BATTLETECH:

GOLDEN RULE
BY WILLIAM H. KEITH
Asgard
Wotan
Lyran Commonwealth
22 March 2990

"So who the dreck is Georg Suertos?" Durant Carlyle wanted to

know. "I know he's a local fat cat-"
"'Fat cat' doesn't even begin to cover it, Captain," Major
Jonathan Colby replied, shifting the ever-present cigar stub to the
other side of his mouth. "Not by about ten thousand light years.
He's probably the richest guy on Wotan."
"And he wants us, huh?"
"Yuppers," Colby replied. "At least...he wants a couple battle
lances of medium to heavy BattleMechs. And on Wotan, that's
pretty much the same thing."
They'd been making their way through the more unsavory
part of town. Asgard was large, bright, and modern as near­
Periphery worlds went, but it was near-Periphery, and a bit on the
old-fashioned side. The Asgard Citadel loomed over the city from
atop the mountain, but the streets in its deepest shadows tended
to be narrow, crowded, and loud. Colby led the way, consulting a
torn slip of paper several times before stopping and pointing at a
garish fac;ade.
"What," Carlyle said, surprised. "In there?"
"The World Tree," Colby replied. "That's the place."
"I would have thought someone as rich as this guy would
have better taste in hangouts."
"Actually, he owns the joint," Colby replied. "And I never
question how a client chooses to spend his free time."
The World Tree was crowded, loud, and, shrouded in smoky
near-darkness. Two young women writhed and gyrated on a small
stage-in-the-round to the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of something
4 GOLDEN RULE

that might have been a canned version of "Hard Man" by the

Blackstarz. A few people danced where they could find room on
the floor; most of the joint's patrons hunched over too-expensive
drinks or stared at the dancers.
"What'II it be, guys?" a hostess asked. She was pretty, but
either tiredness or boredom had ground off the bright edges.
"We're here to see Suartos," Colby told her. He made a fiver
materialize between his fingers. "Colby. He's expecting us."
The woman made the C-bill vanish, though Carlyle couldn't
tell where it had gone. She wasn't wearing much, and definitely
was short on pockets. "Over there," she said, pointing to an empty
booth with her chin. ''I'll tell him."
They threaded through the chaos and took the indicated
table. A reserved light glowed above the shabby surface.
"So...do you have any idea at all what the job is?" Carlyle
asked his C.O. He punched in the code for a beer on the tabletop's
order pad. Colby did the same.
"Nope. Off-world is all I know. And he wants a two-lance
contract."
"Well, we're almost there," Carlyle said. Second Lance was
short a 'Mech-Pryor's Thunderbolt had blown a coolant seal and
fried a couple primary actuators.
Their drinks arrived a few moments later, followed soon after
by a beefy man in sharply tailored utilities. "Reid," he growled by
way of introduction. Carlyle didn't like his looks...hard and dark
and...just a bit slimy. "You Colby?"
"I have business with Suartos," Colby said.
"I work for Mister Suartos," Reid said. "He has a job for you, if
the price is right."
"What kind of job?"
"Vermin control. He wants you to put the kibosh on a little
invasion."
Carlyle watched Colby sizing the man up. "I see. Maybe you'd
better fill us in."
Reid pulled out a small holoprojector disk and placed it on the
table. It was an expensive little gadget, the sort of technology you
rarely saw nowadays. Data appeared in the air above it, along with
the ghostly image of a planet.
Just a hair over nineteen light years from Wotan was an arid
eyeball world by the name of Golandrinas. The innermost world
of an M7 red dwarf, Golandrinas was tidally locked to its primary,
 WILLIAM H. KEITH 5

one hemisphere forever baking beneath the sullen, blood-hued

sun, the night side capped by ice. The planetary capital of Rowe
was located in the twilight zone, the narrow band circling the
ugly little world where the sun gently and continually rose and
fell above the same horizon with the planet's slow librations.
Fierce winds and heat storms driven by solar heating kept the
temperatures around the terminator more or less bearable; only
in the Deep Night was it so cold that a circular ice cap had formed,
creating the glassy blind pupil of what looked like an enormous
eyeball staring out into the darkness beyond its sun.
"Trent is the infected pimple on the planet's ass," Reid told
them. A point of light marked its location six hundred kilometers
from Rowe, well into the world's night half. "It's not part of the
local government. It's ruled by a local petty warlord by the name
of Duboise."
A man's image replaced the planet hanging above the table.
Scar tissue and an eye patch beneath a hairless scalp suggested
he'd been through a few wars.
"Former Arcturian Guards," Reid told them. "Mean son-of­
a-bitch. Uses raw terror to keep the peasants in line. He's been
hiring meres, mostly from the Periphery-in particular some
scum called the Deathgeld. The word is he's going to march
on Rowe."
"Local forces?" Colby asked. "Planetary militia? Auxiliaries?"
"Nothing worth mentioning." Reid hesitated. "There's...not a
lot on the planet of any value."
"Really? Then why is Mister Suartos interested in the place?"
"Maybe," Carlyle said, speaking for the first time, "it has to do
with Vickers Mining."
Reid gave him a sour look that told Carlyle he'd just hit it on
the head.
Vickers was a major mining company for the entire district,
with its headquarters located on Derf, less than eighteen light
years from Wotan. It had operations on perhaps forty planets,
moons, and asteroids throughout the region, with an emphasis
on rare earths and minerals. Carlyle had seen a recent news item
to the effect that the company's stock had just taken a big upward
jump...something about rumors of a major mineral strike on one
of their holdings. On Golandrinas, perhaps?
"Is that true, Reid?" Colby asked the man. He chuckled. "Is
Suartos trying to protect his investment?"
6 GOLDEN RULE

