Mason West

- (Not by me, this was done by Spleenslitta)
Mech fights may be the dominant form of entertainment on Solaris VII and all of the Inner Sphere for that matter, but it doesn't provide much exitement for those who only value speed in competitions.
For these few eccentric induviduals there are only two forms of competition can satisfy their need for speed and spectacular crashes.
Neither one of these sports can net enough revenue to be worth broadcasting across the Inner Sphere except when the finals are held each year.
These events are called the ICE arial and vehicle races. Both events only allow oldfashioned internal combustion engines powered airplanes and groundvehicles.
In the year 3047 the prices for the winners were far higher in order to drive the competitive spirit of the participants to new heights.
The largest reason for this increase was very much due to the rather heavy presence of several members of the Liao ruling family amongst the audience on Solaris VII.
This naturally made for some rather high casualty rates due to the racers greed and ambitions.
[insert name] West scanned the skies for his sons easily identifiable twinprop engine plane while holding his wifes hand for reassurence.
He heard his wife's hopefull intake of breath as three planes flying low to the ground came into sight, but both of them could easily see that their sons plane was not among them.
Where is Mason's plane? You said he should have the speed advantage with those engines now that you finetuned them. Why isn't he here yet?
He was about to try and calm down his wife after her frustrated outburst when he saw several flashes of light up in the lower parts of the cloud cover.
The flashes continued to show themselves at a rate and strenght that only a barrage of long range missiles could produce.
Suddenly a burning wreckage with a thick trail of black smoke broke out of the cloud cover. The fuselage exploded in midair before it could be clearly identified.
He felt his wifes hand squeese his own till it hurt so much that he feared she would break his fingers.
Mason doesn't use LRM's. Too expensive!
He did his best to keep his thoughts from showing on his face for the sake of his wife and his children who were watching from the nearby on top of their cars roof.
The planes that were lower to the ground were manuevering for position as they closed on the second to last checkpoint.
A spread out volley of short range missiles blew up the left wing of the leading plane.
It spiraled out of control and crashed into the ground before the pilot could eject.
The plane bounced on the ground several times and when it finally lay still the twisted wreckage was barelly recognisable as a plane anymore.
That was Hans Wurrenmeyer! He was a good man. Rest his soul. The worried father spared a moment to take of his hat to show respect for one of his former rivals.
His left shoulder ached as he remembered the shrapnel that wounded it and ended his career as a racingpilot. I guess we won't be sharing that bottle of scotch while reminiscing about our final race afterall Hans.
Then the red plane that shot down down Hans simply exploded as a stream of autocannon rounds coming from above punched holes into the fuselage and the fueltank within.
The plane of his son came diving towards the checkpoint at a tremendous speed.
The whole West family raised their voices as one in a cry of relief and joy when the twin engined plane with twin tail booms passed the checkpoint with a small lead from the remaining competitor.
The remaining plane was dark blue and rather large, but also fast for it's size because of it's three engines that the pilot was pushing to their absolute limits in order to keep up with Mason.
It sported a large caliber cannon in it's nose, a big box of missiles under the left wing and two smaller ones under the right.
Mason sacrificed some airspeed to roll away from a salvo of missiles and responded with his rearmounted machineguns.
The bullets did their work and shredded a protruding bit of the front landing gear as well as the left wings missile box on the big plane.
Mason feinted and managed to outsmart his opponent who fired his cannon in a desperate attempt to put him out of the competition.
But Masons luck ran out when he had managed to set course for the final waypoint and his goal. His opponents right missile boxes both contained streak missiles.
Mason managed to avoid one of the missiles with some fancy manuevering and shot down another one with his rear machineguns, but the two remaining missiles exploded near enough to his right wing to damage it.
Mason pushed his engines to their limits to gain more of a lead and get out of the range of those nasty short range streak missiles while dodging as best he could to stay out of the cannons line of fire.
