Good Choices

 

Lubyanka Prison

Umma City

Larsha

Capellan Confederation

September 10, 3026

 

He lay in the small, hard cot and listened to the sounds of gunfire. Pirates again, he presumed. He heard the whine of lasers, the electric hum of particle cannon, the staccato blasts of a missile barrage. He lay in the darkness, waiting for the stray laser or missile blast that would end his silent vigil. Listening to the sounds grow closer, unsure which side he should hope to win.

Sometimes, there were no good choices.

 

September 14, 3026

 

He lay in the small cot in Lubyanka Prison. Every world in the Capellan Confederation had a prison for dissidents, traitors, rebels and spies, and on every world it was called Lubyanka Prison. It was meant to strike fear, naming it after the infamous prison of the ancient KGB, but to him it only served as a reminder that this was all a shadow-play on the cave walls, a pale imitation of the ur-Lubyanka of old Russia.

He became aware of Major Aydogan, his commanding officer before his arrest, standing in the room, looking down on him with something close to disappointment. He sat upright, levered his legs off the cot.

“Captain Dyubichev,” the Major began, stopped. “Dmitri. Why? Just tell me that. Why?”

“Why what?” asked Dyubichev.

“Three men dead. Three Maskirovka men. Why?”

Dyubichev remembered the plainclothes men breaking open the door, how close the vibroblade had come to slicing open his throat. The Capellan Confederation’s intelligence service did many things well, but making fine distinctions between dissidents and those who happened to be standing too close to dissidents was not one of them. “I thought defending Capellan citizens was our job?”

“Your job is to follow orders. Your job is to kill whoever I order you to kill. Your job off the battlefield is to mind your own goddamn business. You realize everyone in the unit is under suspicion now? The political officer’s breathing down my neck, wants to know every time I so much as step out to piss,” Aydogan threw up his hands in frustration. “If that wasn’t enough now we have this so-called ‘Angel of Mercy’ and her pirates to worry about. Do you know how hard you’ve made my job? Everyone’s job? Blake’s hairy left nut, Dmitri, if you wanted to die there are quicker ways to do it.”

Dyubichev nodded. Sometimes, death was the easy choice.

 

September 17, 3026

 

He lay in the small, hard cot, hands folded over his chest, and watched the small square of light inch its way across the bare cement block wall. The small, barred window was set too high in the wall for him to see out, but he could watch the movement of the sunlight that filtered down into his small cell. There was little else to do, other than mentally relive the mistakes of the last six months, so he much preferred the mindless distraction of the light and its slow, steady progress.

He heard the key turn in the stark, solid steel door to the cell. He stood with a sigh, and waited motionless in the middle of the room.

The door swung open to admit a guard, Rorynex submachinegun slung across his chest, and an officer whose jacket lapels bore the yellow stripes and single silver triangle of a captain. A Hawking autopistol rode at his hip.

“So this is the traitor,” the captain looked him the way one would a particularly persistent spaghetti stain. “Quite a list of charges. Espionage, treason, murder. Three security forces members dead. You’re lucky most of your unit is off chasing pirates, or you’d have been shot by now. Anything to say for yourself?”

Dyubichev gave a weary shrug. ‘Security forces’ was a fancy way to describe non-uniformed paramilitary thugs murdering your own citizens, he thought, but he doubted the sentiment would get much sympathy.

“Nothing? Well, that’ll soon change,” the captain growled through gritted teeth. “You’re wanted in the capital. Seems there are a couple of people very eager to talk to you, and believe me, an hour with them and you’ll be begging to spill every little secret you know.”

Since no introductions seemed forthcoming, Dyubichev mentally dubbed the man Captain Hawking. He was standing just beyond arm’s reach. Dyubichev was sure he could grab the Hawking’s gun, maybe shoot both him and the guard before they could react.

And then what? Die in a hail of bullets when ten more guards arrived, no doubt. Death was the easy choice. He hated easy choices.

“And when they’re done with you, they’ll come for your family next,” Hawking continued with growing heat. “Your father. Your mother. Your cousins. Your friends. Your neighbors. Everyone you’ve ever known is going to disappear right out of existence.”

Captain Hawking snorted derisively when Dyubichev failed to react, reached into his breast pocket and produced a pair of restraints. The guard in the doorway shifted his submachinegun and brought it slightly up, eyes tense. Dyubichev held his arms out wordlessly, calmly allowed Hawking to tie his wrists together. The captain shoved him in the back, towards the doorway.

