Chapter 1

  Word of Bke Forward Command Post

  Aur

  Lyran Alliance

  28 January 3075

  The door to the DropShip’s bunkroom smmed open. Heavy booted feet stomped inside. Eden’s eyes popped open and she reached for her sidearm, but it had already been seized. Her left eye struggled to focus in the dark, but her right switched to infrared. She could see half a dozen humanoid shapes all around her in shades of orange and red, cd in blocky combat armor.

  One of the men grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her out of her bunk. All around her she could hear other formerly sleeping men and women also getting dragged out and forced to their knees on the floor. One of the armored men pressed a heavy auto-pistol into Eden’s temple.

  “We’re getting out. Enough is enough,” the figure growled out in a low voice. “Precentor’s already dead. Are you with us or against us, little dog?”

  Eden could hear simir demands being hissed around the room from other men, simirly aiming guns into her companions. She took a struggling breath.

  “I am loyal to Bke, now and forever. Do what you will.”

  The figure stared her down, his eyes sharp and glowing red in the thermal vision. After a moment he looked up to the rest of the bunkroom. “She is loyal.”

  Around the room other combat-suited men were also decring their targets loyal. Finally one of them nodded.

  “Your faith is rewarded, Acolytes,” he announced. “Next room, go.”

  The soldiers released their charges and fell back, marching out and moving on to the next bunkroom. The st man turned around to look back at the people on the floor.

  “What are all of you still doing there? Get up! The day’s starting!” he ordered.

  Eden groaned and achily stood up. She pulled on her uniform, taking a moment to look around until she found her sidearm carelessly discarded on the floor. She had to dodge around the rger, heavier bodies of her bunkmates as they also stood up and got dressed. Her eyes burned as someone turned on the blinding overhead lights.

  She methodically straightened out her bunk, massaging her forehead as the adrenaline began to wear off. She’d gone to bed with a headache, and three hours of rest had done little to help. She pushed herself to keep moving. Spotting the corner of a piece of paper sticking out of her disheveled pillow, she quickly tucked it out of sight and pulled the covers over it.

  The room froze for a moment as the report of a single gunshot echoed from down the corridor. Then everyone went back to work, operating in the oppressive silence born of stress and fatigue. Loyalty tests like this one were nothing new. The test was different each time, but the punishment for failure was always the same.

  She finished getting dressed and made her way out into the cramped corridors of the DropShip. Before too long she had made it to the ship’s lower-level ‘Mech bay, where she stepped onto the ramp leading outside, squinting in the sunlight. The pnet’s cool, crisp air smelled strange in her nostrils, long used to the recycled air of DropShips.

  Eden’s Union DropShip had nded next to another Union on a small mountain pteau, which gave them a modest stretch of rocky nd between the ships to work in. The area was abuzz with personnel, with trucks shuttling people and materiel around, soldiers going through drills, and a nce of BattleMechs standing guard on the perimeter.

  “Acolyte Eden.”

  Despite the din of activity on the ground, Eden heard the voice as though it were right next to her, as her cochlear impnt vibrated her ear bones. She stopped dead in her tracks, her back going ramrod-straight. She turned her head to see a rge man in a white uniform standing at the bottom of the DropShip ramp. She approached as he beckoned her over.

  “Adept Janos,” she said in greeting, bowing her head to him. “How may I serve?”

  “I would see that you are well,” he smoothly replied. “You understand that this morning’s loyalty test was necessary. Those of us sworn to the Master must remain steadfast in our faith. These mercenaries were a gift to our Division, but they are no followers of Bke.”

  At his words, Eden’s eyes trailed over to the other Union. By Bke’s grace a mercenary JumpShip had entered the system less than an hour after the Shadow Division had. After a quickly-pnned assault the Division had successfully seized both the JumpShip and the DropShip attached to it. The mercenaries had been wise enough to change their contract to the Bkists, and were now supporting the Shadow Division.

  “Allowing such people into our ranks is a risk. We must make use of them, but also watch them. That will be a priority for the Dobermans,” Janos went on, naming Eden’s unit.

  “Yes, Adept,” Eden dutifully answered, keeping her head down.

  “The Precentor may doubt the Canis Domini, but I believe in you and the others. I know you have the potential to be Bke’s strongest warriors. Be assured the Order will provide you all that you need for your duties,” he finished as he withdrew a tiny bottle of pills from one pocket.

  Eden obediently took the bottle and poured the pills into her mouth, swallowing them down with practiced ease. “I give my body and soul to Bke,” she breathed, mechanically reciting the mantra she’d been taught.

  A tiny smile touched his lips. “That is all I can ask. Very well, Acolyte Eden. Dismissed.”

