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Chapter 1 – AD 3115


The sun was starting its long journey towards the forested horizon as Grandfather finished lighting his pipe. He drew deeply, and leaned back as he sat on the porch waiting for his grandson to return from school. The old man wore a light jacket and had placed a blanket on the chair to keep warm. The weather was starting to turn cold again with the arrival of autumn. Summer had been short this year; the spring rains had been unusually intense.

The holovid weatherman said this was a continuing trend due mostly to a solar cycle and would probably resolve itself when sunspot activity died down. Meanwhile, the sun’s increased output was hard on the planet’s communications satellites. Even incoming jumpships had been re-routed to JumpPoint Beta in order to avoid the radiation streaming from the unusually turbulent Sun.

Grandfather drew on his pipe again, and reflected that, whatever the cause, it was a beautiful autumn day. His left knee didn’t ache, for a change, and that meant there’d be at least a couple more days of sunshine. He was listening to the breeze as it passed through the trees lining the avenue, admiring the spiraling leaves as they fell, when a bus pulled to a stop several houses down the street. It disgorged several children in front of a small, wooden bus shelter. Most of the kids began walking down the street, by ones and twos. Three boys, however, began walking towards Grandfather, excitedly waving their arms and jabbering in loud voices. None were wearing jackets, but no one seemed to mind the cold.

“Did you see that tank?! It was huge! I bet that thing could blow up a couple of buildings with one shot!”

“Yeah, and what about that hovercraft? Did you see how big it was? I bet it could carry all the kids on our bus. And did you see how fast it could go? Man, if we could have that for a school bus, I’d never be late for school again!”

“Aww, you’d still be late. If you’d get up on time, that might help!”

This last comment came from the smallest of the three, who trailed the other two. Dark-haired and of smaller than average size, he seemed dwarfed by his backpack, which was stuffed with books and a jacket. One of the first two, a tall blond boy, stopped. Pulling something from his backpack, he gleefully held it up to the others.

“See what I got from the souvenir store? It’s a scale model of that Manticore we saw out in front of the museum. I can’t wait to build it!”

The other boy, of average size and with olive skin, also pulled out a box, showing it to the others. “This is a Yellowjacket! It’s a helicopter with a Gauss rifle in it! It’s a tank killer!”

The blond boy shrugged. “I bet I could just blow you out of the sky!”

“Yeah, right! I’m way too fast and when I get behind you, I’ll shoot you to pieces!”

“Nuh-uh. I have a turret. I can shoot you wherever you are.”

“So? Your turret turns way too slow. You won’t even see me! Right, Dillon?”

This last question was directed at the dark-haired boy, who looked at each model with a speculative eye. “I think you guys would have a hard time hitting each other. The Manticore isn’t fast enough to track the Yellowjacket, and the Yellowjacket would have to fly around so much, it wouldn’t be able to get a good shot at the Manticore.”

The other two boys paused to digest this bit of wisdom. The blond began putting his model back into his backpack, then stopped. “Hey, Dillon, did you get anything at the souvenir shop?”

“Nah, I was just window-shopping.”

“Sure you were. I saw you in the check-out line. Come on, you got something. Tell us.”

“Well, I ….listen, promise you won’t tell anyone. My Mom will kill me if she finds out how much I spent on it.”

Reassured by a chorus of “Cross my heart, hope to die” from his friends, the boy unzipped his backpack and drew out a box of his own.

“What’s that thing!? I thought you were gonna get a tank! That thing’s just a walking target.”

The boy withdrew a little from the other two, and started to shove the box back in the backpack. “Well, I was listening to the holovid and it said…”

“Dude, that holovid is for little kids. Everyone knows that a tank has lots more armor, and a bigger gun. My particle projector cannon would blow your tin can to smithereens!”

“Dude, shut up. My BattleMech has a PPC, and an autocannon and four lasers, so I know I could beat you!”

“Yeah, whatever. That thing can’t outrun my Yellowjacket! I’d blow your head off before you can even see me!”

