Hound55
Cyberlad
Half Pint
mickilennial
Ezekiel
Master Bruce
PrinceAlexus
Pilatus
Chronic
MST3K 4ever
Main Recreation Yard
Fort Tie Shan
1800 Hours
29 March, 3030
"And you're sure about this?" Captain Sally Roth asked the dirt-covered boy as she tended to the scrapes on his knees and elbows among the crowd of other prisoners. "I need to know this isn't just some story you made up."
"It's true, honest!" Diego said, fussing as she wrapped the big scab on his left forearm, trying not to get stepped on by one of the grown-ups around them. "I think it goes all the way to the outside!"
"Keep your voice down," the Captain said. "If you're right about this, we can--"
"Sal, do you know what's going on?" her cousin Cynthia butted in, shoving and squirming her way through the crowd. "The guards normally don't bring us all out into the yard at once. And they definitely don't leave us out here until--"
"Attention, prisoners!" a voice blared over the loudspeakers in the courtyard. Captain Roth winced as she recognized the voice; it was Grigori Ilyanovich, the former Maskirovka agent who had taken over the operation of the prison, and had interrogated her on more than one occasion. "Due to the changing political and tactical situation on the continent, the circumstances of your captivity are being...altered. Before we begin, we have a special visitor for you."
The doors to the central compound swung open, and several dozen NPDRE soldiers with assault rifles, riot shields, and heavy body armor emerged. Forming a phalanx, they pushed the crowd back until another figure emerged. This one was wearing what appeared to be a PAL power armor suit, decorated in gaudy gold and red trim and a flowing crimson cape. Around him, a paid of small camera drones buzzed, no doubt broadcasting his performance on local news outlets.
"Criminals, malcontents, sympathizers, prisoners all," he addressed the huddled masses, his voice connected to the loudspeakers from a microphone inside his helmet, "I am the Crimson King, proprietor and commanding officer of the Crimson Fists. You are all here because you have committed acts of opposition against the order that the New People's Democratic Republic of Espia have put in place, an order that I have come to this planet to protect and enforce."
Roth scoffed under her breath. Her people hadn't 'opposed' this new order at all; they had been waylaid during the coup, brought here to be used as political prisoners, or as hostages in case Gaius and his Knights gave the new rulers any trouble. She knew sooner or later, they were going to start using them to put pressure on Gaius, and supposed the time had finally come.
"The mercenary terrorists known as Gawain's Green Knights have been a destabilizing figure on this planet for far too long," he stated. "They have raided supply lines, robbing the noble troops of the Espian Guard of food, medicine, and other vital supplies. They have endangered the entire city of South Nui Awa with their squabbling against the Heavenly Sword, and in their dealings with the Liao-loyal terrorists, have acquired weapons of mass destruction. They have slaughtered civilians in the Keahi Township and then pressured Comstar to blame my own loyal Mechwarriors for their atrocities, Mechwarriors whom have bravely sacrificed their own lives in the name of the revolution. I have decided, this shall no longer stand!"
Sally smirked; she didn't like what was coming, but it did give her some bit of comfort to know that whoever this pompous asshole was, the Green Knights had been giving them hell.
"Bring forward the captain of the Green Knights' ship!" the Crimson King commanded. The armed guards pushed forward, driving a wedge to part the crowd of prisoners as they slowly advanced towards Sally and Cynthia.
"Cynthia," Sally asked her cousin, "Did you get everything on the shopping list?"
"We got the last item this morning," the quartermaster of the No Leaf Clover nodded.
"Tell the boys in the machine shop that it's time to make the call," she said, using the toe of her boot to mark a message in short-hand in the dirt as the guards approached. "Send that out onto the airwaves, and pray to the gods of space that the GDK are listening."
"Got it," Cynthia said as the guards grabbed Sally by the arms, dragging her towards the Crimson King. Cynthia looked at the marks that Sally had drawn in the dirt, committed them to memory, then swept them clean.
