Today’s simulated battle decided who picked up the vaunted billet in Achernar’s militia, commanding one of The Republic’s rare BattleMechs, and who finished a law enforcement degree looking forward to commanding a desk for two years before learning how to write parking citations.

Enemy icons cluttered Raul’s head’s up display, laser-projected across the upper third of his cockpit’s ferroglass shield. Their short tag lines of information tangled in among IFF codes for his own skirmishers. In his mind, the coded tags resolved into two forces of similar troops, spread out over the dry lake basin. Armored vehicles chewed up the ground with belted treads and knobby tires. Hovercraft glided along with deadly menace like wolves among sheep. If Raul held an edge it was in raw firepower, although Charal DePriest made up for that with superior mobility.

More than made up for it, in fact, as a green-haloed square on his HUD burst in a flare of emerald light. At a glance he read that a squad of Charal’s hoverbikes had overpowered and destroyed his remaining Demon tank.

Raul cursed his luck for drawing Program 12, the Highlake Basin, and then cursed himself for not anticipating Charal’s early move out of the Taibek Mountains, the jagged edge of the northwest horizon. Swallowing back the dry, metallic taste of his anger, he dialed in the frequency for his computer-controlled vehicle commanders.

“Alpha group, spread nor-nor’west. Beta, spread nor’east.”

These were his two primary battle group formations of heavy armor. By cupping them around Charal’s advance forces, supporting his infantry drive, Raul hoped to fold the enemy into a pincer. If nothing else, he might be able to thin out the middle of the field, allowing him to push through and finally come to grips with his opponent.

“Delta group,” he called up his reserve line of armored vehicles, holding defensive positions behind him, “shake out into a skirmishing wedge.”

The HUD’s chaos of icons thinned, but not so much that he would get an easy push through at Charal DePriest. He’d have to fight his way through, which was exactly what Charal wanted of him. The entire confrontation so far, she’d commanded from a support position while he always stalked the forward edge of battle. She waited for him to soften up his defenses on her stinging probes—waited for him to make a mistake. The first Mech Warrior to fall wouldn’t end the scenario, no matter how far ahead he (or she) might be.

It would give the other commander free reign to leisurely destroy the opposing, computer-generated force down to the last digital man.

As if summoned by that dark thought, a pair of SM1 Destroyers glided out of the enemy pack, hunting him. Raul pulled back behind the defensive line he’d set with four Joust-701s, counting on the threat of their large lasers to hold back the Sims. He knew better than to close with an SM1’s ’Mech-killing twelve centimeter bore, and Charal knew enough not to challenge an entrenched line. The Sims fell back, their drive fans pushing them on toward better prey, and Raul stalked northwest to mirror the sudden movement of Charal’s Legionnaire.

She’d make the first mistake, and he’d be there to catch her. He allowed for no other possibility.

Being a MechWarrior was all Raul had dreamed of as a teen, whether sitting with his father through their seventh screening of an Immortal Warrior holovid or in his school studies of The Republic’s military history. It didn’t matter that there were no longer any wars to fight. To him, the Word of Blake Jihad was ancient history. Devlin Stone’s Reformation and the resulting birth of The Republic of the Sphere had required some fighting, but not much compared to the previous four hundred years of Succession Wars and the Clan invasion. And even Stone’s last battle had been fought nearly two decades before, bringing an end to the Capellan Crusades and peace to the Inner Sphere.

The allure of being a MechWarrior, though, was one that refused to pale, and had become almost legendary with the widespread arms reduction. It spoke to Raul in the reverent way people referred to Devlin Stone’s Knights of the Sphere. With the intense coverage of the gladiator ’Mechs on the game world of Solaris VII. Even in the way his classmates looked at him now; only a cadet and MechWarrior-candidate but, in their minds, a future officer, knight, legate or prefect.

Raul had promises to keep, and no one was going to stand in the way of that dream. He searched through his cockpit’s ferroglass shield for a new target.

Charal DePriest found him first.

A storm of tracers skipped off Raul’s cockpit shield and then drifted down over the Legionnaire’s torso as Charal reached out from long range to walk a line of destruction from head to hip joint. Ferroglass cracked into the legs of two long spiderwebs, barely holding up under the assault. The simulator trembled violently, shaking Raul against his five-point harness—hard enough to leave deep bruises across his shoulders and abdomen. His neurohelmet slammed back against the seat’s headrest, cracking one of the support posts.

The Legionnaire’s massive gyroscopic stabilizers relied on Raul’s own sense of equilibrium, linked through the pilot’s neurohelmet. Shaken, Raul blinked back a wave of dizziness and the sensation of sudden vertigo as his BattleMech balanced on uncertain footing.

Recognizing the uneasy sway of his Legionnaire, Raul spread out both of the ’Mech’s arms for balance and throttled into a slower walk to recover the stricken avatar. Icons danced over his HUD, demanding his attention. But Major Blaire had taught them that it was always better to do something immediate and constructive in a live-fire situation than debate overlong on the exact right thing to do. Raul was an attentive student.

“Alpha group, hard press.” His order might buy him some time if Charal had to deal with a sudden advance.

His own reticle tracked across the cracked shield, painted by a targeting laser, but for the distance Raul switched over to his infrared monitor and full computer imaging. Charal was on the move, but he bracketed her in a long pull of autocannon fire before ever looking at his HUD for more information. Raul spent several hundred rounds on empty air but several hundred more into the outline of Charal’s Legionnaire. His return fire chipped away armor from its arms and upper chest, rocking it back but not doing enough damage to knock Charal off her feet.

Static whispered into Raul’s ears as a transmission burst from his computer-controlled subofficers crackled over the speakers built into his neurohelmet. “Alpha group,” the voice identified itself. “We’re through, sir.”

For a brief second Raul thought that his armor group had decided to desert him. That would be a new twist coming out of the computer’s limited programming. Then, shaking off the last of his dizziness, he caught on that elements of Alpha formation had penetrated to the rearward lines on this flank.

Raul was behind her!

His head’s up display painted the same picture as he spent several critical seconds in study. Charal’s brief move forward, coupled with his return push of battlesuit infantry and armor, had opened up the field between them so that both Legionnaires faced off over open ground. Her western flank was in chaos, cut off from their commander by a narrow line of his own troops. She had two… looked like three armored vehicles left in the immediate area that might be able to reach her side.

“Beta group, smash forward. Tie them up. Alpha, hold your line. Delta, reinforce Alpha.” Raul rattled off his commands with a confidence born of immediate need. If only he could wait for his reserve infantry in Delta to move up, he might be able to capture Charal’s BattleMech—and wouldn’t that be a fine cap to his RTC record?