Fringe War Battletech Campaign

March, 2788

The old man stood quietly, an ache in his spine, and looked out over a thousand acres.  His memory conjured up an image of riotous fields, golden and heavy with ripe grain.  Now it was a land that would bloom no more.  The landscape was sowed with jagged hunks of iron, melted hunks of steel.  When it rained, a slightly radioactive thorium cloud choked off any remaining weeds that tried to sprout between the corpses of twisted metal monsters.  For thousands of years humanity had kept the barbarians from the gates.  First with wood, then stone, then iron and plasteel.  But not anymore.  The Fall of the Star League in the 27th and this centuries Succession War had seen many of the Periphery planets abandoned to pirates and warlords, mercenaries and governments that were no better than the bandits themselves.  They were taxed, supposedly for protection, but the destruction furrowed before him betrayed the lie.  His land planted with misery, watered with blood.  But I, he thought.  I will bring the harvest.

Arthur Lendon turned back to his own machine, the one he knew he would die in.  A three story, 65 ton death machine.  When she first left the gantry he heard the hoots, endured the mockery of the other mechwarriors who thought the golden grain pattern would get him killed.  On that first day, it was impossible to look directly at his unwanted partner, she shone so bright in the brilliant yellow sun.  Not stealthy enough, they told him, standing out will make you a target.  They simply didn’t understand.  He didn’t want to hide, didn’t care if a bolt of blue lightning destroyed his cockpit in the first engagement.  The only thing he cared about was that the pirates who salted his land saw him coming.  Saw the rain of missiles like seeds on the wind, ripping their metal skins like they did his wheat.

In the end, it was they who feared his beloved, his despised.  His lady, Lendon Fields, her namesake only a memory.  I will never walk this land again, the tired old man knew.  But my sons?  I will make sure they do.