The NPDRE soldiers were none too gentle with Sally as they brought her to the costumed mercenary, yanking her arms to pull her forward, shoving or smacking her to push her along. Eventually they parted, and Sally found herself facing the so-called King. Up close, she had to admit the theatrical getup was far more intimidating than she'd thought.
"You are Sally Roth, of the No Leaf Clover, are you not?" the Crimson King addressed her.
"Captain Sally Roth," she said, refusing to be cowed by a man playing a holo-vid villain.
"And your ship has been under contract with Gawain's Green Knights for over a decade, is that correct?"
"I let them use my bunks and my Mech bays from time to time," she answered. As the camera drones buzzed around her, she knew this farce was only getting started.
"So then, would you say you have come to know the Green Knights and their people?" he asked, circling her like a predator stalking its prey.
"The Knights are out there," she said, "and they're kicking your asses, by the sound of it. The people you've got locked up in here are my people."
"Then you claim responsibility for the people in this fort?"
Sally stared him down. "I do. If you want to hurt these people, you'll have to answer to me."
The King nodded. "I see. Choose ten."
"I'm sorry?"
"Ten of your people."
"...for what?"
"Oh come now, Captain Roth," the Crimson King said in a condescending voice, "you know full well the answer to that question."
Sally glared laser-fire at this masked bastard. She did know what he meant: he was going to make her pick which of her people he was going to have executed.
"And if I don't, I assume...?"
"Yes," the threat didn't need to be stated out loud: she chooses ten people to die, or he kills everyone. "Go on: I want to see which of the people under your protection that you care for the least."
Captain Roth wanted for all the world to lunge at this monster, to grab one of the guards' weapons and shoot him down where he stood. But she knew that would only get her people killed.
Blinking back a few tears, she said "All right. Ten people. I can do it."
Stepping out into the crowd, she looked at the faces of people she'd worked with for years, people who had trusted her and believed in her. Most were scared, shrinking away from her, terrified that her finger would rise to point them out.
"I'll go," Cynthia said, stepping forward. Sally's eyes widened.
"Cynthia, I--"
"This is what I get for wanting to play space-hero with you and your boyfriend," she said. As she stepped towards her, and made sure the camera drones were far enough away, she said "The message has been sent. The call's going out any minute now."
Sally nodded, and one by one, a few more stepped forward. Old hands who had served on the Clover for as long as she could remember, new recruits who wanted to show that they belonged, parents who wanted to make sure it was them and not their kids.
"Eckstein," she stated the names to the Crimson King as they approached, "Ronaldo, Perry, Qiao, Surin, Gutierrez, Frankfurt, Billingsley, Roth..." her voice caught as she said her cousin's name, "...and myself."
The Crimson King gave a slow, sarcastic clap. "Very good, very good."
His gaze turned towards one of the camera drones, which flew in for a dramatic close-up.
"Colonel Gaius Wayne:" he addressed the camera, "I trust this message will reach you. You and your Green Knights have until 0700 hours tomorrow morning to turn yourselves in and face punishment for your crimes. If you do not, my men will be forced to execute...everyone in this prison except these ten people."
"What?!" Roth lunged, before a sharp blow to from the butt of a rifle sent her consciousness spiraling into blackness.
As the guards began holding back the panicked crowd, a few of the prisoners began to huddle together.
The quartermaster had been meticulous about keeping track of what items the prisoners had smuggled into Fort Tie Shan, or had gotten their hands on during their work shifts. She knew who had what, and what could be done with all of it. Cynthia Roth never cared for the mercenary life or the people who came with it, but she was brilliant at organization and planning.
Thompson had pulled a handful of resistors from a broken electrical fan.
Ramirez had pried some capacitors from some of the power tools at the neodymium mines.
Dobbs had gotten a battery and a length of wire from a flashlight.
Somehow or other, Ahsan had gotten a dead noteputer and grabbed the circuit board.
And Marston had snuck a small soldering iron out of the machine shop.
Towards the back of the crowd-- not so close that the guards would reach them, not so far that they would stick out, the five of them passed the items back and forth, attaching pieces together when the guards were too distracted to notice the smoke from the solder.
