REPORT: FOR THE JOURNAL OF THE FEDERATED COMMONWEALTH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION Assistant Force Leader Philip Talinin regained consciousness in time to see his DropShip lifting off without him. Fighting the darkness that surely means death to any Mechwarrior, Talinin managed to raise his head just enough to see, not five hundred meters off, the House Hiritsu Overlord-class DropShip "Fist of the People" rising on a column of fire into the black midnight sky. There were lights moving quickly about on the ground recently vacated by the DropShip, lights which Philip Talinin were sure were enemy 'Mechs and vehicles raging impotently against the fleeing victors. Talinin's House Master and Political Reliability Officer would have been proud of his first utterance: "The raid has ... been a great success, particularly if mine ... is the only 'Mech lost. For the glory of ... House Liao!" Talinin's next thoughts were rather treasonous when compared to the first. He tried to wave a defiant fist to accompany the bravado of his first statement, and indescribable pain shot through his entire body at the first hint of movement. He screamed curses in three languages, trying to will himself beyond the pain and past the pain and knowing that he would not succeed. His field of vision was obscured by a red fog, and his other senses were overwhelmed by the fire that ravaged him. As consciousness faded once again, Talinin was almost certain that he reached out to his right in the ruined cockpit of his Hunchback to activate his emergency locator beacon, but he could not be sure. He dreamed a convoluted dream of blood and fire and f lying. He heard over and over the words of House Master York, describing the goals and objectives and acceptable losses associated with this little strategic metals raid into the Federated Commonwealth. He heard how this planet, Raballa, had been a happy and productive member of the Capetian Confederation until the motherless savages of the AFFS descended with overwhelming numbers and killed nine-tenths of the population before enslaving the few that remained. He heard again the reminder that this raid was not truly an act of theft, since House Liao still legally and morally claimed all the worlds lost in the Fourth Succession War. Then Talinin was flying. He was flying down out of the DropShip, his ablative shield glowing with entry friction and his strap-on landing jets firing without a flaw. He still flew, floating overthe and landscape as his Hunchback made its best speed towards the refined metals storage area near the spaceport. The dream suddenly assumed a more blood-red tinge as militia infantry threw explosive packs and inferno missiles against the advancing Liao 'Mechs. Philip Talinin saw the faces of the citizens of Raballa, the little mining colony that grudgingly gave its titanium and iron to the hated Davions now, and he saw how they threw themselves in his path and tried to sneak SRM shots at his cockpit and were instead mashed to a bloody pulp by his Hunchback's feet. He saw the control tower at the small spaceport, and he realized that the old Capellan maps of the complex were all wrong, and that many improvements had been made since the war. Talinin briefly wondered, as two shots from his huge Kali Yama Big Bore autocannon blew the upper levels off of the tower, where the resistance fighters opposed to House Davion were hiding. The dream shifted to the prize, the object of the raid. Tons and tons of refined titanium, waiting to be shaped into armor plating and gun barrels, stacked like cordwood, loaded on to the carriers for the run back to the DropShip. There were dead men and women scattered about the storage area, some killed where they stood firing hand arms at the invaders, and several dead within the wreckage of the forklifts with which they had tried to ram the Liao 'Mechs. Talinin was beginning to wonder about the savagery and desperation that had characterized the defense of Raballa. He had started to question the unquestionable loyalty of these hapless citizens to the Capellan Confederation, when the battalion command center sounded the alert: "Enemy 'Mech forces incoming from the north! Estimated strength of one reinforced company! Loyal soldiers of the Confederation, rally at the DropShip!" With the omniscience of dream, Talinin believed that he could see the insignia, a red rose and bloody thorns, on the enemy 'Mechs as they raced in pursuit of the fleeing Liao raiders. But he could not be sure. Philip Talinin awoke with a start in the hot morning sun and the pain just about slapped him unconscious again. This time, though, he proved to be its master. The feedback yowling through his neurohelmet still messed with his eyesight, but the pain and the nausea lessened somewhat as he asserted control over himself, and he tried to assess his situation. As near as he could tell, his Hunchback and he were two hurting units. "Ammo explosion ... must have been an ammo explosion. Left arm and torso of 'Mech ... fail to respond to commands ... or diagnostics." He spoke for the benefit of his cockpit data recorder, just as he had been trained to do. Perhaps a new generation of soldiers of House Liao would listen to his words someday and learn from his mistakes. "I will ... try to stand the unit ... now." Talinin heard a shrieking sound, and felt shudders run up his unit's left side. A ghost pain filtered through the neurohelmet feedback, but, in a moment, Talinin once again had