"Damn it!" John growled, smming his fist into the table. He watched on the cameras as the four Elementals closed the gap with Freddy's Marauder and started to tear it apart. The man had managed to blow the now stationary Ice Ferret apart and two of the swarming Elementals, but once they had managed to grapple onto his mech, it was all over. "I thought you said this would be a one-on-one duel, Mia."

  "The Wolf was well within their rights to ask for the Elementals to join him since the Marauder was a much heavier mech than his. I am sorry, John Wayne. I did not have time to contact him before he accepted the changed terms of their duel." She replied, not quite sure where all of his anger was coming from. "Considering the state of his mech, Freddy gained much honour by defeating the Ice Ferret and the two Elementals."

  John took a breath, calming his nerves. They knew this was likely to happen, and all the guards had made their peace with the possibility of this being their st battle. The fact that he had managed to even the odds out with a couple of well-pced Darkness spells from his hidden vantage point was honestly the only reason Freddy managed that much once the lighter mech got inside of his weapons' optimal ranges. The damn medium mech had almost as much armour as some heavies and moved as fast as a Spider.

  Mia was not exaggerating when she said the Cn mechs completely outcssed them.

  Jack's Quickdraw fell shortly afterwards, one of the Elementals pumping ser fire into the mech's missile bins, causing it to explode. He had gotten lucky and knocked the head off the hunched-over Adder, leaving most of the mech undamaged, but that didn't stop the Elementals from closing the distance and tearing his mech apart. He had thrown his mech on the ground and tried to roll them off, but other than crushing one of the Elementals, it was for nought.

  This is bloody insane.

  He picked up the hardline and spoke into the handset. "Alpha three and Bravo four are down. Count seven enemy Elementals remaining in the cave." He said, then swapped the monitors to a different set of cameras. "Count two assaults and one heavy mech entering the cavern now. Initiate pn, Charlie. You're up, Jenny."

  He didn't hear a reply, but he wasn't expecting one. Their hardlines went to transmitters in the tunnel, letting the Guards inside know what was happening out here. He had a couple of IR cameras in there as well, but if things went according to pn, he wouldn't actually know what went down in that cave until either the Wolves or the Guards came out the other side.

  Provided they took the tasty bait.

  John sat back and waited. The stage was set for act two of their py, but they needed to wait for the actors to take the stage.

  saKahn Garth Radick surveyed the damage done to his two mechs. The lighter one was all but undamaged, its head melted clean off by a couple of lucky ser shots. The heavier one had taken a significant beating, taking damage to its comms suite and had both of its side torsos destroyed. The Star Commander appeared to be alive but severely injured and unconscious.

  The two enemy mechwarriors were dead, the Elementals gaining the honour for taking down the pilots of those heavy mechs. His touman had taken much more damage than he had pnned, but a quick calcution told him he still outweighed the remaining Guards by 70 tons, and that didn't include his remaining elementals.

  The problem was that he no longer had any scout mechs to search for where the remaining Guards were hiding, and there were two caves in here. He brought up the map of the region, once again looking over the area the Guards had cimed as the Circle of Equals. There appeared to be another entrance to one of the tunnels on the outside of the mountain, though he had no idea if they actually connected or not. This other tunnel appeared not to be part of the Circle of Equals.

  He was about to order his unit to enter the tunnel when a mech popped its head out of it and lit the Vulture up. The Jenners' sers sgged some armour across the much heavier mech, doing little more than annoy it. The pilot turned and let loose a volley of rge and medium pulse sers, doing a significant amount of damage to the light mech.

  "Oooo. Temper, temper. Come inside and py with me, puppies!" A woman's voice came across the comms, presumably the Jenner's pilot. She quickly backed her mech into the tunnel, narrowly avoiding the volley of forty LRMs.

  "Your orders, saKahn?" Star Captain Aaron Radick, his second in command, asked, the Gargoyle pilot ready to chase after the offending mechwarrior.

  "You two, take the remaining Elementals and start searching for that Jenner. Be careful, it is a trap. Because their pilot chose to take a cheap shot and run away, I am suspending Zellbrigen for any remaining Guard mechs. Support each other in there, and if the comms start breaking down again, use the Elementals as runners. I am going to check the other tunnel first to make sure there are no other surprises awaiting us, then join you. Quiaff"

  "Aff, saKahn. They will not know what hit them." The man replied, raising the arm of his mech that held possibly the most terrifying short-range weapon in the Cn arsenal.

  "Good hunting, Wolves. Save some for me."

  With that, the remaining Cn forces split, heading off in opposite directions.

  "Halt!" Star Captain Aaron Radick said, stopping his mech just before they entered the tunnel. On the ceiling was a tangle of wires and what appeared to be pstic explosives.

  "Did they think we would not look up? How stupid do they think we are? Elementals, spring the trap for us." He ordered.

  The Elementals began spraying the charges with precision ser fire, causing the device to detonate. The explosion was minimal, barely singeing the ceiling. He shook his head at that. Were these Freebirth stupid enough to think that a tiny amount of explosive would cause a cave-in?

  "Follow me, and stay alert for any more traps." He said, striding his mech into the dark tunnel. He activated his spotlight, illuminating the space almost as if it were daytime. It appeared to be more than your average tunnel, the ferrocrete pavement and worked stone walls looking like a pathway to a Brian cache (Star League cache. No idea why the Cns called it a Brian cache.)