  Eden held her bow as he walked away, though she fought the urge to colpse of exhaustion. With their nding on Aur, the Doberman group would be on almost constant deployment. They would be sent out on raids, returning only to go on patrol duty around the Shadow Division’s field base. Rest would be a fleeting resource, to be snuck in between deployments. She might be an augmented human, but she was still burdened with the weaknesses of her flesh, and right now those weaknesses were threatening to overwhelm her.

  The drugs were a carefully tailored mix of stimunts, painkillers, and neural stabilizers that would let her power through this trial. She was already beginning to feel the fire in her veins, a twitchy energy that promised to banish her headache –

  – “Yes, I need a little help to get through the night, what of it?” Natalia said as she cleaned the white powder off her nose. Diamond just pursed her lips and stayed quiet and adjusted her makeup. She knew she would have to go on stage next –

  – Eden blinked several times as the sudden memory faded. She could still smell the mix of antiseptic, sweat, and cigarettes of the Canopian bathroom, and she could feel the sheer material of her costume hugging her body. Even the sounds of music from the stage and its bawdy crowd lingered in her ears. She looked around self-consciously, seeing nothing had changed around her and no one had noticed her momentarily spacing out.

  Just a glitch in my impnts, she reasoned. They had been happening more often tely, but she did not have time to worry about that.

  Her eyes fell on a nearby Bkist ProtoMech looming over a group of Techs working on an unmanned drone. The Techs all had a nervous look in their eyes that Eden recognized and immediately tuned out. The mercenaries knew the rules. So long as they followed orders, they would be treated well.

  She headed back into the DropShip bay, making a quick detour to one of the heads. Once she had closed the door of the tiny room, she stood over the toilet and shoved her finger down her throat.

  The pills came back up in a rush as she coughed them out. She spat to clear the taste out of her mouth, and quickly flushed the pills out of sight.

  Keep the mind clear to serve the Master, she thought. The drugs might strengthen her body, but they also burned out her mind, leaving her drifting along in a gray haze. She needed to keep her mind clear. Her body would not be a concern soon enough.

  She waited in the head long enough to seem like a call of nature, then she headed into the lower ‘Mech bay. Two of the big BattleMech cubicles had been refit to squeeze in half a dozen small gantries. Five of the gantries were empty, but the sixth held her Eivlys, resting on all fours.

  The Eivlys ProtoMech was an imposing figure, ten tons of metal and advanced equipment, standing over six meters high. Long cws on its hands and a helmeted head ending in a unicorn-like spike made it look like a cross between a medieval knight and a demon from hell. It sat motionless like a sleeping beast, the cockpit hatch on its chest open and waiting.

  Eden tapped a control to prime the Eivlys’ reactor before heading around behind the ProtoMech, where her interface suit hung suspended from a metal rack. She methodically stripped off her uniform and slipped her legs and arms into the suit, closing up the back with the touch of an activation button in the colr. There was a fsh of pain as contact panels along her neck and back connected to the Direct Neural Interface circuitry impnted in her spine.

  She quickly went through her normal checks, touching her thumbs to each finger and then covering one eye, then the other. The colors were still washed out on her right eye and the details were too sharp, but she was used to it by now. She picked up her suit helmet off the rack and went back around to the cockpit.

  After a surreptitious gnce around herself she popped open a maintenance panel on the Eivlys, revealing the controls for the onboard chemical storage. The ProtoMech held the same cocktail of drugs Janos had handed her moments ago, but far stronger, ready to be injected into her the moment the computers, or her commander, decided her mental cohesion was slipping.

  She hesitated for a moment. She didn’t have to go any further, all she was doing was making sure everything was in its pce –

  – “I’m fine, I just need a little more,” Natalia said confidently, though her pale, sweaty skin looked anything but ‘fine.’ “I have another show to do tonight. Do not worry matryoshka, I know what I am doing” –

  – Eden blinked as the world swam. As soon as her vision cleared, she reached into the maintenance hatch and unplugged the wires.

  She let out a breath. She’d thought she would be relieved now that she could stay in control of her mind, but if anything she felt even more nervous now. She closed up the hatch and took a step back, doing her best to look like nothing was out of the ordinary.

  “Hey, what’re you doing over there?”

  Eden’s heart skipped a beat at the sudden voice. Turning her head, she saw a Technician had appeared at the foot of the Eivlys. She hastily recovered her composure.

  “I am doing final preparations, since my technical staff is apparently occupied elsewhere,” she answered angrily.

  “Yeah sorry, I was going through orientation,” the man replied, before extending a hand towards her. “I’m Tom Raven, just got assigned to you. Someone figured I could help out.” When Eden did not move to take his offered hand he let his arm fall to his side.