A cannon shell missed his cockpit by only two feet or so. He did a steep dive to get lower to the ground where the big plane couldn't manuever so well.
One last burst from his rear machineguns which finally ran out of ammunition peppered the opponents plane, but didn't do much more than scratch the dark blue paint on it's thickly armored nose.
The bigger plane tried to follow but just a few moments into it's dive the hidden damage caused by the first burst of machinegun fire made it's presence known.
The left wing disintegrated in an explosion caused by the missiles tumbling out of their ammunition bins and being slammed about inside wing by the turbulence.
The pilot managed eject before it was too late and thus avoided the same fate as Hans Wurrenmeyer.
Mason made a safe landing and was shortly meet by his anxious family. His mother checked him for over for injuries while his brothers looked at him as if he was simply insane.
His father was pale and stood with folded hands to hide their trembling.
Mason's sister walked up to him with a large obviously false smile before kicking him hard in the shins. Don't you ever take such risks again. You hear me bro?
As he hopped about clutching his newly bruised leg his sister sweeped his remaining leg from underneath him with another kick.
Mason went down in a heap and groaned miserably. He looked up towards his father and said: I suppose i will be able to buy that brand new fusion engine now dad and still have C-bills to spare.
It should fit perfectly in that old Commando you wanted to run in the arena.
Mason's father looked uncomfortably at his wife who was now glaring at him with a look that said it all- He was going to get a real earfull as soon as they were alone.
-Standing in front of the ancient COM-2D Commando that his father once dreamed of piloting in the Solaris arena's made many of Mason's memories come to the surface.
The days when he sat in his fathers lap inside the cockpit munching on his mothers homemade cookies while asking constant questions about the various buttons and toggles that was scattered across the control panel made him grin.
Now that he was older he could clearly see that the mech had seen better days.
Something hot had warped the internals in the torso so that a large missile launcher couldn't be fitted there anymore.
The left knee actuator was damaged beyond repair but still functional.
He looked over at his larger BG-2B Brightglory fighter that he had piloted in the ICE Arial races he could clearly see the Commando's age and lack of the pair of class five autocannons he was so used to firing.
A particarly loud demand from his mother made him turn around.
That old rustbucket of yours will be fitted with more armor and one of those CASE's to keep our son safe.
His father just humbly nodded his head since he knew it was pointless to protest.
They spent the next month fitting the new engine into the chassis and mounting more weapons and an additional half a ton of armor.
In the end they had no choice but to mount a Streak short range missile launcher in the torso because of the warped internals there.
They also added an additional medium laser to the left arm to get some additional quick reactionary firepower.
Obeying his mothers wish they put a CASE in the right torso to protect the mech from ammunition cookoffs.
A lot of nervous thoughts went through Mason's mind as he did a few extra checks of his restored Commando's systems as he walked towards the arena with only his passive sensors activated.
Mom really did put dad through the wringer this time. At least it lead to a more accurate weapon selection.
His fingers flickered over the weapons control console as he once again did an analysis on the targeting sensors linked to the torso mounted Streak missile launcher which came out clean just like his four previous unnecessary checks.
When he saw one of the arena workers wave him over with a brightly colored signalflag and point him in the direction of his entry point he promptly steered his mech towards the huge open steelgates marked with the number six.
He felt that his hands were shivering slightly.
Sitting on top of a fusion reactor is a really intimidating experience. All i had to worry about in my plane was ammunition explosions and stalling.
Once again he thought about the loud voice his mother had used when making her demands.
It's fine. We have taken our precautions.
His willed his hands to stop shaking through sheer determination.
As he was occupied with this he nearly smashed his left arm into a part of the concrete walls surrounding the arena.
First thing i'll do once i win this match is replacing that faulty knee actuator. It won't keep working for long and running might finish it off for good.
At least my first match is in an arena that is nearly perfectly suited to my mech.
The arena was one of the many lesser arenas that most of the rookies debuted in.
