BattleTech: The Day When Heaven Was Falling (Eridani Light Horse Chronicles, Part Nine): BattleTech

By Jason Schmetzer

TRADITIONS RUN DEEP…

 

Other mercenary units fly flags at two flagpoles at their headquarters, one with their unit's flag, and other bearing the flag of their current employer. However, the Third Regimental Combat Team—a.k.a. the Eridani Light Horse—leaves one flagpole bare, as a reminder of the death of the Star League, and the other pole flies the Light Horse's unit and regimental flags at half-mast.

What triumphs and tragedies shaped the Eridani Light Horse and its traditions? What drove them to become a force to be reckoned with, an elite mercenary unit with one of the longest histories and the deepest traditions in the Inner Sphere? Witness the unit's origins in the Star League and follow their evolution all the way through the Succession Wars and the Clan Invasion to their downfall in the Dark Age and their resurrection in the uncertain future of the ilClan era.

 

Part Nine: The Day When Heaven Was Falling by Jason Schmetzer: During the Dark Age, an invasion force from Clan Jade Falcon arrives at Hesperus II intent on conquest. The Eridani Light Horse must help the Lyran defenders hold the line…but at what cost?
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201600464

Book preview

BattleTech: The Day When Heaven Was Falling

BattleTech: The Day When Heaven Was Falling

Eridani Light Horse Chronicles, Part Nine

Jason Schmetzer

Catalyst Game Labs

Contents

The Day When Heaven Was Falling

Jason Schmetzer

Coming Soon: More New Fiction from the Eridani Light Horse Chronicles

Battletech Glossary

BattleTech Eras

The BattleTech Fiction Series

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The Day When Heaven Was Falling

Jason Schmetzer

MYOO MOUNTAINS

HESPERUS II

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

30 DECEMBER 3144

Leutnant Gilda Pennon died smiling.

She saw the yellow-and-gray Victor BattleMech raise its arm, saw the maw of the 100mm autocannon swing into line with her ’Mech, and grinned. You sack of shit, she said, just as the Victor fired.

The seemingly unending stream of shells ka-blam-blam-blammed across the front of her Zeus and tracked upward, finally crossing her cockpit. The Zeus halted immediately; her screens went dark, and a bright red flashing "KIA" flashed in her HUD.

The Victor’s MechWarrior laughed at her death. Got to keep moving, girl, Lieutenant Thomas Cole said. End sim.

At Cole’s words the Zeus’ HUD fired back up, showing the 80-ton Victor standing there, tall and imposing in the early-morning Hesperan sunlight. The prancing horse of the Eridani Light Horse stood out in the bright light.

I don’t have to keep moving, thank you, Gilda said. I’m Self-Protection Force, remember? We don’t run around the badlands chasing every little thing. We stand between the factory and whoever comes against it, and mostly watch while the turrets blast them into tiny little pieces that regret ever getting on the other end of an improved heavy Gauss rifle.

Cole chuckled. If you say so. If that were true, I reckon you wouldn’t have come out here with me this morning. The Victor started moving, angling its path to pass on her Zeus’ left side. She pivoted and fell into step with the other machine; the navs were already set to return them to the factory complex.

Her Zeus was of the weight and quality of Thom Cole’s ’Mech, but his Victor had been places. The Eridani Light Horse was a storied mercenary unit. It’d been around for centuries, since the Star League. You heard stories off Galatea every other week about some two-bit crew of mercenaries running out on their employers or double-crossing the people they were supposed to be protecting, but the Light Horse wasn’t like that. They were true to their salt, as the saying went.

When Gilda had learned the Light Horse was coming to Hesperus II to help garrison the factories, she’d done a lot of reading and watching about them. She knew their history, backward and forward. She knew their traditions. And when they had arrived and the kommandant had asked for volunteers to liaise with them, she’d made sure her name was on the list.

Her Zeus had been built right up there, beneath those mountains, in the Defiance