worse than death.

 

Frank gritted his teeth and tried to move his head, but the only motion possible to him was to tilt his head backwards, forwards, and from side to side. He slammed his head back against the headrest of the chair several times, but it hardly made a dent in the agony in his head.

He vaguely remembered nearly being fried somewhere in the past when something in his mech had blown up, but he could barely put a thought together with all the stabbing knives eagerly poking holes in his head. They carved long, torturous paths through his nervous tissue, picking at his memory and his very soul.

Life is cheap.

He tried to ignore the words, but they just kept drilling into his mind. It was an eternity of sharp, piercing pain.

Life is cheap.

“Arggghhh…” He groaned.

Kill. Kill. Kill them all. Kill in the name of Blake.

Frank tried to hold onto his own thoughts, his own sense of self, but it was slipping away…

Slipping away…

Then everything changed. One moment there was the excruciating pain of the knives perforating him, the next his skull was a overstressed dam trying to hold back a torrent of mind numbing images. Frank started screaming from the intense pressure building up in his head.

His screams did not stop for many hours.

 

“What is the prognosis?” Marcus Chua stared at the wide eyed, catatonic Horry who sat slumped over in his bonds. A line of drool trailed down to the floor from his open mouth.

“Minimal higher level brain activity. Looks like this one’s a wash.” Cunningham sighed heavily as he checked his monitors. “And I had such expectations…”

“Don’t worry. We have a few more candidates in line. This is just a temporary setback.”

Horry was released from his bonds, and the man just keeled over and fell heavily onto the floor in a heap. A small pool of saliva formed under his mouth, while his eyes continued staring at nothing in particular.

“Do we sedate him?” An assistant asked.

Marcus looked at Horry. “Don’t bother. Throw him into his cell. Let him rot.”

 

The next day, the prison staff were plucking prisoners out of their cells and prepping them for transfer. The Comstar personnel were all sedated to prevent problems. Nobody asked why the transfer orders had changed from when they last saw it. It wasn’t safe policy with ROM agents at every command level ready to pounce on the slightest bit of doubt.

Included in the transfer was one William Horry, who was not sedated due to his status as a neutral, but tied down securely anyway. The prisoners were strapped into their chairs, unable to move even if they wanted to.

The transfer included 20 Comstar acolytes and adepts, 15 ‘neutrals’, and 5 real criminals. They would be sent to Phoenix.

The convoy set off on time at 1100 hrs, two wheeled trucks holding the prisoners and two Chevalier tanks as escorts. They were soon joined by a group of mechs from the nearby city of San Francisco, a Level II of Blakist mechs from the city garrison which would escort them all the way to Phoenix. They proceeded on a new highway built by the Word of Blake, Interstate 4RF, an almost flat and straight route to Phoenix.

The convoy stopped for lunch at their designated stop point at 1330 hrs after travelling a total of 150 kilometers. Half the mech pilots left their cockpits for chow supplied by the prison trucks, while the other half stayed on watch. They were in a sparsely wooded area, the trees obscuring much of their sight.

Then the rebels attacked from their hidden positions.

 

Precentor James Taffel, who was supposed to have retired from active duty in the Com Guards after the Battle of Tukayyid, struck first, his Marauder-5S firing its ER PPCs and gauss rifle into a Toyama. The shots all carved into the Toyama’s left torso, which promptly crumpled under the hideous firepower. The Toyama crashed to the ground in a shower of sparks.

Meanwhile, his fellow resistance fighters were taking full advantage of their current position, targeting the active Blakist mechs and vehicles. A Lightray was vaporised when hit by a salvo of 40 SRMs from a modified SRM carrier, while a Wyvern was turned into a raging fireball when its ammunition stores were ignited by a Wolverine.

The Word of Blake personnel, especially the mechwarriors, were gunned down by his infantry, while the two Chevaliers were quickly turned into bonfires when some troopers fired inferno SRMs into them.

“Go, go, go!” James ordered into his neurohelmet’s communications microphone. “Secure the trucks, then get those prisoners out! And somebody get those empty mechs!” He had only a platoon of leg infantry and some specialised personnel, and getting out the Comstar folks and the neutrals would be difficult with such short manpower. He was using techs to man the captured mechs, since fully qualified mechwarriors were extremely rare in the resistance groups.