By the time the panicking and the near-riot had been quelled, the five had finished the assembly. It was crude, the signal wouldn't be strong, the range wouldn't be far, and the battery wouldn't last, but it was a chance.
"Pssst, hey kid!" Thompson whispered harshly. A few feet away, Diego looked up.
"Me?"
"Yeah, c'mere," he gestured, "Captain Roth has a job for us."
Nervously, Diego approached, and the five big men all turned their backs on him. He realized that with them all surrounding him, the guards couldn't see him.
"Take this," Thompson said, handing the kid a small device with an antenna on one end, a button on the other, and a mess of electronics in between. "You know Morse code?"
"Not really," Diego shook his head.
"Okay," the man sighed, "Then listen to me very carefully. That button on the end of that thing? I want you to press it like this, a 'dot' means you only tap it, a 'dash' means you hold it down for a second. Got it?"
"Got it," he nodded.
"Okay, here goes," the man thought as he ran through the code in his own head. "Okay. Dash-dash-dot...dash-dash-dot...dash-dot-dash....stop. Dot-dot-dot....dash-dash-dash....dot-dot-dot....stop. Dash...dot-dot-dash...dash-dot...dash-dot...dot...dot-dash-dot-dot...."
"Uncle Mack's" Industrial Scrapyard
Property of Maxwell Metals Incorporated
A subsidiary of the Aqua Vitae Corporation
100 km south of Geom Haebyon
150 km northwest of Fort Tie Shan
1850 hours
29 March, 3030
"I don't know how we're going to do it," Cadet Higgins said. "You saw the transmission. If they see our Mechs coming, they'll just waste our civvies anyway."
"Well, we can't just do nothing!" Lieutenant Lyons protested. "Those are our people, we can't just let them be executed!"
The three members of the Green Knights' mobile HQ crew, collectively known as "the GDK" (short for, "those god-damn kids," as the Colonel had been heard muttering on more than one occasion) were bickering inside the monitoring station once again, still keyed up after seeing the news transmission sent out by the leader of the Crimson Fists.
"Maybe you can't," Higgins snorted. "Have you looked at the gun emplacements on that place? Attacking that fort is a suicide mission. Either we don't attack the prison and they all die, or we do attack the prison, we all die, and they all die anyway."
"Guys," Cadet Windham muttered, "Can you quiet down? Something on one of the FM bands is a little--"
"The Colonel will figure it out!" Lyons said. "I know he's got a plan for something like this!"
"Oh gods," Higgins rolled his eyes. "Look, I respect the Colonel just as much as anyone else here, but he's not infallible. If something's impossible, then it's impossible, you can't just wish something to work and--"
"No seriously, guys," Windham said, "One of the civilian channels is getting some weird interference. Let me listen..."
"I'm not giving up on my friends!" Lyons said. "Just because you don't have any doesn't mean--"
"SHUT UP FOR A SECOND!" Higgins yelled out. "Listen to this-- it's an FM signal. I'm tracing the source of the interference, and...yeah, look at this, it's coming from inside the fort!"
Together, the three listened as one of the local country music stations broke into static fuzz, followed by a series of long and short beeps. When the beeping ended, the static faded back into steel guitars and honky-tonk, then a few moments later, the static came back, along with the beeps.
Lyons grabbed a scrap of paper and a pencil, and began decoding.
G - G - K
S - O - S
T - U - N - N - E - L
U - N - D - E - R
F - O - R - T
L - O - O - K
S - O - U - T - H
W - E - S - T
N - O
M - O - R - E
T - I - M - E
C - O - M - E
G - E - T
U - S
S - O - S
T - U - N - N - E - L
U - N - D - E - R
F - O - R - T
L - O - O - K
S - O - U - T - H
W - E - S - T
N - O
M - O - R - E
T - I - M - E
C - O - M - E
G - E - T
U - S
"Holy-- --shit," Higgins and Lyons both said at once.
A few minutes later, Colonel Gaius Wayne stepped out into the main yard of Uncle Mack's Scrapyard, and called out.
"GREEN KNIGHTS!" he shouted. "Mission briefing in ten! This is the one we've been waiting for."