"That's not your business, Colby. Look, 1 can offer you half a
million C-bills if you can disrupt Duboise's Golandrinas operation...
plus one hundred thousand per 'Mech."
"Uh-uh," Colby said, shaking his head. "One million plus one­
twenty. And you pay the transport."
"Eight hundred thousand, plus one-ten...and transport."
"Done."

Union-class Dropship Ragamuffin

Golandrinas
Lyran Commonwealth
5April 2990

Carlyle drifted in the common room of the Ragamuffin, falling down

the long and steepening slope of the local gravity well toward
the night side of Golandrinas. Through the obser vation cupola,
he could just make out the eyeball world ahead, illuminated by
starlight and peering up at the DropShip from the dark. The local
sun was in eclipse, but the planet was edged by a bright red partial
halo refracted through atmosphere.
"Your C.O. wants us to put down right outside of Trent," the
ship's skipper told him. Hank Austin looked at least as old as his
venerable vessel. With those weathered wrinkles and that white
beard, he would have been right at home on the deck of a Terran
sailing ship from twelve hundred years ago. "He got pretty testy
when I suggested a landing area farther out from town."
"Well, he always gets a bit short-tempered when he can't
smoke," Carlyle said, grinning. Colby's Commandos had engaged
the Ragamuffin more than once before. Austin and his ship
were frequent sights throughout the region, from Tamar to the
Periphery.
"Hey, the ventilation systems on these old Unions ain't all that
good," Austin said with a shrug. "You want to breathe, you keep
the pollutants down."
"Not a problem, Captain. By the time we hit dirt, he'll be
cranky enough to bite the head off a Shadow Hawk."
"So, I gather this is just a quick in-and-out?" Austin asked.
"Right. According to our intel, there's a 'Mech park at the
edge of the town, a kind of headquarters for Duboise's thugs. If
 WILLIAM H. KEITH 7

we can pop in on them before they saddle up, we can shoot up

their 'Mechs and be outbound again before they know what hit
them."
"What intel?"
"Suartos's man gave us a dossier that thick," Carlyle said,
holding up a thumb and forefinger stretched apart to show a
massive tome. "And the C.O. used that to put us together a pretty
good plan. Maximum destruction for a minimum of risk."
"Huh."
"What's 'huh'?"
"Nothin'. It's just that in my experience, the very best military
plans, based on the very best military intelligence, tend to be the
ones that go pear-shaped in the biggest hurry."
Carlyle laughed. "Don't worry! The intel isn't that good ...."
"What I can't figure," Austin said, scratching his beard, "is
what the hell a rich bastard like Suartos thinks two lances can do
against an operation like Duboise."
"Damfino," Carlyle said with a shrug. "I figure it's because of
the Golden Rule."
"'Golden Rule?'"
"Sure. You know: 'the man with the gold makes the rules."'

An hour later, Carlyle stood on the Second Lance 'Mech bay. The
Ragamuffin was under one G of thrust now, banishing freefall and
replacing it with the sensation of weight. The ship was backing
down toward the planet's night side with a shuddering growl that
rattled her bulkheads and sent vibrations rippling through the
steel deck gratings.
Carlyle had gathered with the other members of his lance
and the Commandos' tech team. They were fifteen minutes out
from grounding; time to saddle up and jack in. The lance 'Mechs
towered around them in the deep and looming shadows.
Pryor's 'Mech was still out of action, though they'd brought
it along to continue the repairs, strapped immobile within its
gantry. De Salva's Commando, Bryant's Catapult, and Carlyle's own
Shadow Hawk brooded to the right of the partially disassembled
Thunderbolt, with most of the gantry walks and accessways already
cleared away. The three of them had stripped down to shorts and
were strapping on their coolant vests.
8 GOLDEN RULE

