Ilsa J. Bick - Battletech - Damage Control

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BATTLECORPS
DAMAGE
CONTROL
by Ilsa J. Bick
A NOTE TO READERS ABOUT SECURITY
These preview PDF files are being released with nothing beyond
the basic security; you need not be a subscriber to BattleCorps to
enjoy this fiction. Feel free to distribute these PDFs throughout the
community to harken the return of Classic BattleTech fiction!
However, please keep in mind that future PDFs will be released with
appropriate security measures to ensure BattleCorps can continue
to provide new fiction and art for the BattleTech community every
month.
BattleCorps Security Team
BATTLECORPS
Damage Control • Page 2
Scorpius Planus, Thuban
Bolan Province
Lyran Alliance
9 September 3064
There was a muffled roar as
heavy cannon fire punched the
sky, like the distant growl of thun-
der. An instant later, the floor of
the medical Quonset twitched
and jumped under her boots, and
Dr. Elizabeth Trainer felt her heart
slam into her throat. A steely talon
of panic dug into her chest and she
clutched at the edges of the chair
where she sat. Relax. They’re still
more than twenty klicks away.
She dragged in a deep, calming
breath, and instantly regretted it.
The Quonset’s cooling units were
going full blast, but the air was
heavy with ash and the stench of rancid sweat, rotten eggs, and
something sweet and burnt. It reminded Trainer of pork roasted
on a spit, drizzling juices into sputtering flames that licked along
the meat.
But she knew the smell wasn’t pork.
The front lines were to the east, on the black basalt expanse
of the Scorpion Plains that spread around the base of Scorpius
Mons, Thuban’s highest volcano. The Plains—a vast, ruined land-
scape of lava hummocks—were riddled with steam plumes and
sulfur vents. And that’s where the soldiers and BattleMechs of
the Twenty-Third Arcturan Guard were fighting and dying in a
battle against their brothers, the warriors of the Eleventh Arcturan
Guard. It was a battle that Trainer could smell and hear and feel
but, mercifully, not see because she was so afraid that Jonathan
might be there, in the thick of it.
Oh, God, please keep him safe…
A man’s voice—tremulous and very frightened—cut into her
thoughts. “I… I don’t know what happened. It was as if I’d been
airdropped into hell.”
BATTLECORPS
Damage Control • Page 3
Trainer blinked back to attention. The MechWarrior was perched
on the edge of a cot, his head bowed. His right knee jiggled up and
down like a piston. Trainer sat on a chair she’d pulled around to
the captain’s cot. There were no offices in the Quonset, and so a
psychiatrist had to make do. Now, she crossed her right leg over
her left, and clasped her hands over her knees. “I know it’s hard,
Captain Stanton,” she said, keeping her voice as calm as she could
even though she felt a slick of clammy perspiration along the back
of her neck. “But you’ll be better off if you talk about it. I know that
talking makes it more real…”
“Christ, yes,” said Stanton, jerking his face up in a sudden, spas-
tic movement. His eyes locked onto hers. His eyes were very blue,
like Jonathan’s: the color of sky on a cloudless afternoon. But
that’s where the resemblance ended.
Stanton had been found, unresponsive and nearly catatonic, in
the cockpit of his Zeus, a kilometer from their unit. Medications—
not many, because she wanted him lucid—had relaxed him, and
he was looking a little more… human. Not like the frightened ani-
mal they’d found. Still, there were purple smudges under his eyes
that gave him a haunted, wild look. The med techs had stripped
him out of his battle gear, and she saw that his cammie tee was
sopping wet with sweat, the fabric clinging like a second skin to
the muscles of his chest. A cigarette he’d lit but not smoked was
tweezed between the first and second fingers of his right hand.
White curls of smoke spiraled from the tip in sinuous ribbons.
Grimacing, Stanton screwed his eyes shut and slapped the palm
of his left hand against his forehead. “It’s like, they’re pictures…
they’re here, in my head, right behind my eyes, and when I talk
about it, I see it. I smell it, and I can’t move, I can’t…”
“Stanton.” Trainer took her hand and gently pulled Stanton’s arm
away from his face. She could feel him shake. “Captain, open your
eyes, and look at me.” She waited until Stanton did and then she
tightened her grip on his forearm. She had to appeal to honor and
duty; she had to inject the sense of his importance into his psyche
like a hallucinogenic drug. Manipulative? Of course, but this was
civil war.
“Stop.” She drilled him with a look. “Stop. This. Right now. You
understand me? You pilot a goddamn Zeus. You’re a warrior.
Shakes or not, you’ve been trained to do a job, and, by God, you’re