Two more armed guards were waiting in the hallway, and fell into step behind him as the captain led the way through security gates and out into the glaring sun. Dyubichev was blinded by the sudden brightness, stumbled and then went sprawling into the dusty courtyard as one of the guards shoved him again. He was kicked and prodded to his feet with more force than strictly necessary.

A wheeled armored personnel carrier in the mottled green and brown of the Larshan militia sat rumbling in the building courtyard. Dyubichev was unceremoniously hauled into the rear passenger compartment by two of the guards, while Hawking clambered into the commander’s cupola.

 

It was a short drive to the spaceport. The rear doors of the APC swung open, revealing the nearby control tower, three DropShips on the weather-stained ferrocrete and rows of liquid hydrogen fuel storage tanks beyond, watched over by a single Commando in the green and bronze of the Fifth Confederation Reserve Cavalry. Subcommander Kahalani’s ‘Mech, Dyubichev remembered, one of his unit—one of his old unit. Good kid, green, a little headstrong. Probably wind up dead the first battle he got into.

Nearby, a slate-grey Karnov transport sat waiting, its rotors tilted skyward. The guards prodded him towards the aircraft.

Inside the aircraft was a large cargo bay, echoingly empty now, with a row of seven seats built into either side of the fuselage, directly behind the four-man cockpit. Dyubichev was buckled into one of the seats, a guard on either side, two more opposite. Dyubichev didn’t mind the dour company. He was just glad the seat offered a view, if he craned his neck, out the forward windscreen.

He could hear the pilot and copilot go through their preflight check, hear the growing throb of the rotors as they spluttered to life and slowly began to build up speed.

The flight engineer was saying something that caught Dyubichev’s attention. “—weird power surge in one of the DropShips. Looks almost like a—”

Kahalani must have detected something too. Dyubichev could see Kahalani’s ‘Mech striding quickly across the ferrocrete landing pad towards the furthest DropShip. Kahalani was shouting something at the DropShip over the external speakers, but Dyubichev couldn’t make it out over the noise of the Karnov’s engines, only that he sounded angry, maybe, frightened.

A large hatch in the side of the DropShip blew open, and out stepped a humanoid figure, twelve meters high, painted entirely black save for a white skull emblazoned on its chest. A BattleMech. From the big shoulder baffles and large antenna, Dyubichev recognized it as a Charger. Heavy, more than three times the size of Kahalani’s Commando, and fast, but not well armed.

Captain Hawking was screaming at the pilot “Get us out of here! Get us out of here!” and the tone of the engines surged higher.

The Charger turned to face the Commando, then broke in a run straight toward the smaller ‘Mech.

Kahalani seemed shocked, standing still for a moment. Belatedly, he brought the Commando’s arms up, firing a volley of missiles at the Charger and following up with a green stab of laser fire. Two answering beams fired back, and Dyubichev realized this must be an up-gunned CGR-1L variant.

Then the Charger was on the Commando. It grabbed the Commando’s left arm with its own right, crushing the laser mounted there and holding the smaller ‘Mech in place. Kahalani struggled in the Charger’s grip for a moment, then spread the Commando’s free arm wide, a gesture of surrender.

Dyubichev’s view lurched suddenly as the Karnov lifted off the ground, giving him a glimpse of a platoon of APCs speeding across the landing pads towards the two ‘Mechs. The pilot brought the nose around again, just in time to see the Charger deliberately raise its left arm, ending in a bulbous hemisphere housing a Magna Mk III laser, until it was almost touching the Commando’s head. And then firing, the laser’s red beam boring a neat, round hole straight through the ferroglass viewscreen and out the back of the ‘Mech’s head.

The Charger threw aside the limp Commando like an unwanted toy. 

Hidden gunports on the DropShip opened up and began blasting away at the charging APCs. One erupted into a fireball that lifted the entire vehicle off the ground. Another careened out of control, belching black smoke, until it rammed into the landing struts of one of the other DropShips.

A stray laser blast struck the spaceport’s long row of fuelling tanks. Kilotons of supercooled liquid hydrogen ignited in an instant, erupting in a volcanic roar. A fiery column blew hundreds of meters into the air.

The Karnov was blown about by the shockwave, throwing Dyubichev against the chair restraints. Something sheared through the rear of the aircraft and suddenly the wind was howling and the aircraft was spinning, smoke and debris flying about the compartment, blinding Dyubichev, choking him. He doubled, retching, and something whistled narrowly over his head and the guard beside him was screaming, something wet pouring down Dyubichev’s side. The massive hole in the rear of the aircraft showed blue, brown, blue, brown as it pirouetted drunkenly in the sky.