Somewhat dejected, the dark-haired boy nodded as he finished closing his backpack. As he swung it over his shoulder, the group continued walking, still talking smack about each other’s models. Finally, the boys reached Grandfather’s house.

“See ya, Dillon! Call me, okay?”

“Yeah, I will!”

The smallest boy walked up the sidewalk to the porch steps, then bounded up them, two at a time. “Hey, Grandpa!”

Grandfather set his pipe aside. He winced slightly as he stood up, and favoring his left knee, reached out to hug his grandson. “Oof! My word, you’re getting bigger every day!” The two hugged briefly, then the boy disengaged and hurried inside, leaving the door open behind him.

“What’s the rush, boy? Come back here and close that door behind you. You know how expensive …..it is to heat the house…..” he trailed off; it was plain that the boy was already out of earshot. Grandfather heaved a sigh, and ignoring his stiff joints, gathered his blanket and pipe. Limping slightly as he entered the house, he carefully closed the door behind him. He laid the blanket across the back of the couch, turned to the closet, and began hanging up his jacket. “Dillon? I hope you didn’t spoil your dinner with any junk food from your field trip. Your momma made some casserole and I’ve got the vegetables ready to cook right now. “

A toilet flushed somewhere in the house, and shortly the boy’s face reappeared as he came out of the hallway. “Wow. That smells pretty good. What are we having again?” When Grandfather told him, he made a face. But Grandfather was firm. “Don’t try any of that with me, son. You’re gonna finish your veggies tonight, or you can forget about that sleepover you were plannin’”

“Yes, Grandpa”, said the boy. He slouched into the next room, and was about to turn on the holovid when a thought occurred to him. “Hey, Grandpa, wait ‘til you see what I brought back from the museum!” He looked around for his backpack, finding it on the couch. Unzipping it, he pulled out the box his Grandfather had seen earlier. “What do you think, Grandpa? The box says it’s a Warhammer. Did you ever see one of….” The boy stopped abruptly, as he saw the look on his Grandfather’s face and sensed something was wrong.

“Where did you get that?”, asked Grandfather.

“From the Souvenir store at the Museum. Why? What’s wrong?” replied the boy.

Grandfather sighed again, his lips compressed thinly. “Son, do you have any idea what your Mom’s gonna do when she sees that thing?”

“Uh…..get mad at me? I don’t understand – why would she get mad?”

Grandfather was about to reply when the kitchen’s cooking timer went off. “Hold on a minute, I’ll be right back.” As he headed for the kitchen, a thought occurred to him, and he added “In fact, why don’t you give me a hand in here?” “Sure, Grandpa”, said the boy, and he hurried after the old man, setting his model on the dining room table as he went. They went about preparing the meal in silence for several minutes before Grandfather finally rounded on the boy and asked him “Son, don’t you remember what I told you about your Daddy’s passin’?”

The boy looked over at him, then cast his eyes down. As he busied himself with setting the table, he said “Yeah. He died when I was eight. Mom said he died from an industrial accident.”

“What else did I tell you about that accident?", Grandfather asked. The boy thought for a moment, then said “Nothing, really, only that I should be proud of him.” He paused. “What? ”

Grandfather grunted as he opened the oven and pulled out the casserole. Shying away from the blast of hot air rolling out, he slammed the oven door shut with his good knee, then set the casserole on a countertop. “I reckon your Ma was right when she said you weren’t ready for the truth. I thought you might be able to handle it, but I guess ten wasn’t old enough. Son, your Dad died piloting a ‘Mech. Don’t you think your Mom might get upset if she saw you buildin’ a model of a ‘Mech on the kitchen table?”
The vegetables were coming to a boil on the stove, and the boy moved over and began stirring them with a wooden spoon. He shot a worried look at Grandfather, and said “I’m sorry; I guess I wasn’t thinking again.” Grandfather poured some cold water into two glasses, and set them on the table. Returning to the kitchen, he took over the vegetables from the boy. As he stirred, he thought about what he’d told the boy a year earlier. Grandfather stared into the pot as he remembered the story.