going to do it. Because we need you, Captain. You can’t afford the
luxury of withdrawing from the fight.”
BATTLECORPS
Damage Control • Page 4
“Luxury.” Stanton’s chin quivered, and she saw the shine of
sudden tears in his eyes. “Don’t you think I know that?” he said,
and she heard his shame. Stanton looked away, then seemed to
remember the cigarette in his hand. He sucked greedily; the tip
glowed hot red and, in another moment, twin streamers of blue-
gray smoke jetted from his nostrils.
“Look,” said Stanton. He swung his head back, and she saw that
while the tears were still there, he’d regained some of his self-con-
trol. Good, she thought. Got him crying. Halfway there. Now, got
to pace this just right.
“I… ,” he said again, his voice clogged with emotion. “I don’t ex-
pect you to understand. But these were… are my friends, and the
simple fact is that we’ve never been trained for… for this.”
“You’re a soldier.”
“Sure, but trained for a real war, not this! I haven’t been trained
to fight, to… kill my friends, my… damn it,” he said, and now a
single tear crawled down his left cheek. Stanton’s face was still
grimy with black ash from the battlefield, and the tear left a soli-
tary, white track. “That’s our sister regiment, the Golden Lions,
out there. Doctor, I trained with some of them. I know who they…
what their faces look like inside those machines. Those are people
in there.”
Oh, my darling Jonathan, are you out there, are you safe? “We all
know people, Captain,” said Trainer, keeping her voice as steady
as she could. Focus, focus on the mission! Her heart felt as if a
fist had grabbed hold and squeezed. “We all have friends… and
now it’s hard, but they’ll kill us if we don’t kill them first. They’re
the enemy.”
“But they’re not,” said Stanton. His lips were shivering so much
that when he took another pull from his cigarette, the tip bobbled
up and down. “They’re still the same people. It’s the damn poli-
tics that have changed, that’s all. This isn’t a war about principles;
there’s nothing just about it. It’s simply killing.”
“And that’s why you froze?” Trainer asked, choosing another tack.
They could discuss the illegitimacy of a civil war all day and, while
she agreed, they’d get nowhere. “That’s why you ran? That’s why
you left your infantrymen to fend for themselves?”
“I…” Stanton’s mouth opened but nothing more came. After a
few seconds, he scrubbed his lips with the flat of his left hand. He
BATTLECORPS
Damage Control • Page 5
looked away, but not before she saw the emotions chase across
his face: fear, shame. Despair. “I’m tired,” he said, finally. “I want
to be left alone for a little while. Please.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Please.” Stanton’s expression was fierce, and she saw that his
left hand was fisted, the skin over his knuckles white from tension.
“Just for a little while.” And then, in a low murmur: “You don’t
know what I’ve done.”
“And what have you done, Stanton?” When he didn’t respond,
she touched his shoulder. He flinched. “What have you done?”
“No.” He seemed to shrivel into himself. “No, I can’t. Not… not
now. I don’t,” he pressed his fists to his temples. “I don’t want
to think!”
“About what?”
“No, please, can’t you leave me in peace? Please, just go away,”
Stanton whispered. His eyes snapped shut then bugged open, as
if he couldn’t stand what was in the darkness before his eyes.
“Please.”
Trainer debated then pushed up from her chair. She felt as if
she were very close to getting at the terrors bouncing around in
Stanton’s mind. But while she had to wiggle into his head and
twist his thoughts to serve the mission, she couldn’t afford to
break him. “All right, Captain. But be very clear about this. My
job is to get you back to duty, pronto. Yours is to fight. Everything
else—love, friendship, compassion—is a secondary consideration.
Hell, they’re not even on the damn list.”
They locked gazes for a few seconds. Then, Stanton said, “I was
wrong about one thing. You know what I said before? About it
being like hell?” He dropped his cigarette, then crushed the smol-
dering butt against the concrete floor with the heavy wedge of a
MechWarrior boot. “It was worse.”
“Your hell’s inside you, Stanton, and you’ll beat it,” Trainer said,
unsure if she believed this. “You’re going to go out there and
fight… and you’re going to be fine.”
As she turned to go, Stanton said, “I want to ask you a question.”
She looked back. “Go ahead.”
“How can you do this?”
摘要：

BATTLECORPSDAMAGECONTROLbyIlsaJ.BickANOTETOREADERSABOUTSECURITYThesepreviewPDFfilesarebeingreleasedwithnothingbeyondthebasicsecurity;youneednotbeasubscribertoBattleCorpstoenjoythisfiction.FeelfreetodistributethesePDFsthroughoutthecommunitytoharkenthereturnofClassicBattleTechfiction!However,pleasekee...

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