His lance of mechs and another two combat vehicles gathered round the perimeter of the site nervously as the infantry soldiers stormed the trucks and inspected the Blakists. Those still alive were given medical attention to ensure that they would live until help arrived, while the dead were quickly laid out carefully in neat rows. Taffel might be a guerrilla fighter, but he was sure going to be a conscientious one. Another truck meant to hold the rescued prisoners drove up one side of the road.

Come on, hurry up, he urged his men silently. 150 kilometres away from San Francisco meant that VTOLs or aerospace elements could be upon them pretty soon, in as little as five minutes. He wanted them to get away as soon as possible.

 

He opened one eye, then the other, even as he wriggled the fingers and toes on his limbs to check that he was still intact. His throat felt extremely dry and hoarse, and he struggled to eject some saliva from his glands to water his parched throat. He felt exhausted and weak.

There were several booming sounds that indicated explosions, and the vaguely familiar vibrations he could feel through the chair he was in told him that mechs were on the march nearby. He didn’t know where he was, or what he was. For the life of him, he could not even remember his own name at the moment.

There was a blindfold over his eyes, and there were straps tying him down into his seat. He could barely move his body, and he hurt like hell. The ringing headache didn’t help either.

Suddenly, there was a sound of a metal door being slammed open, and he heard the crunching of boots with dirt under the soles upon the metallic floor of… wherever he was.

The newcomers made little sound, save for their slow breaths and the slight rustling of weapons straps against their clothes. One walked near him, and suddenly his blindfold was torn off.

The man winced at the light permeating his eyes, forcing himself to adjust and investigate his rescuers, if that was who they were. They wore green combat uniforms, and their faces were painted in typical forest camo patterns. They wielded an assortment of weapons, some of which were cautiously pointed his way.

“Wh…” His voice cracked, and the man tried again after working up some more saliva, “Who are you?”

There was no reply, but they did release him from his straps. The man was lifted out of his chair. He noticed the same thing happening to several other people.

The soldiers took him out of the room he was in, and the man realized that it had been a truck. He coughed a bit from the smoke outside, coming from several burning heaps that he identified as mechs and vehicles roasted by inferno rounds.

A hulking Marauder stood nearby, its bulbous weapons pods aimed towards the sky, as if watching for some attacker from the clouds. The man had realised that even though he could not remember who he was, he was able to recognize machines and tools. Hell, he could even tell the model makes of the small arms most of the soldiers were handling.

And somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he could pilot a mech.

A thunderous roar drowned everything else out, a rising fireball only a hundred meters away, followed by several more explosions out of nowhere. Somebody screamed, “Incoming!”

The man dove to the ground, as did everybody else, but that did not stop an Arrow IV missile from hitting the truck he was in. Shrapnel punched through a soldier beside him, and the man swallowed dryly in fear as he was splattered with blood.

More missiles were falling on the area, and the calm of the gathered soldiers had dissolved in the chaos of the unexpected attack. They ran about haphazardly, trying to seek any semblance of cover, which was impossible in the face of such powerful artillery missiles.

Prisoners were being pulled along hastily by the surviving soldiers into another small truck. “Enemy mechs on the way!” A soldier with a commset announced fearfully. The mechs immediately started moving towards the direction of the missiles. “We have to go, now!”

The man looked around desperately. Then his eyes set upon an idling Hussar battlemech, with a technician, from the looks of it, in the cockpit. He surmised that the man was overriding the mech’s security systems. It was obvious that the mech did not initially belong to the people who had gotten him out. The colour schemes did not match. The Hussar was painted in white and blue, but the other mechs were painted in standard green camo.

The man also knew instinctively that these people were on his side, though he had no idea what side it was exactly. All he knew was that he should help them.

He started limping as fast as he could for the Hussar, ignoring the cramps and aches in his muscles. He clambered up the cockpit access ladder, and came face to face with the tech. “Is the mech ready?”

The tech stared at him in shock, though the man knew he must look a sight. “Who the hell are you?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

The tech detached a radio from a hip pocket, “Talk to the commander.” The man grabbed the radio, even as another missile fell not more than 80 meters away.

“Who’s this?” The gruff words were followed by a grunt, and the tell tale whine of a PPC discharge.

“I don’t know, but I think I can pilot a mech.”