De Salva whistled as Natalie Bryant's olive green tank-top

rode up a bit. "Nice, babe!"
"Hey!" Carlyle barked in his best none-of-that parade-ground
bellow. "Can it, Diesel!"
"Blake's Blood! You can't blame a guy for looking!" De Salva
said, leering.
"Never mind, Durant," Natalie told him. "Poor guy hasn't had
any action for so long, all he can do is look!"
De Salva's face went dark. "Screw you!"
"Ooh..." Bryant said, cinching her vest closed with a dramatic
flourish and sealing it. "Don't you just wish!"
"Both of you knock it off!" Carlyle snapped. As Executive
Officer of Colby's Commandos and the skipper of the Second
Lance, it was up to him to keep his unit functioning smoothly
and with a minimum of interpersonal issues. De Salva and Bryant
were always throwing barbs at one another ...but things had
taken a nasty turn lately without David Pryer's mellow, levelling
influence.
Every one of them, he reflected, was stressing out over this
contract. The trouble was that they did not, in fact, have good
intel for this op, despite what Captain Austin had said earlier.
The dossier Carlyle had mentioned was long on descriptions of
the planet and its population, but frustratingly short on details of
Duboise or his mercenary unit. Most mere units out here had a
rep, but the warlord and his unit, a 'Mech company identified only
as the Deathgeld, were both completely unknown.
Maybe it was a brand-new unit. Carlyle could only hope so. A
new unit meant that even if all or most of the MechWarriors were
experienced, they weren't used to working together, as a team.
He looked at Bryant and De Salva and wondered if he was
going to have the same problem.
Deathgeld. What the hell did that even mean? Geld, as in
"gelding," with the suggestion that they were out to castrate
Death? Or a mispronunciation, deliberate or otherwise, of "guild,"
as in a death guild?
Carlyle had no idea, and there didn't seem to be any information
out there on a mere unit by that name. Add Reid's secretiveness
concerning Vickers Mining and his boss's connection to mysterious
mineral strikes on Golandrinas, and Colby's Commandos were
practically flying into this op blind.
 WILLIAM H. KEITH 9

And that sort of ignorance was even more nerve wracking for
a company X.O. than having members of his unit at one another's
throats.
"Let's mount up, people," he ordered.
Carlyle's Shadow Hawk was two centuries old, but meticu­
lously and lovingly maintained. Massing fifty-five tons, stand­
ing nine meters high, its primary armament was an Armstrong
J11 autocannon mounted on its left shoulder. It tended to have
a problem with heat build-up, especially when using its Martell
laser and jump jets, but this op, at least, shouldn't be much of a
problem. Ground temperatures at the landing zone stood at mi­
nus twenty Celsius. Things would have been a lot more dodgy if
they'd had to fight on Golandrinas's day side.
He rode the gantry lift to the access hatch, where Sergeant
Kai Griffin was unsealing the cockpit hatch. "You're ready to rock,
sir," Griffin told him.
"Outstanding, Griff." Using the grab bar, he slid in legs first,
ducking his head to clear the combing.
"Don't forget, Captain," Griffin told him. "You owe me a C."
"I'll pay you when I get back." It was an ancient routine, a
means of staving off the looming fear. He had to come back if he
owed his crew chief money... at least, that was the idea.
Griffin cycled the hatch shut, then slapped it hard with his
palm. "Go get the bastards, boss!"
Hell, these techs probably didn't know who the Commandos
would be fighting today. They kept it simple: get out of here and kill
the bastards....
Carlyle's neurohelmet was in its rack above the seat. He lifted
it, then settled it down over his head, the padding nestling against
his shoulders. Once upon a time, some techs whispered, it had
been possible to run a BattleMech entirely through thoughts
transmitted through the helmet. Carlyle wasn't sure he believed
them, however. This neurohelmet was a far simpler and more
primitive affair, feeding the MechWarrior with cues through his
inner ears concerning balance and attitude.
After going through the voice recognition and engine start­
up sequences, he engaged the power, and felt the 'Mech come
to life around him; no longer a massive, vaguely humanoid
tower of articulated metal, but an extension of his body. Views­
creens on his console showed Griffin and several other astechs
scrambling clear.
10 GOLDEN RULE

"Two minutes to touchdown," Austin's voice said over Carlyle's

comm system. "Everybody strap in!"
Those last couple of minutes were always the hardest.
The shuddering howl of the Ragamuffin's fusion torch
increased in pitch and volume...and then Carlyle felt the bump
as the DropShip's massive pads kissed the ground. Austin, he
thought, is good. The Commandos had used his services on
several ops before this one, and he never disappointed.
Just so he was still around when it came time to dust off.
The enormous cargo deck hatches cycled open on darkness,
and the magnetic grapples holding Carlyle's Shadow Hawk upright
in its gantry released their grip. Carlyle pressed his throttle pedal
and the 'Mech stepped forward; the steel deck flexing, ever so
slightly, beneath his foot. "Let's go, people!"
He strode down the ramp and into the pool of radiance
from the ship's landing lights, as De Salva's Commando and
Bryant's Catapult followed. Carlyle's external sensors registered
minus eighteen Celsius, and as he cleared the lee of the ship
the wind struck him full-force, howling in at ninety kilometers
per hour.
The ground was bare and rocky. They'd landed well clear of
the nightside ice sheet, but frozen pellets rattled incessantly off
his cockpit in the shrieking gale. The sky overhead was black with
tumbling cloud wrack. As he stepped out of the light around the ship
and into the encircling darkness, a jagged horizon showed in one
direction, a red-orange streak of sky ...a dawn that never came.
Other 'Mechs moved clear of the DropShip, silhouetted by the
glare of the lights-First Lance, with Hauptman's Shadow Hawk,
Zeller's and Hernandez's Locusts, and Colby's 6M Wolverine.
"Initiate Plan Alpha," Colby ordered. "Carlyle? Hauptman? You're
up."
The company's two Shadow Hawks were generally tasked with
recon. "Roger that," Carlyle said.
The Shadow Hawk was Durant Carlyle's favorite 'Mech,
a near-perfect fusion of maneuverability and firepower. Its
maneuverability was in large part due to the three Pitban LFT-
50 jump jets mounted in its torso, with a combined thrust that
could boost the machine up to ninety meters in the proverbial
single bound. Carlyle engaged his jets and held them for the
maximum burn time, sailing in a low, fast arc across the dark
landscape.
 WILLIAM H. KEITH 11