It consisted of tightly packed concrete buildings standing mostly around four floors high that used to be the homes for workers for an abandoned armor factory that was part of the arena as well.
He parked his mech in the marked slot he had been assigned to await the starting signal.
His starting area was on the outskirts of the southern part of the residental area of the vast arena.
The old factory looms over the residential buildings to the east.
He put on the radio to hear the commentators discuss the upcoming match.
Bzzt...sponsored by Buy an Obsolete Wreck Today. They have a sale on all kinds of quad mechs to the end of the month.
We have a mixed light-medium weight match full of promising hopefulls today here at the Bradley arena and the spectators are hollering for blood.
Most of them are rookies with only a few matches under their neurohelmet, but we have three veterans including old battlehardened Backels in his battered Urbie.
These veterans could make this match into a slaughter.
What is your opinion on the upcoming mayhem John?
I think Wilkins has a good chance to dominate this time since she has been on a winning streak lately.
She has been the last one standing in four matches in a row and has had eleven kills collectivly in these matches.
Those stats don't lie. That Gladiator of hers has melted more armor....
The commentators are interrupted by the starter klaxons. Mason calmy walks out of his starter slot and heads east.
He squeeses his mech through an alleyway between two buildings by turning the torso sideways and aiming his arms to the sides.
He sees movement through some windows in the building ahead of him but it dissappears northwards as soon as it appeared.
He gets out of the alley and through a courtyard.
As he rounds the corner he is looking straight at the back of what appears to be a Enforcer lurking at a crossroad.
After looking over the terrain briefly and noting a road going east towards the factory he carefully aims his missile systems right between the Enforcers shoulders and let's loose.
The heat inside the cockpit rises while he readies his lasers to take advantage of any gaps in the armor that the missiles might cause.
Most of the missiles hits exactly where he aimed and the others makes a mangled mess out of the jump jet nozzles in it's lower back.
The Enforcer stumbles and looks like it might fall over but the pilot get's lucky as an arm to braces the mech against a building long enough for him to stabilise it.
Mason fires his dual lasers to try and finish off the larger mech before it turns. The heat spikes to levels that spontaniously produces a large amount of sweat on his forehead.
His lasers melt most of what's left of the back armor on his adversary before he manages to twist the torso to take some of the damage on the left arm instead.
A large amount of coolant runs down the Enforcers left leg as some of the heatsinks in that part of the torso was destroyed during his assault.
Seeing that his opponent is almost ready to retaliate Mason runs up the road towards the factory, but turns to the south till he comes up against the arenas walls where he turns right again along a gap between the buildings and the walls.
The energic voice of one of the commentators comes out of the speakers.
We got first blood. It's a calmly and cleverly executed ambush that nearly brought Gudinao's Enforcer down to it's knees.
Most of the rookies out there would have stayed behind and tried to trade hits, but this one seems...Bzzzt...bit more cautious as he promptly dissappears into the urban maze.
He slows down the mech to ease the strain on his heatsinks.
I shouldn't put too much of a strain on that actuator either. Maybe i should keep going this way till i get to where i started? If i do that i could use that alleyway to ambush that guy again.
As he turns this idea over in his mind he hears a slight boom and there is a black trail of smoke coming from behind some buildings ahead.
Bads news for someone.
He is almost out of the alleyway between the buildings and the perimeter wall when a Jenner with only a mangled mess where it's right podlike arm used to be uses it jump jets to land on top of a building in front of him.
The Jenner pilot seems desperate as he jumps across another building and lands somewhere in the courtyard Mason was in earlier.
Shortly thereafter he hears a series of explosions coming from that direction.
He most certainly knows how to jump from one bad situation to another. He must have had an encounter with that guy i just meet.
If he had that much trouble in the west i might be better off by going back and ambushing both of them while they are slugging it out.
One of the commentators makes some remarks that catches his attention.