a full, upright view of the world. "Standing maneuver successful!" he exulted through gritted teeth. "Sensors ... still marginal at best ... and there seems to be ... damage to the ... left hip actuator ... but this Hunchback can travel. Armament reduced ... to one right arm medium laser. Three heat sinks lost ... but I still have ... more than enough. I must evade enemy...search parties and avoid capture ... until a pickup ... can be arranged." Slowly, creaking at every joint, Talinin felt his 'Mech lumber off down the long hill into the desert. Raballa is not the kind of planet that travel agents describe as 'tourist-friendly." In fact, there wouldn't have been much more than fat, scuttling scorpions and salt-laden dead oceans there if a survey hadn't located titanium deposits near the south pole. Assistant Force Leader Philip Talinin was discovering these facts for himself as he made his way into the wilderness. He found that he didn't have a whole lot to say for his cockpit data recorder once the novelty of his survival had worn off. The recorder's built-in chronometer would have shown hour after hour of silence and labored breathing, punctuated by the odd curse as that faulty hip actuator caused the occasional stumble. It was ten hours after regaining control, as planetary twilight was setting in, that Talinin once again shared the benefits of his experience with posterity. "Drek!" This was nothing new, really. He had uttered that particular expletive some seventeen times since he had been left behind, mostly due to the treacherous footing in the desert. No, the really interesting part came after that. AFL Talinin had company. "Look at the...size of that ... scorpion! No ... no, wait, I'll... have to describe it ... I know the visual recorders ... went out with the sensors. The damned thing's ... easily twice as ... long as...my Hunchback's foot! It must ... weigh two hundred kilos! Hey, it's... coming this way. Let me see if my ... last medium laser...has any punch left ... in it." With twinges of pain slicing through his neurohelmet, Talinin raised the Hunchback's right arm. He manually aimed the laser there, a task made doubly difficult by the pain and the growing darkness. He silently breathed a prayer, knowing that his Political Reliability Officer wouldn't appreciate such anti-State mutterings on an official cockpit data recorder, and triggered the weapon. The air crackled with energy, and the familiar weaponfire surge of heat washed over Talinin. The gigantic scorpion vanished in a blue bolt, replaced by a scorch mark and some unidentifiable slick on the sand and rocks. Talinin was satisfied, and said so. "Thanks to...the target of opportunity...1 know now I ... can effectively aim my last... remaining weapon. I ... am not defenseless." Talinin saw then that he was in a shallow depression, hidden from the surrounding desert plains by a low rocky rim. Without effective sensors or navigational computers, he did not feel that nighttime travel was worth the risk. He decided that this was as good a place as any to sleep for the night. Besides, in his wounded and somewhat delirious state, he had been remembering last night's vivid dreams. He wanted desperately to return to them, perhaps to see just what had gone wrong with the mission. He was almost certain that the dreams held the key to his failure and his fate, but he could not be sure. Although his first dream had been of flying, his second night's fantasy travels were accomplished with feet of pure lead. He ran and ran, towards a DropShip that forever stayed at a distance, even as the enemy 'Mechforce gained on his Hunchback with relentless speed. Talinin turned left, triggering his autocannon at the nearest enemy 'Mech, a Phoenix Hawk whose pilot saw the error of his ways and decided to confront the Hunchback from a discreet distance. That wild shot bought Talinin some time, but his leaden feet betrayed him again. He could come no closer to his DropShip than half a kilometer. With a sinking heart, Assistant Force Leader Talinin saw the last Liao 'Mech aside from himself enter the DropShip. The great doors closed, and the engines began to power up for the boost to orbit. He was to be left for dead! Suddenly, Talinin's threat receiver beeped a warning. Being abandoned on a hostile planet was not to be his most immediate concern. Caught flat on his supernaturally-heavy feet, Talinin and his Hunchback could do nothing as a pair of 7K Wolverines, replete with pulse lasers and twin SRM launchers, jumped onto his position. One landed not fifty meters in front of him, while the other landed the same distance directly behind him. Talinin triggered his autocannon and lasers at the front target, centering the crosshairs on the large red rose with bloody thorns painted dead center on the torso. As he did so, Talinin incongruously thought of a joke. There was a kind of phony commendation that he had heard was given out by the mercs of McCarron's Armored Cavalry. It was given to any member who survived a major weapon barrage directed at his or her thin rear armor plating. The award came as a very small sticker, to be attached to the rear of the recipient's BattleMech, directly over the engine housing. The sticker read: "IF YOU CAN READ THIS, I'M SCREWED." Talinin had once considered this kind of horseplay demeaning, not at all worthy of Mechwarriors in the service of House Liao. Now, however, from the perspective of memory and dream, he found the idea somehow appealing. He certainly