saKahn Garth Radick moved out of the cave and tried to bring up Star Coronel Ramon Sender, one of his senior cluster commanders and the man whom he left in charge of the Wolves who remained outside of the Circle of Equals. His radio was still spitting static out, despite being outside.

  "Communication System - Damaged"

  He ran a quick diagnostic on the system; it was dispying damage to his antenna that he had not noticed before.

  "Curious. I will have to bring that up with the technicians after we leave here." He said to himself, angling his mech towards the dropship. Losing communications due to the materials this pce was surrounded in was bad enough, but to lose them due to faulty equipment was-

  "Targeting System - Damaged", his computer's voice said, alerting him to another issue.

  "Stravag, what is happening!" He said, then noticed a bleep on his radar. Looking up to his left was a very battered Charger, racing down a mountain sidepath towards him. It was missing its left arm and torso, and was carrying what appeared to be its missing arm in right hand actuator, brandishing it like a club.

  He turned his mech towards what he assumed was the Guard's lone assault mech and raised his left arm to fire two of his three rge pulse sers and a pair of his ER medium sers. Most of the shots went wide; his targeting system was not compensating for his snap shot. He disabled it, switching to manual firing mode, then bsted the mech with his other rge pulse ser and two more medium sers.

  These nded, scoring damage on the mech's legs and torso, but not cutting through. He cut his mech to the side, trying to avoid a collision with the other assault mech.

  The Charger sprayed him with three pitiful bolts of small ser fire, but swung its makeshift club, bringing it down hard on his mech's left torso, narrowly missing his cockpit. A massive gash tore through most of the armour there, activating a warning kxon inside the cockpit.

  "Armour - Critical"

  "Stravag!" He cursed again, activating his jump jets to make a little distance between them. His mechs' arms and centre torso were heavily armoured, but the side torsos were notoriously thinner for a mech of this size. Though nowhere near as bad as the Chargers were, and that is when they were in good condition.

  "Sensors - Offline"

  "What is going on!" He swore again as he nded, turning his mech towards the loping Charger. He eyeballed the shot as best he could and fired. Most of his shots went wide, but another rge ser did punch the other mech's torso, destroying the remaining armour there and damaging a lot of its internals.

  Fmes were shooting out the sides of its engine housing, the shot hitting the engine, but it kept coming, bringing that hateful-looking club down on him again. He tried to raise his arm to block, but was too slow, catching it once again in the left torso. Warning lights went off again,

  "Armour - Critical. Damage to Internal Structure. MASC System - Damaged. MASC System - Offline. Life Support - Damaged. Cockpit - Damaged"

  "Curse you, Bckstone Guard! DIE!" He shouted over his external speaker, not understanding why everything in his cockpit was choosing this moment in time to break down. He raised the arm with the two rge pulse sers, pcing them directly on the Charger's exposed engine, and fired, activating his jump jets simultaneously.

  He rocketed above the exploding mech, taking serious damage to his armour, and causing his mech to vibrate wildly in the air. He fought with his controls and managed to bring his mech down safely, albeit not very gracefully. He looked over at the fallen mech and whistled softly. It was completely on fire, its cockpit engulfed in fmes. The pilot did not eject when his engine exploded.

  "You fought with honour, warrior. I wish I knew your name, for you and your guards put up a fight worthy of any of Kerensky's Chosen." He said solemnly. If that mech had that kind of damage, he knew his warriors must have all been defeated in that tunnel.

  "His name was Captain James Kearney, a warrior with over eighty years of experience piloting mechs." A voice said behind him. He snapped his head around and was nearly face-to-face with a silver-haired man with an eyepatch. The same warrior he had stepped on. The man smiled at him and rested a sword on his neck "Howdy. The names Captain John Wayne, the new commander of the Bckstone Guards. I believe you and I had some unfinished business back there, saKahn Garth Radick."

  "How?"

  A Few Minutes Ago

  John knew this was dumb, but he didn't want Mia to get hit by any errant ser fire. So he charged at the Executioner in front of him, sheathing his sword for now. The MechWarrior didn't even bother tracking him, instead lifting its foot up to squash him ft. He changed his angle slightly and narrowly avoided being pounded into the ground by the rge rectangur foot.

  He pulled the only remaining spell scroll he had out of his pocket and chanted, "Spider Climb." A clear, viscous substance covered his hands and feet, and he suddenly felt lighter than normal. Before he could change his mind, he jumped onto the side of the mech's foot and began his ascent.

  It was tricky moving up the mech's legs, the moving parts of some of the joints threatening to squish whatever limb got caught between them, but he managed it. Once he got to the mechs back, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way to the cockpit. That's when he spotted some of the electronic equipment, and he knew how dangerous those emitters could be to an unshielded human (Seriously, some of those things will microwave a hot dog in a second if they are transmitting). So he drew his sword and started destroying them one after another, making his way to the cockpit hatch.

  The mech turned and fired its weapons at something he couldn't see, giving John only a moment of warning that he was now riding on the outside of a mech that was in combat.

  God damn it, just because I beat an Elemental, doesn't mean I want to be one!

  *CLANG!*

  *FWOOOSH!!!*

  The vibrations from the impact, along with the sudden change in altitude, almost sent him flying over the side, holding on only by one hand onto a random ventition pipe. He pulled himself up and destroyed the remaining antenna, then rushed over to the cockpit and sshed the hatches' locking mechanism just as the mech started to vibrate from another heavy impact.

  He managed to dive inside as a wave of fire washed over the mech, the sounds of warning kxons masking his entrance as the Executioner flew into the air yet again. He braced himself, ready to activate his invulnerability again if need be, but his Spider Climb spell let him stay mostly stable as the assault mech nded hard.

