BattleTech: Lion's Roar: BattleTech Novella

By Steven Mohan, Jr.

FIGHT FOR THE CROWD

Solaris VII is the Game World, a planet of spectacle and intrigue entirely devoted to ferocious gladiatorial combat. Except on Solaris, the gladiators aren’t people—they’re BattleMechs, thirty-foot high, walking engines of war.

David Singh is a down-on-his-luck ’Mech pilot with just enough skill and raw guts to attract all the wrong kind of attention. Singh’s dream is to become a championship fighter in the games. He’s an underdog, but his flamboyant fighting style gives him a solid chance of making the jump. But he’ll have to watch his step.

Because on Solaris, the most dangerous contests take place outside the coliseum.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
• Release date: Feb 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781386961505

Book preview

FREAK SHOW

The Jungle, Cathay

Solaris City, Solaris VII

Freedom Theater, Lyran Alliance

8 February 3064

The flight of FarFire long-range missiles rippled across David Singh’s Grasshopper, shattering armor and knocking his seventy ton ’Mech off-balance. He took a step back to steady himself.

That’s when he caught the lucky break.

One of the missiles had been a dud. It failed to explode when it smashed itself against his chest. Instead, the heat and shock of the impact had set the warhead on fire. The mangled missile dropped to the ground, its nose cone burning. As David watched, the titanium casing caught. He was crouched next to a class delta.

Metal fire.

You couldn’t freeze class deltas away with CO2; they burned far too hot for that. And you couldn’t drown them either. Metal fires burned so fiercely they stripped oxygen right out of water molecules to feed their savage hunger.

There was nothing on Solaris that could put this fire out.

At least until the stadium officials cleared the arena and vacced it down.

And David would happily bet his next purse that wouldn’t happen until after this match was concluded.

Around the burning missile, long stalks of marsh grass started to catch. The vegetation was well soaked by the light rain programmed for this match, but titanium burned at a couple thousand degrees.

The plants never stood a chance. The fire spread quickly, powered by the ferocious metal fire at its incandescent heart.

The Atlas had started a conflagration.

And Shamil Idrisov didn’t know it yet.

All this David saw and understood in a second. He targeted along the threat vector and released his own flight of LRMs. His cockpit shook as the missiles erupted from their chambers in the Grasshopper’s head and punched through the gray, greasy smoke rolling up off the fire.

David was moving as soon as the missiles were away, charging forward and to the right at a dead run. The rain had already dropped visibility to a couple hundred meters and the smoke would only make it worse. Idrisov wouldn’t pick him out of the jungle, especially since David had covered his ’Hopper with irregular patches of emerald and chocolate and khaki — jungle colors. He sported no flashy colors at all, save for the small green and gold emblem placed just beneath his cockpit—an extended hand clutching a broken sword.

And the fire sealed the deal. David was counting on a few seconds of confusion in which Idrisov would mistake the fire’s bright thermal signature for his ’Hopper.

Somewhere off to his left his external microphones picked up the sudden crack of the missiles’ impact. He felt the tremor of the 100-ton Atlas charging forward.

Standard tactical doctrine said closing was a smart bet for the Atlas. Idrisov had a thirty-ton edge in weight and better short-range weapons.

But on the Game World, standard tactical doctrine usually cost you the match.

Sometimes more than that.

David glanced down at his thermal sensors. It was a messy picture. The rain picked up the inferno’s heat, smearing the thermal signatures, but David knew what was happening and Idrisov didn’t.

He picked the emerald glow of the Atlas out of the picture and cut left, running until Idrisov’s signature disappeared into that of the conflagration. He pivoted to face the fire. He should be right behind Idrisov now, the assault ’Mech’s relatively weak rear armor vulnerable.

David targeted the fire and loosed another round of LRMs along that bearing, trusting the weapons’ guidance systems to take them right in.

Then he charged forward.