The howling gale clawed at his 'Mech, but he held it steady.

Sixty meters to his left, Lieutenant Earnest Hauptman, from First
Lance, piloted the company's second Shadow Hawk, matching
Carlyle's flight, his jump jets flaring brightly in the night.
So much, Carlyle thought, for sneaking up on the bad guys....
But it couldn't be helped and the enemy would know they
were coming by now anyway, since they would have been
tracking the Ragamuffin's approach, entry, and touchdown
on radar. They'd allowed for that in the battle plan, with the
DropShip deliberately touching down just two kilometers from
the objective.
That objective was a BattleMech staging depot, the reported
home base of the mercenary unit the warlord Duboise was
gathering for his assault on Rowe. The ramshackle town of Trent
was half a kilometer further on and a bit to the south. Plan A was
brutally simple and direct: hit the depot, knock down the wall,
and shoot up the 'Mechs inside before they could be manned and
scrambled. Another jump should do it.. ..
Carlyle came down on rocky ground just outside the depot
wall. The gate was several hundred meters to the left, but he
preferred a more direct route. From a range of thirty meters, he
opened up with his autocannon, the heavy slam-slam-slam of
armor-piercing high explosive shells punching deep into prefab
ferrocrete slabs, lighting up the night with crackling, pulsing
detonations. Hauptman touched down nearby and added his
autocannon's fury to the storm. Bits and pieces of shattering wall
pinged and tinked off Carlyle's armor.
The wall was just ten meters tall; the two Shadow Hawks could
easily have leaped over it with a brief burn of their jump jets, but
the idea was to open a hole for the rest of the company, which
would be coming up from behind very soon now. Intended more
to deter foot infantry than 'Mechs, the wall crumbled and sagged
in billowing clouds of ferrocrete dust swiftly whipped away by the
blistering cold wind.
"Commandos, Recon," he called over his comm unit. "We
have a breach!"
"Good going, Recon," Colby's voice replied. "We're a few minutes
behind you."
Carlyle scanned the interior of the depot fortress through
the gap in the wall with IR, and picked up the fast-moving red
and yellow images of running men against the cooler blues and
violets of the background.
12 GOLDEN RULE

"Jumping!" he called, and triggered his jump jets, bounding

over the rubble of the breach and coming down in front of the
facility's 'Mech gantries.
What he saw there gave him pause.
The gantry array consisted of twelve scaffolding towers
meshed together, side by side and fifteen meters high, with
catwalks and power feeds running in every direction. There
should have been twelve BattleMechs there, the objective Colby's
Commandos had been paid to damage or destroy...but there
were just two within their storage slots, a WTH-1 Whitworth and a
35-ton Panther.
"Command, Recon," Carlyle called. "We've got problems."
"What is it?"
"Two 'Mechs in their slots. Space in the racks for ten more, but
they're all empty. I think they've flown the coop."
"Damn."
The conversation was abruptly interrupted by a stream of
heavy machine gun rounds clanging and rattling off the side of
Carlyle's 'Mech. He pivoted right, seeking the source of fire, and
saw infantry moving through the shadows a hundred meters away.
Bringing up the Martell medium laser mounted on his right arm,
he loosed a burst of coherent light at his attackers. A couple short­
range missiles, probably from man-portable launchers, streaked
out of the darkness. One exploded against his right shoulder, but
without inflicting much damage.
"Ernie!" he called, moving quickly to his left. "Let's wreck
those two."
"Copy that!"
Carlyle turned his autocannon on the Whitworth, an old and
uncommon BattleMech he privately lumped in with a general
subgroup he thought of as "DrekMechs." Whitties were slow and
cumbersome, poorly armored and poorly armed, with a badly
designed leg actuator system that left them prone to breakdown.
The destruction of the Whitworth factory on Dieron during the
Amaris conflict meant no more were being built. This one had
likely been passed down within some warrior family or other. It
was painted black with red trim, and something about that tugged
at the back of Carlyle's mind. The paint was scratched and scoured
in many places. The 'Mech had been through a few wars.
Carlyle decided to put it out of its misery with a stream of
autocannon fire, pounding at it with a long volley. The rapidly
 WILLIAM H. KEITH 13