“Sorry, but no. We can’t trust you…”

“Yes, you can, dammit!” The man roared, anger flooding his words. “This is personal. The Blakists beat me up, tortured me for days. I assure you I hate them as much as you do.” Memories were finally coming back to him, and the man was livid with barely suppressed anger at his treatment at the hands of the Wobblies. He glared at the tech. “I’m gonna make them pay.” He clenched his fists, and resisted the urge to shake them at the tech.

There was only the sound of weapons fire on the other side of the radio for several moments, before the commander replied, “Anderson, is the Hussar ready?”

The tech blinked in surprise. “Yes sir, it’s ready. But sir, we still don’t know who this guy is…”

“We’re fucked either way. Let him have the mech.”

The tech took a second to look at the man, before reaching down into the cockpit for a cooling vest and a neurohelmet, which he tossed at the man. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” The tech slid over behind the mechwarrior couch, allowing the man to sit into the couch.

“I hope so myself,” the man murmured as he shrugged on the cooling vest, then placed the neurohelmet over his head. “You tuned this already?”

“Not yet. Hold on.”

There was a wave of vertigo before the man felt the nauseous sensation subside into a dull, throbbing beat at the base of his skull.

“Okay. I just calibrated the neural patterns to your brainwaves, and I’m switching the mech off from standby. I know it still feels like shit, but it’ll take a while for the auto diagnostic I’ve installed to enhance the link.” Anderson slapped the top of the man’s neurohelmet once, “For luck, buddy. Good luck, and good hunting.” The tech jumped off the ladder, pressing a button as he did so, retracting the ladder back under the cockpit.

The slap on his head seemed to knock another memory loose, and Frank Meronac remembered his own name now, along with additional twinges of pain. Yeah, wish me good luck. I guess I’ll need every bit of it. He still felt like shit and he was thirsty and hungry as hell, but somehow being in a mech, striking back at the Wobblies, made him feel better.

From his scattered memory, Frank recalled that the Hussar was a 30 ton light mech, top speed about 150 kph, designed for skirmishing and deep penetration strikes. Because of its speed, Frank was strongly reminded of the Dart he had used back on Salem, but there were some crucial differences between this Hussar and its previous incarnations.

This version of the Hussar packed an extended range particle cannon instead of a single large laser. The PPC was assisted by a nifty targeting computer system that could further improve the PPC’s accuracy with another C3i spotter. Frank was bewildered for the slightest of moments by the sheer sophistication of the Hussar, with all its high tech bells and whistles.

But more than that, Frank was disturbed that he had seemed to know almost exactly which piece of equipment, which toggle and switch on the console, was about. The specifications of the original Hussar had popped into his mind even though he had never ever seen a Hussar before in his whole life, nor spent time reading up on every mech in existence like most other mechwarriors.

What the hell happened to me? thought Frank as he started the Hussar up at a brisk walk towards the radar spots indicating the positions of the friendly mechs. I’m remembering stuff I shouldn’t have!

“Hussar pilot, you there?” The commander suddenly asked. Frank was so surprised he nearly lost control of the Hussar. “The line’s encrypted, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, I’m here. Advancing towards your position right now.”

“So you are indeed a mechwarrior? Remember your name now?”

Frank wanted to answer back with his real name, but something told him that he should give another. The name William Horry appeared, “I’m William Horry.”

Frank could swear the commander nearly choked on his answer, before the other man replied, “Uh, good, Mister Horry. Well, here’s the situation. The Wobblies have set us up well and proper this time. They seemed to know that we would be intercepting the convoy at this exact spot, and have set up some artillery units northwest to pound us into shit once we made our move. They also got a Level II as a screen pinning us down right now, and we’re falling back steadily.”

“I want you to use that Hussar on a long flanking move. Get the attention of those arty units. Destroy them if you can. Chaparrals or Padillas shouldn’t be much of a problem. Then bug out once I give the signal. We can’t run with our backs turned if that means an Arrow IV missile into our asses.”

The situation seemed awfully familiar, and Frank was tempted to refuse. But like everything else that had happened to him, he had no choice. Nope, none at all. And the cold anger of his incarceration still burned in him.

“On it,” Frank said simply as he kicked the Hussar up to top speed. “Consider those Wobblies dead.”