Wil Lassiter, Dillon’s father, had been a ‘Mech pilot employed by the local lumber company. He was working out on the newest site, a place ideal for cutting timber. The lumberjacks called these locations “dream spots”, because they were located right near a river, usually with a steep embankment. There was hardly any work to it; you just rolled the log off the embankment and it floated downstream, where the culling crew corralled the logs and got them ready for the lumber mill. Dillon’s father had been trimming the limbs off of a newly-felled tree, when a shout went up.

In those days, the company liked to blow stumps as soon as the tree was cut down. The idea was to recycle the whole tree right away and turn the place into farmland as soon as possible. No sooner would a lumberjack place a saw across a tree, than an explosives layer would be drilling underneath that same tree to prep the stump for explosives. Mark, cut, haul, boom! That day, the crew had been anxious to make quota – it was getting close to shift change – and so the explosives layer planted his charge under a tree that had been marked, but not cut yet.

What happened next was pieced together after the event. It became apparent after the investigation that, instead of blowing the stump he was supposed to, the layer hooked up the wrong wires, and blew the bottom right out of the uncut tree. Naturally, the tree fell, and as it was five meters across and a hundred meters tall, it made a hell of a noise when it came down. It was assumed that Dillon’s father, who had just finished trimming a felled tree, looked up when he heard yelling over the comset.

Witnesses said that they’d never seen an Industrial ‘Mech move so fast. With almost no time to react, Wil had still managed to lunge backward, enough so that the enormous tree only clipped the front of his ‘Mech. It shattered some of the glass and mangled the front of the cockpit. It must have injured Wil Lassiter, but he was apparently still in control, because while the tree’s glancing impact knocked the ForestryMech back ten meters, the badly damaged machine managed to stay on its feet.
Unfortunately, it came to a stop right at the edge of the embankment, which promptly collapsed under the ‘Mech’s thirty-five ton weight. Wil Lassiter fell another ten meters, right smack into the river. Of course, his engines quit when the ‘Mech submerged. His cockpit rapidly filled with swirling cold water, and the hatch frame was too damaged to open. Wil Lassiter could not get out. It took two days to recover the ‘Mech and its drowned pilot.

Grandfather shook himself out of his reverie as the vegetables threatened to boil over. Shutting off the stove, he removed the pot and poured the vegetables into a colander. He then dumped them into a bowl and, putting a pat of butter on top of the steaming food, called out to the boy “Dinner’s on!"

Grandfather and grandson ate in silence. Finally, as he struggled to finish the last of the green beans, the boy said "Grandpa, we had fun at the museum today. Thanks for the money. I had to borrow some from the teacher to get my model. Can I get an advance on my allowance to pay her back?”

“Sure, son. What made you buy that particular model, though?”

“Well, at school there‘s a group of kids who like tanks, and they think tanks are the best thing ever. They’re always arguing with the aerospace kids about who could kick whose butt.”

“And which group do you belong to?”

“Oh, none of them. I belong to the BattleMech group. We think BattleMechs could kick everyone’s butt!”

“Well, maybe they could. How many members have you got?”

The boy looked down at his plate. “Just two of us. My friend Freddy likes the smaller ones, but there are way more kids in the other groups. The Tankers have almost ten people!”

“Wow. Sounds like you’re outnumbered. But so were the early BattleMechs. It didn’t make a difference – they cleaned up the tanks and the aerospace goobers just the same. Changed everything.”

“I know! But when we try to tell the other kids how good the BattleMech is, they just tell us we’re big, slow moving targets, and that we’d get blown away. You should have heard Dennis today, when we were walking home!”

“I know, I know. I overheard you boys when you were walking up to the house.”

“Well, then you see what I mean. I just don’t know what to tell them. I read up on BattleMechs at the school library, but none of these guys will listen to me explain.”

“Son, there are five simple reasons why the BattleMech became the number-one fighting machine of the last five hundred years, and it’s pretty easy to explain, even to your friends.”

Grandfather pushed his chair back, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and slowly stood up. “If you’ll help me with the dishes, I’ll tell you what those things were, and why they changed the face of war. Then – maybe you can win a few more members to your group of BattleMech admirers.”

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