pulsing detonations of white flame sent massive, whirling chunks

of metal spinning across the compound as he peeled open the
enemy 'Mech's torso with his high-speed cannon, then burned
into the internal structure with his laser. Portions of the gantry
structure sagged and twisted, then toppled, taking the savaged
Whitworth with it in a smoking pile of wreckage.
Hauptman, meanwhile, focused on the Panther, a decent
enough light 'Mech armed with a particle projector cannon and
short-range missiles. More SRMs were streaking in from the infan­
try position to the right. Carlyle turned his autocannon on them
while Hauptman finished off the Panther.
Damn it, where are the rest of the 'Mechs? The only answer
Carlyle could arrive at was Rowe, the planetary capital six hundred
kilometers to the east.
But something didn't feel right. Using his infrared feed, he
carefully scanned the interior of the compound. He could see the
infantry scattering, fleeing the barrage of heavy firepower. Close
by, he saw the heat flares of the two dying 'Mechs. The rest of the
compound appeared deserted, and that wasn't right either.
Carlyle stepped back outside the compound wall, still
scanning. He could see light and heat signatures marking the
town half a kilometer away, and...what the hell?
There was a giant heat signature north of town, perhaps half
a klick distant. He couldn't tell what it was from here, but it was
huge, as big as a large building and it was giving off a hell of a lot
of heat. It was noisy, too. He'd been aware of the sound from the
moment he's stepped onto Golandrinas' surface, but it had been
more or less masked by the howl of the wind. Now, though, he
could hear it more clearly; a deep-throated rumble punctuated by
shrill shrieks drifted across the rocky terrain.
"Major Colby! Recon."
"Go ahead."
Carlyle described what he was seeing, transmitted an
electronic copy of the heat signature, and added, 'Tm going to
check it out."
"Copy. Yell if you need help."
Carlyle put his Shadow Hawk in motion, taking several long,
bounding strides before kicking in his jump jets and launching his
'Mech into a low, flat trajectory. The winds and flying bits of ice
clawed at him; the rumble grew louder. He landed, broke into a
run, then jumped again...then again....
14 GOLDEN RULE

The Whitworth's black and red liver y had made Carlyle sus­
picious. Both it and the Panther were, if not 'Mechs exclusively
fielded by the Draconis Combine, then at least they were oper­
ated by House Kurita forces more often than not. Duboise was
supposed to be gathering a mercenary unit here; was he hiring
Kurita 'Mechs from across the nearby border?
Or was the Draconis Combine behind this operation in a more
direct and sinister way?
Run...jump ....
"Look, Major," he said over the comm. "I think the Combine
is in this somehow." He told Colby of his suspicions, of the Kurita
'Mechs, and the Whitworth's black-and-red color scheme.
"That doesn't make sense. They wouldn't launch a cross-border
raid this deep into Lyran territory."
"Maybe it's not a raid."
"Invasion? There's not a lot here that's worth invading."
"That we know of, sir. I'm almost there. Give me five minutes."
"You've got them. Rendezvous at the depot."
Eighty meters to go now. A final leap, jump jets shrieking ....
Carlyle came down in an open field strewn with white,
cr ystalline rocks. What is that. .. quartz? He thought so. He could see
the source of the giant heat plumes now...an enormous, mobile
machine five stories tall and fifty meters long, like a ponderous,
segmented worm grinding slowly through rock and dirt. The sound
assaulted him, an ongoing explosion that made Carlyle's Shadow
Hawk tremble. The Vickers Mining logo showed on the machine's
work-worn flank. The thing was old...probably a relic of the Star
League era. An MMR unit, a mobile mining refinery....
The leading edge of the thing, hajf-buried in the ground,
chewed its ponderous way forward at the blistering pace of
several meters per hour, pulling rock into its maw by the ton and
pulverizing it between massive, slow-turning crushers. Crushed
rock was then fed by conveyers to fusion-driven furnaces, then
routed through extractors that separated pure metal from dross.
Cooling slag was discarded from the rear, piled up like immense
worm castings and leaving a bizarre and desolate wasteland of
scarred and tortured earth in its wake. A pressurized control cabin
and crew quarters were located high up on the dorsal surface,
but the monstrous machine could operate robotically. Carlyle
wondered if this one had a crew. No cabin lights; it was probably
on automatic.
 WILLIAM H. KEITH 15