 

Adept Ganisto growled as he struggled to keep his Initiate upright from the sheer force of the Marauder’s hard hitting attack, shaving away almost all the protection from the mech’s arms. There was no doubt in his mind that the mechwarrior in that rebel machine was an ace, the movements of his mech fluid and deadly as he picked Ganisto’s unit apart.

His Initiate was falling into pieces, and so was the plan. It had called for his troops to be merely the force to pin the enemy force in place while their supporting artillery units provided the main hammer thrust with their big Arrow IV rockets guided in by TAG. But the big rockets were hitting nowhere because his VTOL spotters were shot down before they could lock on the enemy mechs. There were four reserve Red Shifts rapidly moving up from the backfield, but even then it would take time.

The suppression fire the rebels were throwing out was shocking considering their size, but Ganisto knew a lot of that was due to their gunnery skill. His warriors were being forced from stepping out from cover to take clear shots at the rebels, but the rebels could not disengage either because they knew that he still had a Raven just waiting to designate an unwary target with the Target Acquisition Gear, which would most certainly spell the end of the mech with multiple Arrow IV homing missile impacts.

It was basically a stalemate, with the arty units using up their saturation rounds in a vain attempt to score a lucky hit. But the stalled battle took a sudden turn for the worse when his sensors screamed of a fast moving mech skirting round the battlefield towards the artillery units.

Then the Marauder charged, and that was when Ganisto realized he had a real problem.

 

Chaparrals my ass! Frank wanted to complain when he finally saw the hulking metallic beasts that were the originators of the Arrow IV missiles. They weren’t the low slung vehicles from the Star League era that his messed up mind had managed to dredge up when the commander, whoever he was, had mentioned Chaparrals, but instead were massive assault mechs that belched missile after missile at their far off targets.

The light forests had given way to a series of rolling hills and undulating plains, which gave him a pretty clear view of the new mechs. Unfortunately, that meant they could see him too. The enemy arty mechs were arrayed in a long line, spaced out in 300 meter intervals. There were six of them.

Frank fired off a particle burst at one of those mechs, which hit a torso without any noticeable effect. His brain began to unconsciously catalogue the new design’s likely armour tonnage, weapons loadout, speed and other various aspects of a new design that he was dead certain he should not be able to do before.

Assault mech. 100 tons. Armour estimated at near max, top speed 50 kph. Twin missile tubes in each torso indicates dual Arrow IV launchers. Recessed weapons ports in torso and head are probably machine guns or small to medium lasers. Jump jets likely from exhaust vents on rear of mech.

Frank entered the information into his Warbook program as soon as he could from the unfamiliar thoughts running through his mind, all the while trying to draw a bead on the enemy mechs.

He fired another particle beam at the same mech he had struck before, but the shot missed this time. The huge mechs were not even bothered by his Hussar, but continued flinging Arrow IV missiles into the sky. Unlike the Chaparrals which could be killed with just three well placed PPC shots, Frank suspected that it would probably take forever for him to kill one of those beasts.

I have to catch their attention… He noticed something on the far side of the line. What’s that? Frank punched up his magnification, and saw about 4 trucks next to one of the big mechs. The trucks had a cargo hoist on a turret, and were loading something into the mechs’ cavernous torsos. Those looked like crates, but there was a strange series of large levers on them as well.

The extra knowledge he had somehow come into possession of was as handy as ever. Arrow IV ammunition canister. Featured on O-Bakemono class arty mechs. Empty canisters are ejected via a dump mechanism, and fresh ammunition canisters, weighing a ton each, are loaded in. Entire process takes 5 minutes to complete.

Frank didn’t even want to think about how he knew all that crap. He did not have the time for that, and the battle was just heating up. The glimmers of a plan concerning the cargo carriers began to coalesce in his mind, but as he moved around the line, several red blips appeared on his radar. And they were moving very fast. They’d be onto me in less than a minute.

The Hussar sent dirt up into the air behind it as Frank sprinted it on a parallel course to the new arrivals. Probably Mercury, Mongoose, or Red Shift designs, he thought. Frank wanted to hit his own head. What the hell was a Red Shift?

That’s a Red Shift, the new part of his mind answered back moments later as two spindly light mechs appeared from behind a hill, headed straight towards him. It even supplied the relevant information before the Warbook could do so. Scout/electronic spotter design. 20 tons. Two extended range medium lasers, TAG, and either an ECM or Active Probe module. Top speed, 151 kph.

