Part 5: Fiction Contest Entry Winner

What can a loyal star colonel do when his Khan orders him to break zellbrigen so flagrantly? There is a conflict between duty to my Khan and to my own sense of honor- but in the end, duty won out. If I was not one for whom duty was superior to honor, I have no doubt that I would not have been approached.

Our forces had bogged down fighting on this pestilential world. Clearly, if some rash action were not taken, we would have fallen behind the other galaxies. Just as clearly, there was no honorable yet sufficiently rash action available; our enemies had entrenched well, with nauseatingly well sited and well layered static defenses. A full cluster of our forces could have battered themselves senseless on those walls to no effect; and some of the bolder star captains had tried. One option remained. Where a large force could not break through the defenses, a lone Mech stood a chance to slip between the cracks and wreak havoc on the exposed innards. That was already an imperfectly honorable assignment, but what made it worse was the choice of weapon chosen to cripple enemy defenses.

Second only to nuclear and chemical weapons, the fuel air bomb was a weapon with a feared and reviled history stretching back to the earliest days of spaceflight since before even the time of honored Kerensky. With its wide area of effect, it was impossible to select an individual target; noncombatants not bid into the defenses could easily be gruesomely killed. It was the weapon of a surat. When I was chosen by my Khan to carry it, I was physically nauseous. Yet I knew, and could accept, the political sense of the decision. I, as the only Warden who held the rank of star colonel or higher, was a threat should circumstances change. I had to be neutralized in some way, and so: I would be chosen by a Khan whose request I could and would not deny to carry out an intensely disgraceful act. If I failed, I would be dead. If I succeeded, he would know what I had done, and my shame would remove any threat I may pose. Elegant, if redolent of the disgraceful backbiting of barbarians and pirates.

I myself chose to set the timer on the fuel air bomb as a mark of contempt for this mission. One mech, and all the time I needed, I considered far too much firepower to destroy an entire firebase. I thus gave myself a time limit, and bid away my own life should I fail to complete my mission in a time some considered foolishly aggressive. I had to claw back whatever honor I could from this wretched ball of mud. Of the mission itself, there is little to say. No freeborn can match me in single combat, even when aided by the fiendishly clever defenses these Inner Sphere sorts delight in concocting. One after another, I reduced their mechs to charred metal, not even bothering to issue the individual units thrown in my path formal batchalls. That would waste time. We are meant to not waste time- are we not? And so I did not.

The sheer number of enemies told on my mech, though I fought doggedly on. I poured every lest dreg of my skill into a mission that would be a disgrace to me, a violation of all I held dear, and the end of any hope I might have to command a galaxy someday- or even to become Khan myself. Despite this, I fought no less strongly, because my honor was to obey. That, I feel, is what the younger crusaders do not and never will understand- why we must hold so strictly to our duty no less than our honor. Or perhaps I am becoming old, and feebleminded in my age. I wonder if they will let someone so disgraced train snot nosed sibkin?

Ah yes, the bomb. I reached the point I had identified as the optimal placement for the filthy weapon, and deployed it as planned. The firebase was destroyed. It was a great victory for our people and my clan. And when I emerged from the charred, smoking wreckage of the fortification that had held our warriors at bay for so long... I was hauled in front of a clan council to answer for my crimes. Stripped almost completely of my rank, I did not even bother demanding a trial of refusal- my revenge would come in the trial for a bloodname that happened soon after. To have a disgraced, old mechwarrior- and a warden, no less- grab a precious bloodname over so many ristars favored by the rest of the hierarchy dismayed many, I feel. To my mind, it was simply the just reward for following my orders.