Movement to the right caught Carlyle's attention and he

pivoted, bringing his autocannon to bear.
ADragon-
"Major!" he shouted, wondering if Colby could hear him
above the thunder. "Confirmed! It's a Kurita op!"
"How do you know?''
The Dragon opened up with its lmperator-A autocannon,
sending a stream of high-explosive shells slamming into Carlyle's
left arm and side.
"Dragon!" Carlyle yelled, twisting his 'Mech clear. 'Tm taking
fire!"
The monster massed sixty tons, and sported a red-and-black
paint scheme similar to the wrecked Whitworth, confirming the
Combine's involvement. Dragons occasionally were found in the
employ of non-Combine forces, but House Kurita had a near­
monopoly on the squat, ugly things, with so many serving in their
line 'Mech units they might as well have been the trademarked
combat machine for the Draconis Combine.
The big question remained. Were these Deathgeld Mech­
Warriors recruited from Combine territory? Or were they here as
an advance guard for the Draconis Combine, the spearhead of
an invasion? The Combine border with the Lyran Commonwealth
was over a hundred light years distant, but it wasn't impossible
that the Kuritas were hitting Golandrinas as a prelude to a large­
scale assault on House Steiner.
How to prove that, one way or the other?
Carlyle triggered his jump jets, soaring left as the enemy
'Mech loosed a second autocannon volley. He came down hard;
he'd taken damage to his left-side jump jet, and it wasn't firing
with full efficiency. The Dragon was already pivoting, raising its left
arm which housed a Victory 23R medium laser.
Carlyle fired his Martell laser, hammering at the enemy
'Mech's massive torso. The Dragon staggered back a step, trying
to avoid that storm of coherent light. Its Telos long-range missile
system was mounted in a kind of heavy snout protruding from
its central torso. Carlyle hoped to cripple that before any Colby's
Commando 'Mechs came within range.
The Shadow Hawk and the Dragon were quite closely paired
with one another in arms and armor, which meant this duel would
quickly devolve into a slugfest that would leave both machines
wrecked and helpless. His single advantage lay in his jump jets;
16 GOLDEN RULE

the Dragon was as fast as the Shadow Hawk, and lacked his jump
capability, but its armor and weapons loadout were slightly better.
If Carlyle was going to win, he needed to find a way to beat the
Dragon using his maneuverability.
Carlyle jumped again, this time coming down squarely behind
the enemy 'Mech. He opened up with his autocannon...then saw
the raw flare of light as the Dragon fired its rear-facing medium
laser.
Damn! He'd momentarily forgotten that small design detail!
At close range, the laser pulse hit him squarely in his chest.
Continuing to fire, he stepped to the left, slamming round after
high-explosive round into the Dragon's back and flank.
As the other 'Mech clumsily pivoted in place, Carlyle began
to initiate yet another jump sequence, but killed the command
as he glanced at his readouts. The Shadow Hawk's viewscreens
were fluctuating, and another jump-or another direct hit by that
backside laser-could have unforeseeable repercussions.
Adding insult and a great deal of fear to injury, he saw three
more 'Mechs emerge from behind the massive machine-a
Thunderbolt, a Wolverine, and a second Dragon, all bearing the
Draconian Deathgeld colors.
A full lance of four heavy Deathgeld 'Mechs, deliberately
hiding their heat signatures behind the mining machine. The
only reason to pull a stunt like that would be if they knew Colby's
Commandos were on the way. In this frigid nightside environment,
a powered-up 'Mech would stand out like a tarantula on an empty
dinner plate, pumping geysers of heat into the atmosphere even
while standing still. The Vickers mining refinery provided the
perfect cover from which to spring an ambush.
"Major Colby!" he transmitted, screaming to be sure he could
be heard above the racket. "Hold off! Hold off! It's a trap!"
"We see it, Durant! Pull the hell out of there. Fall back and rejoin
the unit."
"Not sure that's an option right now," he replied, continuing
to exchange shots with the nearest Dragon. He began retreating,
stepping backward as the Dragon advanced. As Carlyle moved,
he triggered the short-range missile launcher mounted on his
'Mech's cockpit housing, sending a pair of Holly Derringers
streaking out to slam into the Dragon's torso. The explosions lit
up the dark landscape with a spectacular one-two flash, sending
chunks of shrapnel hurtling through the night.
 WILLIAM H. KEITH 17