had the experience necessary to deserve the award. The Wolverines fired everything they had, slashing the Hunchback's torso armor into so many aligned-crystal steel toothpicks. Talinin experienced the impacts in a kind of dream slow-motion, watching the missiles blowholes through his laser-softened 'Mech's midsection. He marveled at how the blasts from the two attacks canceled each other out, allowing him to keep his Hunchback standing with very little effort. His dreamy happiness was rudely interrupted, however, when his five remaining autocannon shells, massaged by laser heat and chemical explosions, cooked off simultaneously. Philip Talinin felt the searing pain run up his left side, as his neurohelmet echoed his 'Mech's agony. The CASE system protected his engine, but the explosion gathered up all the guts from the left torso and ejected them out the back in a thick spray of fire, rendering the left arm and side useless. The Hunchback dropped to its knees, and the two Wolverines jumped away, apparently content with their evening's work. Consciousness in the dream became questionable, and Talinin was aware of a sudden quiet as his Hunchback slowly tipped forward. In the dream, there came the distant sound of thunder as the Liao DropShip "Fist of the People" lifted off into space. Talinin heard his own voice say "The raid has ... been a great success, particularly if mine ... is the only 'Mech lost. For the glory of ... House Liao!" He tried to stop himself from gesturing, but he failed. He seemed doomed to dream a repeat performance. Through the haze of pain, he could sense his hand moving towards the activation toggle for the emergency locator beacon. It was in an awkward position, and there was so much noise from the DropShip and so much ruined and dangling equipment in the cockpit. He thought he had hit the switch, just before he woke up, but he could not be sure. Assistant Force Leader Talinin awoke, and the sound of DropShip jets stayed with him. He shook his head slowly so as not to dislodge his neurohelmet, but the sound became steadily louder. It was a moment before Talinin realized that there was, in fact, a DropShip landing quite close nearby. He gingerly stood his unit up, favoring the damaged hip actuator and avoiding even the slightest stress on the shredded left side or arm. The dawn had only recently arrived, and the huge spherical DropShip descended with the low sun behind it. The cockpit data recorder caught Talinin's next words. "Okay... all right ... here goes ... nothing. Either that's ... the "Fist of the... People"...or I've had it. One way or ... the other ... it ends here." Talinin rose out of the depression and marched his unit at his best speed towards the landing DropShip. There is no indication on the cockpit data recorder exactly when Assistant Force Leader Philip Talinin realized that he was approaching a DropShip whose markings, a huge red rose with bloody thorns, matched those of his enemy. His course did not waver, nor did his speed. He simply moved in as fast as his condition allowed, opening fire with his laser upon reaching close range. In fact, the cockpit data recorder only has nine more words on its tapes, recorded when the DropShip finally opened one of its doors and a Wolverine was sent out to confront Talinin: "Good God! How did they make it so big?!" Philip Talinin will be quite a long time in recovering from his injuries. I have spoken to him at length, here aboard the Lancaster's Rose DropShip "Crown of Thorns" in the secure hospital area. He has been through a terrible ordeal, and the Mechwarriors of the 'Rose should have a certain admiration for his courage and stamina. His story must be believed, because there is so much corroborating data, much of which comes from Philip's own memories, as well as from the testimony of the two Wolverine pilots involved in the incident. When I examined Philip that morning, he was wearing the traditional neurohelmet and cooling vest of a Mechwarrior. He had been horribly injured, with five broken ribs on the left side and multiple compound fractures of the left arm and hand. His left hip had suffered major ligament damage, making walking impossibly painful. He was clutching a data recorder, a battery power unit, and a laser pistol in his good right arm. His wounds imitated those of his BattleMech, a Hunchback, with a coincidence terrible to consider. You see, Philip believes he walked into the desert in his 'Mech. He did not. His Hunchback lies where it first fell, some thirty kilometers away from where we found Philip, alone and raving in the desert. We believe, from all the available evidence, that Assistant Force Leader Talinin triggered his eject mechanism when he meant to switch on his locator beacon, and in doing so injured himself seriously. It would seem that Philip suffered some kind of body-image breakdown, believing his 'Mech to be himself and translating his own injuries and physical problems into 'Mech damage. The severity and complexity of such a psychosis is unique in the literature, and the effectiveness of any treatment is not predictable. We can hope that there will someday be a cure for Philip...but we cannot be sure. Dr. Michelle Campbell Chief Medical Officer Lancaster's Rose Nadir Jump Point Station Sarna, April 3053 Back to BattleTechnology 21 Table of Contents Back to BattleTechnology List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by Pacific Rim Publishing. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com