I paid the Fixer; his name was Johnson. For a few thousand Ferrite he could put me in contact with a Warrior Clan. They were looking for a few good pilots, and legend had it they didn’t care where you came from. Well, legend was wrong about almost everything. They had an intelligence dossier on me that went back to potty training reports from my preschool. It was creepy.
The Defenders of Bunny hired me. I worked for almost a year as a tech learning the equipment, as I went through their training program. I made friends with the Bunnies too. Somehow balancing the blood soaked howling of the MIU with the gentle care of the bunnies allowed me to not go totally buggy. We all went pretty buggy; I mean we climb into giant machines, merge our intelligence with an artificial sentience that exists only for war, and we seek out our brothers and sisters to battle. For cheese.
Ah, the cheese comment confuses you. Well, I am not an elite pilot. I am a third tier pilot for the Avengers of Bunny. We don’t get the glamor assignments, we get the contract work. We pay the bills, keep the utilities covered, and keep the training company in ammunition and regeneration tanks; trust me, we need them. We go to war to settle disputes between merchant houses and minor nobles. Trade war is expensive, mecha war is a budget item. Case in point; Silver Chalice Brie.
Cogwork state recognizes Class 1 and Class 2 dispute resolution as legal and binding. Class 1 is one lance on lance. Class 2 is Clan on Clan. Class 3 requires an act of the Cogwork Senate; as Class 3 involves regular army formations and brings nations into conflict. We do the dirty work, the Class 1 and Class 2 battles to keep the merchants from assassinating each other, or getting the government involved.
Mother Mary Foods and Zazen Dairy had been partners in developing a line of yogurt snacks for zero gravity environments. In the Mother Mary Labs where the project was hosted, Zazen Dairy technicians created a new cheese; Silver Chalice Brie. No one thought much of it, until Duke Crimson tried a sample one of the lab techs forwarded, and noted that its flavor was perfect for those who have been warring for long periods on metallic tasting Stim packs. Military orders alone promised billions of Ferrite for the owners, but ownership of cheese was not covered in the contract.
Mother Mary Foods hired Clan Blood Spirit. Zazen Dairy hired the Avengers of Bunny.
This Is the part where I tell you about our powerful niode driven machines, the elite of the Clans. Well I would love to, but if I tried to pilot those machines, like our Chieftains Torrent, my brains would be fried like a Silver Chalice Bree sandwich. That doesn’t mean we are not powerful. We are.
Clan Blood Spirit are newcomers, from the fringe worlds where law ran thin, and any security you had came from the muzzles of your guns. They were hard core. Their leader ran a Nephillax. That made him a King of the Mountain. The rest included one Nifthel, two Orcus, and Holmes. They were impressive machines.
We are the Battlestars lance, Avengers of Bunny. We have two ranks of Holmes and a single rank of Nifthels, which honesty compels me to admit isn’t fully worked up. However, we are veterans of Clan War as well as King of the Mountain. We are not as outmatched as Blood Spirit thinks.
There is an official channel that carries the legal definition of the challenge, the obligatory calls to surrender and submit to negotiated settlement. I kid you not. I didn’t believe it myself, but Knockers McGuinty, our chief technician showed me the channel, its automated lawyers in high speed BS settled nothing. It would be settled with blood and iron, with skill and steel, A little luck helps too.
Channel 17, the challenge frequency opened with a hail from our foe.
“Avengers of Bunny, you face the Blood Spirits, the last true Clan. Face your doom with honour”
Granted, they had the edge in mecha, but his held a few decent surprises, and skilled pilots. This was a test of will.
“Hail Blood Spirits. We honor your courage, we expect you to bring every ounce of skill and fury to the battle, but you will need it. We are the Avengers of Bunny, we are the Battlestars. Bring it!”
From the center Nephillax a storm of missiles arced out. More than twice what our best launchers could turn out. They rained down on Adama, my Nifthel and Starbuck my wing Holmes. The twin Orcus in his front rank were less fortunate. A Panther Wheel and Dual Gatling cracked out, but Starbuck and Apolo danced their Holmes to the side. Apollo grazed Splinter Shot off the ear of his Orcus, but Starbuck showed the true danger of a Holmes when the crackling energy of capacitors discharged her Injection Beam with perfect synchronization, its three emitters synching to triple its power into a blaze of mech killing lightning.
One Blood Spirit machine destroyed, one pilot wounded or dead, and battle was just beginning.
Furious at the death of his mech, the Blood Spirit leader discharged a Particle Slate that hammered the heavy armour of my Nifthel, but Adama housed a few secrets of his own, and the swarms of repair nanites had largely corrected the earlier damage from the missile strike, and the little energy left after the stacked laser shields bent and attenuated the beams did little more than etch the armor. I had to do better.
My White Knight was loot from the Clan War. We may have gotten the snot pounded out of us in the Gold fight, but anybody else who crossed the Avengers of Bunny got done like a carrot in the bunny pen. The Nifthel isn’t an elegant mech, it isn’t a fantastic niode driven beast like the Orcus, or a master of the Craftsman art like the Nephillax, but what it is was an ice cold killer, a brutal, over-engineered super-cooled ice powered wrecking ball.
The sibilant scream of the White Knight cored through the shields on the Nephilax with an ease that argued my foe was carrying heavy projectile shields. Against any of my other mecha, the shields would have been useful, against me they were suicide. Ice screamed through the shields, its nanites searing the vulnerable joints in the four legged machine, making it stagger and fall, frozen.
Three Avengers fired, against one Blood Spirit, with the frozen leader looking on in horror as his own helpless machine and his wing man were cut down by the wounded but firing Avengers.
Three pilots down, three machines destroyed. They would not be the last. The Blood Spirits were fierce and proud. I saw one more of their machines fall before my own front rank was scrap. I was supposed to check status reports on my downed pilots, to see if they were living or dead. I was also supposed to punch out before my mecha died, to leave Adama alone at the end. Who does that? Who can share their mind with the artificial sentience of a living war machine, can share the joy of battle with it, and then leave it to go down into the dark alone? He dies for me again and again, I will risk the dump shock, and ride it down with him.
As a result, I was on the ground, shaking and shuddering so bad I couldn’t key my implants enough to radio my pilots for status reports. Neither of them punched out early either. Avengers of Bunny run to brave, not to smart.
I watched two more of our machines die, one by fire, one by laser. I pray my pilots survive. I see the last of our foes falls, guns blazing, the Blood Spirit hurls their defiance in our teeth, their Blue Reaper freezing my rear rank Holmes even as Cornelion Ion Cannons carve the last of their reactor shielding away. I heard a woman’s shriek accompany the death knell of the Blood Spirit mecha. A brave woman, I hope she lived. Foe or not, courage like that Is more precious than niodes.
The report crackled over the comm channels.
“Silver Chalice Brie belongs to Zazen Dairy. This Class 1 arbitration is concluded.”
Decision for our patron. Payment for our Clan, but the prize was out there on the field. Blood Spirits and Avenger of Bunny know the real prize. Glory belongs to those who shared the field this day. Blood Spirits or Bunny, winners or losers, only we know the real reason we were here.
Submitted by John T Mainer 28840