Reload..Jire! Reload...fire! He triggered his laser again as well,

husbanding the shots to avoid building up too much heat. The
Dragon appeared to be in trouble. It shambled forward, stumbling
a bit, and when it fired its laser at a range of just thirty meters, it
was a clean miss.
Then the long-range missiles came streaking in... thirty Holly
LRMs loosed as a deadly swarm by Natalie Bryant's Catapult. Many
missed their intended target, possibly because of the high winds,
striking the ground or the towering cliffside of the Vickers MMR
close by, but just as many slammed into the Draconis Thunderbolt,
which ponderously turned to face the attack with an LRM volley
of its own.
The rest of the company must really have been humping to get
here so quickly. Carlyle maneuvered to keep the first Dragon between
him and the rest of the enemy force and continued to retreat.
Shifting his aim from the damaged Dragon to the _massive
Deathgeld Thunderbolt, Carlyle tagged its launch rack and left
shoulder with his laser, then sent a long stream of explosive shells
into its torso. The Thunderbolt turned back to him, raising its large
Sunglow Type-2 laser, but Carlyle fired his jump jets and sailed
toward the relative cover of the mining machine, overriding the
shrilling of his heat alarm as he came down with a crunch. The
Thunderbolfs first shot missed; its second slashed into the Vickers
machine in an explosion of hot plasma and fragments.
Bryant's second volley struck the Thunderbolt again; its right
arm, bearing the large laser, was blasted from its shoulder. Carlyle
stepped out from behind the mining machine and opened fire on
the Draconis T-Bolt just as more LRMs smashed into its back and
side. The heavy 'Mech began limping clear of the fight, trailing
smoke from the shredded ruin of its shoulder.
As Carlyle's heat warnings shrilled an alarm, he put two more
bolts of coherent light into the first Dragon, which ground to a
shuddering and furiously smoking halt.
And then the rest of Colby's Commandos swarmed onto the
battlefield, hammering at the damaged Thunderbolt, the second
Dragon, and the Wolverine. Colby's 6M Wolverine descended
on blazing jump jets and closed with the enemy's Wolverine, a
flightless 6K. Both variant machines had had their orig.inal au­
tocannon swapped out for large lasers, and for a dazzlingly lit
moment the two slashed at one another at a range of only a
few meters.
18 GOLDEN RULE

The Dragon turned its autocannon on Colby's Wolverine as it

exchanged fire with its opposite number, inflicting savage damage
on Colby's machine, but then Hauptman's Shadow Hawk opened
up on it with autocannon and laser fire. The Deathgeld Wolverine
closed with Colby, grappling with the other 'Mech.
De Salva's Commando, all twenty-five tons of it, slammed into
the far more massive 55-ton Wolverine, knocking it sideways and
clear of Colby's 'Mech.
"Present for ya, Natalie!" he yelled over his comm.
The heavier 'Mech turned, raising its large laser to fry the
impertinent Commando...and took a full double-flight of LRMs
from Bryant's Catapult, the explosions strobing and flashing across
its back and side in a perfectly coordinated strike.
"Good one, Diesel!" Natalie Bryant yelled back.
Carlyle grinned and pumped his 'Mech's fist in the air. "Yeah!"
It looked like those two could work closely together when it
counted.
The enemy, badly outnumbered now, was having trouble
facing Colby's Commandos, which were attacking from three
sides.
Crippled by Br yant's broadside, the enemy Wolverine turned
and began limping clear of the skirmish, followed by the surviving
Dragon, both of them harried from the rear by De Salva's Commando
and Hernandez's and Zeller's much smaller Locusts.
The Deathgeld Thunderbolt had stopped moving.
And so had Colby's Wolverine.

Union-class Dropship Ragamuffin

Golandrinas
Lyran Commonwealth
6 April 2990

"We lost," a badly wounded Colby said to Durant and the others
some hours later. "We beat them...but we lost."
They'd made it back to the DropShip, and now stood in its
sickbay. Swathed in bandages, Colby had been seriously burned.
The enemy Wolverine's large laser had partially burned through his
cockpit, though the mere unit's leader had ejected before it had
killed him. He would be out of commission for quite a while, though.
 WILLIAM H. KEITH 19

"How do you figure that, Boss?" De Salva asked. "We sent

those bastards hotfooting out of Dodge! Killed four of their 'Mechs
for one of ours, and hurt two more pretty bad! We even have a
dead Thunderbolt we can use for parts for Pryor's 'Mech! Sounds
like a win to me!"
"Yeah," Hauptman said, "but we got here too late to stop the
rest from marching on Rowe. Our mission, remember?"
'That Dragon pilot we captured crowed about it," Colby said,
shaking his head. They'd picked the pilot up on the battlefield
after the fight-Lieutenant Senichi Hiramatsu, a Combine mere.
"According to him, there are six more 'Mechs out there stomping
Rowe flat right now!"
"Seems to me," Carlyle said slowly, "our mission didn't have a
chance to begin with. We were being set up to take a fall."
"By who?" Bryant asked. "Suartos?"
"Probably that slimy bastard Reid," Colby said. He shifted on
his sickbay cot, grimacing despite the painkillers. ''I'd be willing to
bet he's working for the Combine."
"So why did he hire us?" Bryant asked.
"Because Suartos told him to," Carlyle said. "But he also made
sure to warn the Deathgelds."
"Might have been public relations," Bryant suggested. "They
could have claimed we were raiders threatening the planet, and
they destroyed us."
"But what is it they want on this rock anyway?" Hauptman
asked. "The Vickers mining claim?"
Carlyle turned to a corner of the sickbay where he'd left a
small duffle bag. He lifted it with some difficulty, hefted it, then
reached inside.
The heavy bar of soft, smooth metal he produced gleamed in
the bright lights.
"Gold?" De Salva asked.
"Exactly. After the fight, I got to thinking that the Deathgeld
wasn't just using that Vickers MMR for cover. They were protecting
it. My guess is that the Draconis Combine got wind of a gold strike
here, and sent the Deathgeld in to grab it. So I ripped open the
miner's side and poked around inside." He held up both hands
and flexed them. "I like a 'Mech with hands! Anyway, I found a
locked vault with walls that tore open like cardboard. I counted
five hundred of these bricks inside. Each one masses a standard
12.4 kilos. ComStar's current exchange rate will be about half a
million C-bills each."
20 GOLDEN RULE

