[center][b][h2][color=f26522]Jonathan McCord[/color][/h2][/b][/center]

One had to offer a certain level of appreciation when it came to Uncle Mack’s crew and being sneaky bastards. When it was confirmed that the Colonel’s challenge was going to be accepted and his mech delivered via a standard recovery flat, Mack cheekily suggested loading Jon’s [i]Marauder[/i] onto a standard equipment hauler. With [i]Ossie[/i]’s frame crouched low, it was easy to move at night like a piece of covered construction equipment. The steady seismic movement of a laden heavy hauler was concealed under the Knights’ lance, the Colonel’s mech on the flat and the incoming movement of the Crimson Fists. Apropos, conveniently adding to the subterfuge, two more trucks followed carrying a pair of tracked excavators. Before the sun was up a nice trench was dug for Jon to nestle into that overlooked the field where Wayne and the Crimson King would duel. It was a good looking set up, Jon had to concede. Mack’s men liked to work. He wished he could have taken a picture. The cooling turbines were just a few meters above the edge of the trench and a cargo net laced with vegetation was draped over everything. Only the lengthened barrel of the AC5 protruded unnaturally, but was likewise covered with loose vines and fauna that would burn off once the party started.    

The ground shook as the Knights moved up and Jon crouched, taking a clump of grass and letting it fall, watching the wind take it, comparing it with the ripple of exhaust bellowing from Knights’ reactor vents in the distance. To the north the young engineer and a few other astechs were working quickly around a field scaffold getting the Colonel’s mech ready. It was already standing and he watched a green pennant that was mounted on the shoulder bearing the Knight’s standard sway gently in the breeze as well. Somewhere on that field the Crimson King and his entourage would appear. Sighted for 900 meters it wouldn’t be easy shooting even with little wind for the autocannon. He’d have to make the first few volleys really count. Looking  behind him, in the dark of the tree line the mech’s presence was imperceptible. At the cooling depth of the excavation he reckoned he could probably crack off a couple extra shots before the jig was up. If he timed it right, they might even think it was Myrmidon hooked to a cooling truck. He reached in his pocket. There was time for one more smoke and he frowned as it was all he had left. He lit up and looked back at the [i]Battlemaster[/i] thinking it had a very regal appearance with the pennant attached and he thought it was a little odd that Wayne referred to it in the feminine.   
 
There was something different about the DCMS girl that he noticed during the briefing. When he found the Knights in the cave weeks ago, she was surrounded by the others, laughing and jovial at times, but this time during Wayne’s presentation she sat by herself and no one spoke to her. He shrugged a bit at the thought, not really making anything of the observation and watching the work continue. Even at this distance it was clear she was in charge and he could see her directing the others from the scaffold, occasionally going in and out of the top hatch or moving to investigate something on the ground. They seemed to be particularly concerned with the left arm and he continued watching them as he dragged down the last of the cigarette. She turned from the highest level of the platform and looked up towards his position. Her hair blew and something gave him an odd feeling, like she was looking directly in his eyes from half a kilometer away. He stood up slowly and shook his head, stamping out the butt in the mud as she turned away. It was time to fight, but before he turned away he opened the book tucked under his arm and as he often did, randomly let the battered spine fall open to one of the many dog-eared and battered pages. The underlined text drew his eyes as it had many times before:

[i]He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.[/i]

He breathed in for a moment and stared at the page as his expression hardened as the words set him in a mind to point a weapon and kill.