He heard his missiles impact and then an impossibly big black shadow loomed out of the gray mixture of rain and smoke.

Motion.

The Atlas was turning.

It was backlit by the unholy glow of the fire, Idrisov’s glossy black paint job picking up orange highlights from perdition’s fury.

All except for the head, which was painted dead white.

David side stepped his Grasshopper to the right, trying to keep the monster’s vulnerable back in front of him, and let go with the large laser in his center torso. Emerald fire danced across the giant’s rear, vaporizing armor and showering the jungle floor with molten globules of composite and steel.

Heat spiked in David’s cockpit, burning his lungs and nearly causing him to black out.

But he’d only get one chance at this. He hit the safety override and let loose with his medium laser, sending coherent light splashing across the ragged black scars already burned into the Atlas’s Durallex armor.

The great machine’s ponderous turn was interrupted by a stutter-step, a sure sign of gyroscope trouble. For a moment the Atlas teetered—

And did not fall.

Idrisov set the legs of his great machine wide, anchoring it to the ground.

And suddenly David was staring at the grinning death’s-head of a very nasty assault ’Mech.

Damn, damn, damn. Time to go.

David turned away from Idrisov—

As the Chechen resumed his turn—

David stepped down hard on his pedals, launching his Grasshopper into the gray sky just as Idrisov let loose with his autocannon and a flight of SRMs.

The barrage missed, but David was in real trouble. He hadn’t finished the assault ’Mech, and even Shamil Idrisov was too smart to give him a second shot at his rear armor.

And David’s Grasshopper would never survive a toe-to-toe slugfest with that Atlas. Especially after all the armor he’d given up to make room for the claw in his left hand. He’d given away three medium lasers and the armor for a weapon he didn’t dare get close enough to use. Not in this match.

Not against an Atlas.

If only he’d had the money to refit his ’Hopper before this match.

David pumped his jump jets, but still came down hard, crouching to take the jolt of seventy tons slamming into the ground at a velocity just a little too far away from zero for his own good.

The impact smashed David’s jaw shut and he tasted the iron tang of blood, tasted it without even realizing he’d bit his tongue. His mind had room for only one thought.

The Atlas.

Behind him.

David Singh ran for his life.

He sprinted through The Jungle, numbers running rapidly through his head. Idrisov was maybe two hundred and fifty meters back. He had an eleven kph speed advantage. Less than two minutes to clear the assault ’Mech’s long-range weapons.

Too long.

Idrisov’s ’Mech Hunter Autocannon/20 bit into David’s rear armor.

David juked right and hit his jump jets again, but not before his rear armor flickered from green to yellow.

The shrill warble of an alarm told him Idrisov had locked on with his LRMs.

Acting on sheer instinct, David jerked his feet up, cutting off his jump jets, disrupting the smooth parabolic arc of his fall.

For a fraction of a second he grappled with gravity as it yanked his beautiful ’Mech down.

Three FarFires flashed by so close that his ’Hopper actually fell through the trailing missile’s contrail.

David hit his jets again, slowing his drop.

Just as the missiles arced around to reacquire.

The Grasshopper came down hard, harder than after the first jump. The Heavy ’Mech’s legs gave with the impact and for a second David thought he was going over. He stumbled and dropped to a knee, putting his right hand down to steady himself.

Just as the three missiles flashed over him, slicing through the space where he’d stood only a second before.

No time for another turn.

Their impact ignited a glowing orange fireball that scoured the earth not ten meters behind him.

A grim smile touched David’s lips.

Sure he was an independent. But he was willing to bet no one in The Jungle had ever seen anything like that before.

And for a few seconds, the heat blast would mess up Idrisov’s thermal sensors.

David ran.

The earth shook as the giant machine lumbered after him.

The rattle of Idrisov’s autocannon filled the arena, but David juked right, juked left, letting instinct guide him away from the deadly shells of the mighty gun.

He wiped sweat from his face and glanced down. The river was a half-klick away. Perfect.