"Two hundred fifty million C-bills," De Salva said, his voice a

near-whisper as he did the math.
Colby's eyes widened. "So that's...?"
"The Deathgeld's pay," Carlyle said, nodding at the gleaming
bar. "Most likely, they'd take a percentage, and ship the rest back
to the Combine. 'Deathgeld.' Y'know, I think the Combine put them
together just to make this raid. 'Deathgeld' could stand for 'Death
Gold,' you know? The strike here looks rich enough to fund all sorts
of Combine operations out this way without having to explain what
they're doing to ComStar. But the important thing is...."
"We just grabbed the Deathgeld's payroll!" Colby exclaimed.
"Right. When the rest of them hear about this-and I'll bet they
have already from the survivors of their garrison here in Trent-I
don't think they'll bother with Rowe."
"Yuppers," Colby said. ''They'll head back this way breathing
fire. That might not be so good for us ...."
"By which time we'll be on our way outsystem." Carlyle shrugged.
"Or we hide the gold, sit tight, and negotiate. Your call, Skipper."
"You think they'll be willing to talk?" Bryant asked.
"Of course. After all..." Colby grinned. "It's the guys with the
gold who make the rules ...."

To be continued in
Eyestorm
Available in the
Battle Tech: A Game of Armored Combat
box set.
 21

GLOSSARY
Autocannon (AC)
Today's standard autocannon is functionally identical to the
models used as far back as the days of the Terran Alliance. De­
signed to cope with improvements in armor technologies of the
day, these weapons maintained their destructive edge through
more than 800 years of battlefield evolution.

ComStar
A pseudo-religious order-controlling Terra-dedicated to
the preser vation of technology and maintaining a neutral control
over the Inner Sphere's communication network.

DropShip
Since JumpShips cannot enter the gravity well of a star, travel
to and from a jump point is accomplished by DropShips. These
massive vessels can carry cargo or passengers and come in a
wide variety of models for every imaginable mission profile.

Heat Sinks
The waste heat generated by battlefield engines and the
weapons they empower made heat management a first priority
as soon as fusion power and energy weapons became common­
place. Essentially a series of heat pumps and coolant lines running
through a 'Mech, these systems collect heat from coolant jack­
ets and coolant lines in heat-generating equipment, designed to
shunt heat away from vital components and out through baffles in
the unit's protective armor skin.

Hyperpulse Generator
The primary means of communicating across interstellar dis­
tances, capable of sending messages up to 50 light years at a
time. After the fall of the Star League, ComStar took control of all
hyperpulse generators and guaranteed their neutrality, thus en­
suring that as humanity fell into chaos and destruction, the ability
to communicate between stars would not be lost.

JumpShip
Travel between stars is accomplished by means of Jump­
Ships, which function by tearing a hole in space-time and mov­
ing through it from one point to another, up to distances 30 light
years away in a single jump. These vessels are very fragile and
cannot enter strong gravity wells, so they remain at the jump
points in a star system recharging their jump engines through the
use of a solar sail while travel to and from planetary surfaces is
handled by DropShips.
22

Jump Point
JumpShips cannot function within a gravity well and must
remain a certain distance from a star to balance out the pull of
the star's gravity and the push of the solar particles streaming out
from the star. The two best points for this balancing act are the
zenith and nadir jump points, which are located at the northern
and southern poles of a sphere surrounding the star. The radius of
this sphere depends on the spectral class of the star and affects
the distance that DropShips must travel from their JumpShip to a
planetary surface.

Laser
Compact and straightforward, standard laser weaponry man­
aged to survive the depredations of the Succession Wars while
their extended-range and pulse-style cousins were lost.

Long-Range Missiles (LRM)

Developed for reach, rather than punch, long-range missile
racks are typically mounted and launched in five-tube groups,
with up to 20 tubes in a single rack. Despite their notoriously less
accurate close-in capability, their flexibility and solid reliability at
long distances has kept LRMs in production for centuries.

Short-Range Missiles (SRM)

Short-range missile (SRM) system make up for its limited
reach with the heavier punch of its high-explosive warheads.
Mounted in racks of two, four or six tubes, SRMs are particularly
effective against vehicles and infantry, and are often a favored
weapon for smaller battlefield units.

Particle Projector Cannon (PPC)

Once considered the apex of energy weapon technology,
these particle cannons have excellent reach for the tactical battle­
field and can vaporize about two tons of standard military grade
armor in just three solid hits. Unfortunately, they are less effective
at ranges of less than 90 meters, as the particle fields at this range
are deliberately inhibited by the weapon design. This electronics
safety feature is intended to prevent the unfocused static of a dis­
charging PPC from overloading the firing unit's electronics.
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