March, 2788<\/p>\n
The old man stood quietly, an ache in his spine, and looked out over a thousand acres.\u00a0 His memory conjured up an image of riotous fields, golden and heavy with ripe grain.\u00a0 Now it was a land that would bloom no more.\u00a0 The landscape was sowed with jagged hunks of iron, melted hunks of steel.\u00a0 When it rained, a slightly radioactive thorium cloud choked off any remaining weeds that tried to sprout between the corpses of twisted metal monsters.\u00a0 For thousands of years humanity had kept the barbarians from the gates.\u00a0 First with wood, then stone, then iron and plasteel.\u00a0 But not anymore.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They were taxed, supposedly for protection, but the destruction furrowed before him betrayed the lie.\u00a0 His land planted with misery, watered with blood.\u00a0 But I, he thought.\u00a0 I will bring the harvest<\/em>.<\/p>\n Arthur Lendon turned back to his own machine, the one he knew he would die in.\u00a0 A three story, 65 ton death machine.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 On that first day, it was impossible to look directly at his unwanted partner, she shone so bright in the brilliant yellow sun.\u00a0 Not stealthy enough, they told him, standing out will make you a target.\u00a0 They simply didn’t understand.\u00a0 He didn’t want to hide, didn’t care if a bolt of blue lightning destroyed his cockpit in the first engagement.\u00a0 The only thing he cared about was that the pirates who salted his land saw him coming.\u00a0 Saw the rain of missiles like seeds on the wind, ripping their metal skins like they did his wheat.<\/p>\n In the end, it was they who feared his beloved, his despised.\u00a0 His lady, Lendon Fields, her namesake only a memory.\u00a0 I will never walk this land again<\/em>, the tired old man knew.\u00a0 But my sons?\u00a0 I will make sure they do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March, 2788 The old man stood quietly, an ache in his spine, and looked out over a thousand acres.\u00a0 His memory conjured up an image of riotous fields, golden and heavy with ripe grain.\u00a0 Now it was a land that would bloom no more.\u00a0 The landscape was sowed with jagged hunks of iron, melted hunks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[3,5,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}