  Eden narrowed her eyes at Raven, noting his unkempt salt-and-pepper hair and the mercenary colors on his Technician’s coveralls. Normally someone outside of Bke’s Order would not be allowed to work on the ProtoMechs, but months of deployment had the Shadow Division’s resources stretched thin. The Bkist Techs would have been assigned to the BattleMechs and even the Tau Zombie ground troopers. That was the lot of a Canis Domini ProtoMech pilot, always needing to get by on what was left after the far more important Manei Domini had taken what they needed.

  “Next time you should be here before I am,” she snapped at him. “I needed to be out on patrol five minutes ago already, I do not need to be wasting time doing your job as well. Have you been briefed on the connection procedure?”

  “I got the basics,” he answered. “Sounds like I’m just here to watch you plug in. Far as I can tell this interface is just a more complicated neurohelmet.”

  Eden shook her head in annoyance and pulled out the bundle of connection wires waiting for her in the cockpit. The DNI impnts were far more than the antiquated connection of a neurohelmet. An unaugmented Frail like this Raven simply couldn’t understand it.

  With practiced motions she plugged the wires into sockets running up the back of her suit, then connected the umbilical lines that would feed her oxygen and water. She felt a chill as the ProtoMech’s computers interfaced with her nervous system. Raven turned his attention to a datapad.

  “Stand by,” he mumbled as diagnostic data scrolled down his screen. “Connections are solid and running. Impnts are operating within ninety percent efficiency.” He looked up at her, squinting pensively. “Do I know you, by the way?”

  “Highly doubtful,” Eden curtly answered.

  “No seriously, I think I’ve seen your face somewhere.”

  Eden’s patience had been thin to begin with, but now it was at its breaking point. She pulled her helmet on and closed her eyes, whispering her customary prayers to Bke. Raven shrugged and went through the rest of his checklist.

  “All right, just gotta do a chemical levels check,” he finally said, tapping on the datapad as Eden looked back up. “Looks like you’re a little off…”

  “I need to go. We are all green,” she interrupted.

  “You sure? I’m seeing some fshes in your cortex here…” he began.

  “Your equipment must be malfunctioning,” she interrupted before crawling into the cockpit and tucking her arms and legs against her body. “Now get clear!”

  The cockpit closed up around her. It was dark and custrophobic, barely the size of a rge duffel bag; even her tiny body barely fit into it. Cmps tightened around her shoulders, hips, and head. She closed her eyes, and a fsh of lightning split the darkness. Something grabbed her mind and swallowed it whole, melting her flesh body away. Her headache disappeared and her vision returned in brilliant detail. She flexed her fingers, so powerful now, and ending in vicious cws. In front of her Raven was suddenly very small, not even reaching her waist.

  An alert bred in her mind and a red warning window fshed in her vision, warning her of a circuit fault in the onboard chemical storage. She overrode the alert with a quick command, allowing the ProtoMech to come fully online.

  As Eden took her first heavy step, Raven’s face brightened with sudden realization.

  “Diamond!” he shouted.

  She stopped dead, turning in pce to look back at him. He had a relieved smile on his face.

  “That’s where I’ve seen you! Diamond, I’ve seen your stuff! Straight out of Canopus!”

  Even locked in the ProtoMech’s chest, Eden burned with embarrassment and anger. Diamond the Canopian entertainer had been weak, a scrawny one-eyed girl selling her tiny body to make ends meet. Eden on the other hand was strong, her weaknesses cut out and repced with powerful metal and electricity. This Frail did not have the right to snder her new life with his careless words.

  A targeting reticule appeared in her vision, but it wavered back and forth over Raven, not locking on. She seethed in annoyance; apparently the mercenaries were already logged in her Friend-or-Foe settings, and the Eivlys was refusing to recognize the man as a target.

  Perhaps Bke has other pns for you, she thought at him. Then she wordlessly turned and lumbered out of the bay. She did not need to concern herself with this man. She had higher duties to attend to.

  *End Chapter 1*

  Thanks for reading!

  This story first appeared in Magistracy Monthly's September 2025 volume. Go check out Magistracy Monthly, it's a really good BattleTech fan zine: https:///magestrixriley/posts

  Ghoul ProtoMech image is provided by Real Mech is Love: https://x.com/realmechislove

  Eivlys image is provided by Oswald: https://x.com/Oswald81288433

  If you liked this story, check out my other work, including MechWarrior: Wild Rose, a long-form fanfiction novel about the scion of the Bck Thorns: https:///series/559158/mechwarrior-wild-rose/

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