There was a massive jolt as the Karnov crashed back down to the ferrocrete, tearing Dyubichev’s seat from the fuselage and smashing it, back-first against the roof of the aircraft. The Karnov slewed uncontrollably across the landing pad, sending Dyubichev and his seat tumbling across the cargo bay floor, to the lip of the hole in the rear of the aircraft, before crashing into one of the control tower walls and flinging Dyubichev back into the main compartment.

 

Dyubichev crawled out from under his seat. Looked around. One guard had nearly been cut in two by a large, jagged piece of metal. Another lay moaning in his chair, his leg twisted at an odd angle. Of the other two there was no sign. Sucked out of the aircraft, probably. Dyubichev shook his head, trying to clear his eyes, staggered toward the dead guard and awkwardly retrieved the man’s survival knife from his belt. Bracing the knife between two chairs, Dyubichev used it to saw through his restraints, then picked up the man’s Rorynex.

The nose and cockpit had taken the brunt of the impact with the control tower, folding like an accordion. The pilot and co-pilot lay crushed and mangled between the aircraft controls and their chairs. The flight engineer had been decapitated, his headless corpse slumped almost peacefully at its station.

Captain Hawking lay wedged between the flight engineer’s station and the co-pilot’s chair. He looked up in shock as Dyubichev stumbled into the cockpit. “It wasn’t me,” Hawking said desperately. “It wasn’t my idea. I believed you. Orders. It was just orders. I had no choice.”

Dyubichev clicked the safety off. “There are always choices,” he said.

The cockpit was filled with a brief flash of gunfire.

 

Dyubichev clambered painfully down the side of the aircraft, and dropped to the ferrocrete. They’d come down close to the inert husk of Kahalani’s Commando, its back resting against the control tower, head down on its chest as though sleeping. He dashed for cover behind the ‘Mech, crouching behind one of its legs and peering above to assess the situation.

The pirate DropShip was concentrating its fire on the other two DropShips, Mule-class freighters, slagging landing legs and engines in an attempt to prevent them from fleeing. The Charger had taken cover behind one of the hangar buildings about five hundred meters away, its back to Dyubichev, where it was exchanging fire with a lance of Scorpion tanks, backed by several platoons of infantry, trying to advance down a runway built for aerodyne DropShips and conventional aircraft. Dyubichev could clearly see two white wings painted on the back of the ‘Mech.

It was a massacre. One tank was already burning brightly, black smoke billowing from its shattered hull. As Dyubichev watched, the Charger’s Mk III laser skewered the lead tank, tearing it apart in an explosion that blew the turret several meters in the air, falling to the ground upside down next to the flaming wreckage of the hull. A second shot hit another tank’s right-side tracks, bringing it to a swerving halt. A moment later the tank’s hatches opened and the crew scampered out, fleeing for the cover of nearby buildings. Answering fire blew away chunks of ferrocrete from the hangar the Charger took cover behind, but none seemed to find their target. The Charger stepped back out from its cover, and a squad of men trying to set up a the tripod for a portable particle cannon were incinerated in a flash of green fire.

Dyubichev winced, shook his head. The poor bastards. Glanced up. Kahalani’s ‘Mech, a mournful, round black hole where the front glass should be, was looking down on him in mute disapproval.

“Hush, you,” he told it.

Of course, the Commando seemed to say, the choice was up to him. Defend the people who only hours ago were ready to kill him? Or let them be slaughtered. That would be the easy choice.

“Well. Shit,” he muttered.

Using footholds on the Commando’s arm, Dyubichev hauled himself up onto the shoulder, shuffled crabwise towards the cockpit, clambered in through the massive hole in the forward viewscreen.

The only vital thing the laser appeared to have hit was Subcommander Avi Kahalani, whom it had hit rather squarely. Everything from ribcage to knees had been completely vaporized, the remaining bits instantly cauterized and flung randomly about the cockpit. Dyubichev found the neurohelmet under the command couch, along with Kahalani’s head and left arm.

Dyubichev gingerly unhooked the neurohelmet from Kahalani’s head, settled it on his own shoulders and felt a wave of nausea wash over him as the uncalibrated helmet tried to adjust to its new wearer. He checked the controls. The wireframe schematic showed heavy damage to the left arm and back, plus an angry red glow where the head should be. The engine, gyro and heat sinks showed green, the missile launchers, red. Dyubichev toggled the switches for the launchers again. Red. One more time, switched them off, then on. Red.