  He moved unseen next to the saKahn, and listened to his thoughts as he gave James a few words for their short but epic fight. They were sincere; the man truly thought that, despite everything that happened, the Guards had put up a brave fight to the st.

  Well, if James came out of that cave, that means they had won in there.

  He shed a tear at the loss of his comrades, but he had unfinished business with the man beside him.

  They sat in that cockpit for nearly thirty minutes, John's sword never leaving the man's throat. Mia drove the jeep up beside the mech, a now awake Bryn straddling the entire back seat. The two appeared to be chatting, but it was impossible to tell from here.

  How is she even alive? Let alone awake and smiling?

  He turned his attention back to the saKahn.

  They talked about many things, John making many mental notes of the man's thoughts, pying him harder than he pyed Mia before he accepted her into his family. In the end, the only thing John was sure of was that this entire fight was pretty much a farce, and that the saKahn had orders from their ilKahn (Leader of the Cns) to not concern themselves with honour and just take the pnet. The only reason they had this fair fight was that his Kahn (Leader of the Wolves) was not happy with not at least offering worlds the Batchall.

  "The only thing I can guarantee for you, Captain John Wayne, is that your people will be treated fairly as we transition this world into a staging world. I can direct the civilian officials to allow your people's ‘couples’ (Loosely a marriage in the Cns) to remain together, but they will still be expected to produce more children.

  Those children will be taught our ways but will be allowed to return home at night to their couple's unit. We Wolves already allow that in our civilian cast and only take children to group homes when no one is able to care for them. As for anyone not in a couples unit already, I am afraid they will be expected to pick a mate or face punishment."

  "And for the older folks?"

  "I will do what I can, but they are expected to work. We do not have the resources to keep people around who cannot provide some benefit to our society. This policy is not meant to be cruel, but pragmatic. Most of the Cn home worlds are much like this one, with little arable nd. We simply do not have food to waste to feed people who do not contribute to the cn's well-being."

  A mech approached them, though apparently in no rush. Their time here was growing short. He sheathed his sword. They had won the fight; however, officially, they needed to lose it, or else they would need to fight more mechs and aerospace fighters. John was nearly tapped out of Aces right then and wasn't sure how the Pelican would stand up to aerospace fighters that could fly through the atmosphere at nearly four thousand miles an hour.

  That is eight times faster than what the Pelican can do in the atmosphere. I am flying an A-10, not an F-15E.

  "Well, saKahn, I expect you to honour what you told me here today. Now, officially, I request Hegria. Allow me and my remaining forces to withdraw from the battlefield safely and return to Bckstone. As for the Star League Cache, I have no idea what the two FedCom agents have cooked up, but there was a regiment's worth of tanks in there, amongst other things. The pnetary governor might be in there with them, but as I said before, he does not have the authority to cede territory to them." John said, dumping any responsibility for those two snakes.

  "Bargained Well and Done, Captain John Wayne. I can guarantee your safe return to Bckstone. Anything after that, you will be on your own."

  "Bargained Well and Done, saKahn Garth Radick. Now, can you drop your dder? I don't want to try and climb down the same way I climbed up."

  They both ughed. The saKahn thought he scaled the outside of his mech without any help, and John didn't dissuade him from that line of thinking. He had treated John with the utmost respect for his combat prowess, and his thoughts had zero contempt for him. He knew he lost, fair and square, and by rights, should have been dead.

  "By the way, John Wayne. Your Batchall said you had a VTOL, but I do not recall seeing it. Was it hidden away in the tunnel somewhere?"

  "No. The fight with your previous Star Commander deyed me from getting it, then you showed up. Be happy that I did not get it saKahn, as you would not be sitting there right now, and we would not have made a contract. Quiaff?"

  "Aff. You speak like us and know much about our ways. Were your parents exiles from the Cns?"

  "Lets just say I had a good teacher and leave it at that. I would hate for you to try and hunt another old man down for teaching me a few things about his past, long before this invasion of yours was pnned." He replied, lying in case he thought Mia might have been their source.

  "Very well, John Wayne. When we install a Somha unit here, I will recommend you to be its Star Captain. There may be some dissent, but I believe you deserve it."

  "Thank you, saKahn. Now, the dder?"

  After another goodbye, John departed the cockpit. Despite their different cultures and the fact that they had just had a battle, the man had a gift for gab. Under any other circumstance, John would have happily shared a few drinks with the man. It was strange, considering most of his unit died at the hands of him and his men.

  He really wanted to think of that man as the enemy, but from everything he had learned from him, the Wolves didn't even want to be in this invasion. He was one of the few crusaders in Cn Wolf who advocated joining the invasion, but that was to make sure their Cn could secure a power base and act as a voice of reason among the other Cns. There was no real malice toward the people of the Inner Sphere.

  The other three cns that orchestrated the invasion, Cn Ghost Bear, Cn Jade Falcon and Cn Smoke Jaguar, were all crusader cns. They held a shared dream of returning to the Inner Sphere in force to conquer the barbarians of the corrupt Successor States. There were several other Cns being held in reserve as well, including Mia's former Steel Vipers, ready to add their forces to the assault on the Inner Sphere.

  He really needed to go over everything he had learned; however, he had another pressing issue. He was now the leader of what was left of the Bckstone Guards and had a letter burning in his pocket with James' final orders. He slid down the remaining few rungs and made his way over to the Jeep as the Executioner started to move away, the other mech following the saKahn.

  The fight for Bckstone was officially over, the Guards winning the battle but losing the war. The one soce John could take from their losses was that there were exactly zero civilian casualties. It was a bittersweet pill to swallow.