David ran and ran and soon the roar of the Atlas’s weapons fell to silence as he pulled out of its range. He came to the river and followed its course, extending his tenuous lead over the assault ’Mech, buying himself a couple minutes.

But that was all.

The twenty second warning sounded, notifying everyone the battlefield was about to shrink. In The Jungle the range was marked by pylons. A contestant who stepped outside the marked area automatically forfeited the match. Worse yet, over time those borders shrank, pulling the combatants closer together.

He couldn’t run forever.

David was rapidly going to lose his only advantage: mobility.

He had to do something.

He came to a giant waterfall, towering fifteen meters above the jungle floor, angry white water falling, bouncing, leaping, crashing, smashing off an immense wall of speckled granite, filling the air with mist and a deep, roaring thunder.

An obvious choice for an ambush.

Too obvious.

David’s eyes flickered left, to the opposite bank of the river.

Unless . . .

He turned and hit his jump jets, hopping across the narrow blue ribbon of water. He arced down toward the far side.  His legs touched down and the right knee quivered and almost gave out.

That’s two, he thought. Have to lay off the jump jets.

The footfalls of the approaching Atlas shook the ground.

No time to worry about the damaged knee now. David raced for the trees, trampling the ferns and bracken that covered the jungle floor, bulling his way through green bamboo, plum trees, and pine.

Then he quickly circled back and stepped into the river, wading through water only a meter or two deep. He turned and backed into the waterfall. For a moment his ’Hopper shuddered as the water buffeted him. The temperature in his cockpit dropped five degrees as the waterfall acted like a giant heat sink, draining away his ’Mech’s residual thermal signature.

Then he was behind the falls, bracing himself against the slimy moss-covered wall at his back.

He carefully side-stepped to his left, finding a spot beyond the waterfall’s main flow where he was camouflaged by spray, but could still see out. If he looked in at the right place, Idrisov could probably see in, too, but David wasn’t worried.

Idrisov wouldn’t bother to look.

David drew a deep breath and stretched his muscles.

Settled in.

He didn’t have long to wait.

The Atlas stalked into the clearing. It seemed to stare suspiciously at the waterfall for a moment, and then it noticed the burnt grass where David’s jump jets had left their mark. The great machine turned to face the far side of the river where David had blazed his trail of destruction through the trees.

Idrisov must have reached the obvious conclusion, because David saw him take a step toward the river.

That grim smile flashed across David’s face again.

Part of winning was knowing your opponent.

Idrisov was brave and honest, a gutsy MechWarrior who would hang on during a fight that wasn’t going his way. But he wasn’t particularly imaginative. And it was that characteristic that would keep him out of the Grand Tournament forever.

The Atlas had no jump jets, so it was forced to wade across the river. A smarter MechWarrior would’ve fired a few rounds into the waterfall just to be sure, but not Idrisov. He just plunged in.

David didn’t actually dislike the big Chechen from the Capellan Confederation. Instead he felt a kind of sad pity for the man. Shamil Idrisov was an artist who aspired to the mastery of Michelangelo, but who would never progress beyond crayons and finger paints.

And David Singh knew what it was like to want.

The water where Idrisov crossed was deep, coming up to the Atlas’s thighs. That would cut down on the great machine’s maneuverability when the time came to spring the trap. And Idrisov’s ’Mech was pushing through the water at an angle away from the waterfall, meaning the farther he got, the more back David saw.

With the patience of a master, he waited for Idrisov to walk right into his gun sights.

As the Atlas worked its way across the river, David was treated to a beautiful view of the damage he’d done before. Most of the Durallex armor that covered the great machine’s back had been stripped away. David saw the gyroscope’s armature through the rents in the Atlas’s hide, like some misshapen metal rib.

David smiled to himself. He was going to beat Idrisov in this exhibition. The purse was enough to allow him to fix up his beloved ’Hopper. More importantly, he was going to win a spot