  Not more than a hundred metres in, they found another charge of explosives on the ceiling, which the Elementals set off as well. He shook his head again, not understanding the point of pcing these explosives like this.

  Just at the edge of his spotlight's range, he detected movement. Four beams of light stabbed into his mech, and he returned fire with his six Extended Ranged medium sers. He wasn't sure if he had hit the target; his targeting system was unable to lock onto anything in this cave, but it didn't matter.

  "Stop running away, Freebirth!" he called out on an open channel.

  "A girl likes to be chased once in a while, mainly by a big boy like you. Do you think you can keep up, or are you pups getting tuckered out already?"

  "Stravag!" He said, smming his throttles forward, reaching his maximum speed of eighty-six kph fairly quickly. If he could close the distance, he could easily bring the harasser down. He just needed one clear view of the mech.

  "Aww... no need to curse, cutie pie. It is just a little fun. You are chasing me in an assault mech, and I am just in this itty-bitty Jenner. The name is Jenny, by the way, Jenny Keys."

  "I am Star Captain Aaron Radick, and I will not be toyed with!" He growled.

  "Toyed with? Maybe a little. Jenny Keys likes to tease, ya know. Oh, you missed something."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "The real explosives. Welcome to Mistress Keys dungeon, wolf pup. May it become your tomb."

  The world turned white, then bck.

  saKahn Garith Radick listened to the radio chatter as the rest of his star disabled the first two sets of explosives, but lost contact when he entered the tunnel. Comfortable with the fact that his Elementals would pass the information on the hunt back to him, he travelled down the path for nearly five hundred metres before the ground turned from dirt into ferrocrete. That was surprising, but what was even more surprising was the gates to a Brian cache at the end of the tunnel.

  He whistled slightly, not believing his luck. Even with his unexpected losses during this trial, finding one of these caches for Cn Wolf would bring honour and respect to him and the cn. However, with the ilKahn still in the system, he wasn't sure if he should let it be known back with the rest of the fleet or not. He might try to cim it for himself as the Supreme Commander and send its contents back to the Jade Falcons.

  "Unknown Mech. You are encroaching on the sovereign territory of the Federated Commonwealth. Turn around or be destroyed." A completely unexpected call came across his comms.

  Federated Commonwealth? What in the hell are these Freebirth talking about? The border is two hundred light-years from here.

  He looked around before responding. There was an Orange line painted on the ground near the front of his mech, a small hole in the door of the Brian Cache, and a FedCom fg painted on the door.

  "This is saKahn Garth Radick of Cn Wolf. This location is within the borders of the Circle of Equals and is part of the Trial of Possession for this pnet. Furthermore, who are you who have defaced a Brian Cache!" He barked through the comms. It was questionable if this exact area was part of the circle, but finding that there was a cache here, staffed with their Innersphere adversaries no less, should have been reyed as part of the bargain.

  "I have no idea what you are talking about, saKahn. I am Commander Cid Steinbech, an agent in the employ of Katrina Steiner-Davion, and we had negotiated with the governor of this world for territorial rights to this area. Turn around now, or else you will be destroyed!" A fsh of light came out of the small gap in the gate, and a deep gouge in the ground appeared in front of his mech as this Cid Steinbech fired a Gauss rifle round out the opening as a warning shot.

  "I will be back, Commander Cid Steinbech, and we will negotiate your surrender then. Think hard about your folly of threatening the saKahn of the Wolves!" He growled, backing his mech up. He had other fish to fry right now, and trying to break through the gate of a Brian cache with a single mech while taking gauss rifle fire would be impossible. Not to mention that they wouldn't want to accidentally damage anything inside.

  Still, this went beyond the bounds of the trial. He needed to get back out of the cave, signal Beta Gaxy to move in and guard that tunnel, then have their aerospace assets and scout mechs search for other entrances to the cache.

  Stravag!

  "Well, that is our cue," John said, standing up from the desk of the hastily built bunker the Guards had set up underneath one of the prefab structures to let him and Mia coordinate the battle. He had just set off the actual charge inside the tunnel, buried in the ceiling under the perfectly resealed bricks from his Dig skill. He had lost connectivity with the camera's in there, thus he was now blind to the situation. They would now board the Pelican and cover the only other exit of the tunnel, destroying any Cn mechs that came out and were stuck on the narrow pathway.

  The giant Executioner might be a problem, but as the pilot went outside of the bounds of the Circle of Equals, Mia said he had dishonoured and disqualified himself. They would transmit that data to the awaiting wolves that were milling around by their dropship, ensuring it was known he had dishonoured himself.

  "Hurry, John Wayne. We need to get out of here before the saKahn returns." Mia said, already having climbed up the dder in nearly the blink of an eye.

  He grunted and pulled himself out of the bunker, having to squeeze his body through the small opening yet again. He could see out the windows on either side of the prefab building where he cast his Darkness spells from, the two Cn mechs still nearby where they had been blinded at. He wished he could have blinded the elementals, too, but he still hadn't been able to hold more than two spells at a time. Not that he would have had the mana to do all of them.

  They moved towards the side of the clearing, intent on grabbing the beat-up old jeep to drive them out of the cave, when the cocking of a shotgun stopped them in their tracks.

  "Halt, Freeborns!. You are my prisoner- Star Commander Mia Bckwell? What is a Steel Viper doing here?"