That’s the same as the Hussar, Frank realized. This is gonna be tricky.

One Red Shift fired, a laser bolt slamming into the side of the Hussar’s cockpit, blinding Frank for an instant, but causing no damage due to the extreme range of the shot. The other laser bolt whipped into the ground. At this sort of range, the laser beams combined could not even heat up a cup of coffee.

Frank kept his mech away from the Red Shifts, which were sprinting at him at top speed. The same Red Shift which had fired at him once before fired again, missing its shots. Frank also noticed something.

Laser takes about 9 seconds to recharge. That mech fires only when it steps forward on the right foot. And how the heck did I spot this pattern anyway? Frank was getting convinced he was going insane. He fired off a PPC burst at one of the other Red Shifts, the lightning bolt hitting the mech right in its breadbasket. It staggered from the hit but kept on coming.

Despite his best efforts, the stubborn Red Shift managed to cut the distance to less than 200 meters. Frank watched the mech carefully, counting down silently in his head as the Red Shift aimed its lasers at him.

Three, two, one, left foot, right foot, duck!

He jerked the Hussar around as the Red Shift stepped on its right foot, turning almost a full hundred eighty degrees in a tight arc that made him face the enemy mechs squarely. As expected, the scarlet laser beams cut across the space he would have occupied if he had continued on his course.

Frank fired back with his particle cannon, and its effects were far more apparent. It neatly severed the Red Shift’s legs. The mech literally flew across the air as it lost its balance, spinning across the ground in an uncontrolled cartwheel from the loss of so much structure while travelling at high speed. It spun to a stop, a shattered wreck of a mech. One down.

The other Red Shifts came upon him, and Frank whipped his mech away from them. He tried to extend the distance, but they were canny enough to keep up. But he did not need to take out every one of them. He only needed to shake them long enough to destroy the cargo trucks.

Frank adjusted his course several times, until he was finally headed towards the cargo trucks with the Red Shifts behind him. The unknown arty mechs must also have tacked onto his plan, because two of them broke off from the line and placed themselves squarely in his path. Damn… Looks like the hard way then.

The arty mechs fired, and suddenly Frank realized they were not aiming for him but rather the place he was going to be. The area effect of the high explosive saturation rounds would do the rest. He leaned back into his command couch as the Hussar was buffeted by tremendous explosions.

The wire outline of the mech turned from green to yellow almost immediately. Frank gritted his teeth. No, that wasn’t going to stop him. Not nearly enough. He caressed the trigger on his targeting stick, and the blue tinged particle bolt arced towards a canister being lifted by a cargo truck. The shot slammed into the canister.

The particles easily set off the Arrow IV missile explosives contained in the missiles, and the hot flaming shrapnel from that one canister flew out to hit the other canisters in the cargo truck and even the loaded canisters in the mech. The mech was thrown to the ground like a rag doll while the ground trembled with the force of the explosion.

The other arty mechs were barely fazed, and stabbed at him with their lasers. Frank twisted the Hussar in its path in ways he never knew he was capable of, evading their shots, sometimes by mere inches. One mech fired at him in an almost unavoidable pattern, and Frank simply stomped on his foot pedals while punching in several commands on his console, while concentrating on his balance through the neurohelmet.

The Hussar stepped on its left foot, then hopped forwards once with the same foot, before resuming its normal movement. The laser beams flashed around the Hussar, and one would have hit the mech if it had used the usual left-right movement. Frank still didn’t know why he had been able to pull off that move, but he didn’t worry any more about it.

Another PPC blast killed a second cargo truck, which had managed to stop its own loading process and thus failed to catch any of the arty mechs in the resulting explosion. Another two more of those trucks, and I could probably disengage. There’s no way I can kill the rest of these bozos in a Hussar!

But the Red Shifts had caught up while he had been evading the arty mechs, and their own laser blasts were pouring all around him. His engine status light blinked to red, indicating the loss of shielding. Fuck. At least they didn’t get my Targeting Computer. Yet.

Another few moments of desperate weaving amongst the arty mechs and the Red Shifts got him a shot at a third cargo truck. Frank did not miss this time either, sending another truck up in flames.

The occupants of the fourth truck seemed to know the score, and abandoned their vehicle. Frank ran his mech forward, pursued hotly by the Red Shifts and with the arty mechs dumping Arrow IV missiles all around him, and managed to give the truck a swift outstep kick with the Hussar, assisted by the heated myomers of the Hussar’s TSM system.