“Well. Shit,” he reaffirmed.

What did that leave? Speed. The Commando could move at a hair under 100 kph in a flat-out run. Fast enough to outrun the Charger. Or. He looked through the shattered viewscreen. Saw the Charger standing, its back to him, perhaps 200, 250 meters away. Or.

He planted the Commando’s arms in the rubble, and levered the ‘Mech unsteadily to its feet. Fought another wave of nausea as the ‘Mech tried to find its balance. Took a deep breath, exhaled. Kicked the throttle all the way out.

The Commando took one hesitant step. Then another. Seemed to gather itself beneath him. Another stride, and another. Coming faster now, gaining speed, myomer muscles pumping like a sprinter, another stride, another, another, another. Faster, faster, the wind shrieking through the gaping hole in the head like a banshee, the pirate Charger filling his forward view.

The Charger pilot seemed to sense something, started to turn. Too late.

The Commando’s shoulder plowed into it just under the right arm with a thunderous crash, crushing and splintering armor plates on both ‘Mechs. Dyubichev was thrown brutally forward against the command couch restraints, only the adaptive padding saving him from serious injury. The Charger rocked back, tried to steady itself with its right arm, failed, fell on its side. The Commando spun back from the impact, toppled over, and crashed through the wall of the hangar. The ‘Mech plowed backwards several meters before skidding to a halt on its back.

Dyubichev’s neurohelmet rammed into the back of pilot’s couch with enough force to daze him. He shook his head, tried to clear his eyes. Red warning lights filled his vision. Gyro damage. Leg actuator damage.

The Charger stood slowly. Dyubichev working feverishly to bring the Commando to its feet, and spotted something under his ‘Mech’s hands. A five-meter long steel beam, broken loose when he’d fallen through the wall. The Charger advanced through the gaping hole in the hangar wall, weapons leveled. Dyubichev picked up the beam in the Commando’s hands, raised it overhead, charged forward, brought it whistling down on the Charger’s head.

The massive ‘Mech staggered drunkenly under the blow, and fell to one knee. Dyubichev’s next swing clipped the Charger’s right shoulder, shattering its high shoulder guard. It swung back feebly, aimlessly, but Dyubichev managed to stagger the Commando back out of reach. He raised the steel beam and brought it down on the Charger’s cockpit again. Ferroglass shattered, the ‘Mech’s round head deformed like a saddle. It wobbled for a moment, lost its balance and fell forward on its face, blowing up a storm of dust.

When the dust settled, Dyubichev moved the Commando forward again, keeping the steel beam at the ready. He stood over the Charger’s inert form and looked down.

 

The pilot’s hatch in the Charger’s head opened, and the pilot half-staggered, half-fell out.

A young woman, her head shaved, with an impressively detailed tattoo of angel wings across her back.

“The Angel of Mercy, I presume,” Dyubichev asked over the external speakers.

She rose to her feet, looked up defiantly. “Just kill me and get this over with.”

“That did seem the most likely outcome of this raid,” replied Dyubichev. “So why make it?”

“Only way to stop you bastards from hunting us like rats,” she snarled. “What did you think we would do? Keep running? Give up and die? Not like we had any choice.”

Dyubichev nodded to himself in the cockpit. He knew all about bad choices. “So you sacrificed yourself to take the pressure off your men? I can admire that. You did all you could.”

She reached into her cooling vest, and pulled out a needler. Dyubichev wasn’t worried. At this range, its chance of damaging his ‘Mech was slightly less than zero. “Guess how much I care about your admiration,” she answered, and put the needler to her temple. “Anyway, there’s one more thing I can do.”

“Wait, now,” Dyubichev said quickly. “Turns out, you might have another choice.”

 

The Commando limped from the hangar, towards the pirate DropShip, steel beam slung over one shoulder like a baseball bat. It walked slowly across the ferrocrete, under the Ship’s watchful guns.

When the ‘Mech came within 100 meters of the DropShip, a voice called out on the external speakers. “We aren’t going to surrender just because you did for the Angel, so you best stop right there,” it said. “Any last words before we send you to join her?”

Inside the Commando’s cockpit, the Angel of Mercy reached over Dyubichev’s shoulder and clicked open a channel. “Decided I ain’t gonna die just yet,” she said, “Now let us on board before the Louies figure out what’s going on.” She glanced down at Dyubichev. “Last chance to back out. You sure?”

No, he wasn’t sure. Not by a mile. But then, living was often the hard choice. And he hated easy choices.

He smiled and nodded. “I’m sure.”