This is a story I wrote as a prologue for an “A Time of War” roleplaying game I just started GMing.  Two of my four players are pretty unfamiliar with the Battletech/MechWarrior setting, so I thought I’d write up something to introduce them to to setting and give a little background on where their regiment stands.

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April 5th, 3048

Sgt. Kay O’Bannon, 17th Skye Rangers, Charlie Company

Dromini VI, Dieron Military District, Draconis Combine

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The Commando crashed through the trees at a dead sprint.  Branches and trunks shattered with sharp cracks as the 25 ton war machine rushed through the forest at nearly 100 kilometers per hour.  Inside the Battlemech’s cockpit, Kay was boiling in her own sweat.  Humidity fogged up the screens on her instruments and moisture collected on the inside of her cockpit canopy, dripping down in long, thin rivulets that streaked the armored glass.

She’d been pushing the machine to its limits for three hours now, and the fusion engine below the cockpit was straining with excess heat, far more than the Commando’s heat sinks could possibly handle on their own.  A warning light flashed on one of the consoles, and for the fifth time in as many minutes Kay slapped the override for the machine’s automatic safety shutdown.  Down below her, in the torso of the humanoid machine, a half ton of short range missiles cooked in the heat.  At any moment something could give, and the Commando would be ripped apart in a cacophony of explosions as its own ammunition cooked off, the force doubly destructive as it was trapped in the armor plating of the machine.  Kay tried not to think about it. Continue Reading