One moment the Hussar was running past the cargo truck, the next it was flying through the air, flung by the force of the explosion in such close proximity. The mech crashed head first into the ground after a few moments of flight, gouging a long burrow in the ground before it came to a stop. As it landed, Frank’s head slammed into the console with tremendous force despite the straps holding him in his command couch. The straps broke with the sheer force of the impact.

Frank groaned, not quite unconscious, but not able to get his trembling hands around the mech’s controls either. Blood flowed into his eyes from a wound on his forehead, cut by something on the inside of the neurohelmet. He tried to shake his head to rid himself of the pounding pain, but his muscles refused to obey his mental commands.

The sound of stomping mech feet made him look up as much as he could. One of those hulking mechs towered over him, and Frank could see the laser weapons ports glowing. He fought the urge to close his eyes. I’ll die with my eyes open.

Then the mech was suddenly rocked by a series of missile impacts. And Frank allowed himself to fall into unconsciousness.

 

“Get those bastards!” Taffel charged his battered Marauder forward, blowing apart a Red Shift with his PPCs while his units hit the artillery line with whatever they had left, which was still quite considerable.

The Blakist Level II that had placed as a screening force would have been a fearsome obstacle when backed up by the Arrow IV units, but without the threat of the Arrow IV missiles, his force had swept over them in mere minutes. He had then led his force forward to finish the job, only to be surprised by the nature of the artillery units, massive armoured mechs that reminded him of the Clan Naga and the Kuritan O-Bakemono designs.

But because of the tonnage needed for the bulky Arrow IV systems, Taffel had been confident they would not be a threat in a mech to mech fight, and he was completely right. Armed only with medium lasers as their secondary weapons, the arty mechs were being taken apart piece by piece by his units’ longer ranged weapons. Adept Janey’s Wolverine seemed to take perverse delight in savaging one of those mechs as she cut away bits and pieces of its armour in two minutes of combat.

The arty mechs had clearly run out of missiles, and had withdrawn from the field, leaving three of their brethren behind, while the Red Shifts had all been killed. The wreck of the Hussar laid near a raging bonfire, and the prisoners were finally away, save for one, the pilot of the Hussar.

“Taffel here to Pickup. Get over here. I need you to pick up somebody.” Horry had been the real surprise factor. Taffel could see the two destroyed mechs on the field that the Hussar had somehow managed to kill, and he knew that in Horry, he had an asset, even if his loyalty was somewhat suspect. If it wasn’t for Horry, the Red Shifts would have entered the battle and TAGged his rebels into debris.

The resistance could ill afford to ignore any possible mechwarrior recruit, especially one as skilled as this Horry seemed to be. Taffel had always trusted his gut, and the same instinct that told him to go ahead with the implantation program and the guy’s involvement in the convoy was now telling him to save the guy.

The transport truck rumbled past, while the overcast skies foretold rain, which explained the absence of aerospace fighters. Indeed, slight droplets of rain had began to fall as his infantry pulled Horry out of the Hussar and into the truck.

Time to go, Taffel told himself. This had been a good day, by almost any standard. The Word of Blake had lost more than 2 Level IIs worth of mechs, and he had managed to gain two mechs, a Locust and a Stinger, as well as a truckload of Comstar personnel and several more mechwarriors. It might not be much, but Taffel knew when to take his victories when he could find them.

As the rebel unit started off for its refuge, Taffel toggled another channel, “Shield, block the sats.”

Rod would complete the mission by blocking signals from the orbiting satellites, even though it was unlikely the Wobblies would see anything past the cloud cover. But Taffel hated to take any more chances after the ones he had taken today.

The rebels disappeared into the hills as the rain intensified, the churned ground turning into mud and obscuring their tracks.

 

“So they succeeded. And he is safe for the moment. In body anyway.”

“This has not been without problems. The Blakists know they have a leak.”

“Or our security could be compromised.”

“We have to be more careful now.”

“Yes. We might have to lay a bit lower than usual for a while.”

“About the Rewrite technology?”

“The Blakists should be allowed to perfect the technology. The social ramifications if they succeed are staggering. With the technology in the right hands, anything is possible.”

“And the only right hands are our hands.”

“Indeed.”