Backels once again demonstrates that an Urbanmech is truly worthy of it's name in this kind of arena.
His Autocannon rips into that Jenner's armor like it's made out of cardboard and the rookie Jenner mechwarrior panics and jumps away.
But he only managed to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire as he now confronts a mech fifthteen tons heavier than his own.
As he listens to the radio Backels's Urbanmech comes into view near the place Mason started. Mason decelerates and tries to go backwards the way he came while aiming his left arm at the new arrival.
Backels spots him quickly and they shoot their arm mounted weaponry almost at the same time.
Masons lasers melts armor on the mechs right torso while the opponents class ten autocannon chews into the corner of a building between them.
If i hadn't slowed down earlier i would have been in the open and i would have taken all that firepower right in the torso.
A chill goes down his spine in spite of the heat inside his cockpit with that thought.
He swiftly turns his mech around and heads back eastwards the way he came to escape the Backels fearsome autocannon while keeping his eye on the screen showing him the view from his backmounted camera.
Just before he rounds the corner he sees the Urbanmech step into view on the screen but it doesn't manage to line up it's big gun before Mason is out of sight.
I better get out of here. Backels would tear me apart if i go toe to toe with him.
Bzzztt....Wilkin's isn't daunted by the Mongoose's speed as she...Bzzt... with cornering the much smaller mech.
With this in mind he barelly slows down to aim when he goes past the Jenner and the Starslayer while they struggle on a narrow road.
The Jenner is clearly outmatched and now has a crippled leg that only allows it to hobble about.
He gets a missile lock on the Enforcers back and fires all of his missiles. This time they finish the work they couldn't earlier.
The bigger mech slumps forward like an old man with a crooked spine since it appears most of the internals in the back are shattered.
The last thing Mason sees before he runs onwards is thick black smoke coming from it's back.
After running fifty meters he looks on the screen for his rear camera and sees flames and pieces of his opponents mech fly out from behind the building that now seperates them.
A dull crump is heard shortly afterwards. Ammunition cookoff. Hope that guy had the wits to eject before it was too late.
Bzzzt...Godinau's mech is torn apart in a spectacular pyrotechnical display. I can see his parachute opening above the arena.
This rookie...ahem....what's his name?...Bzzzt..Ah yes. His name is Mason West and he made quite a reputation for himself last month when he won the yearly ICE Arial Championship race.
He turns to the west away from the factory and deeper into the former residental district along the main road.
A mech similar to his size runs through a crossroad roughly two hundred meters ahead so fast it's only a blur of motion but a blue beam of light catches it in the back just before it dissappears behind a building.
A salvo of short range missiles follow shortly thereafter coming from the same place the small mech first appeared.
A very easily recognisable black and yellow Gladiator steps into view as it hunt's down the Mongoose.
That's Wilkin's mech! She's even worse news than Backels.
Mason aims his weapons in a hurry and as soon as he has a target lock and the Streak missile sensors announce that they are locked on he pulls all the triggers.
The lasers hit the Gladiators left leg and Mason does his best to keep them from straying off target. His unguided missiles spread out and only hits concrete and the badly maintained road.
But his Streak missiles both connect with the target mechs left arm. Now that he is in need of an escape route he can only see a sideroad leading southwards back in the direction of where he ambushed Godinau.
That will have to do. Anything is better than staying here. i'll even try to go face to face with Backels's autocannon than duking it out with Wilkins.
The deep voice of the guest commentator John Garling comes out of his speaker's.
That rookie in the Mongoose doesn't stand a chance against Wilkins now that half of his firepower was torn off along with his mechs arm.
Wilkins is known to have a vindictive streak to her so this....Mason better watch out.
I agree John. If there is one thing i keep remembering whenever i see Wilkins come into the arena it's that manhunt she had last year when a rookie dared to seriously damage her mech in an ambush.
She singlehandedly destroyed five mechs in that match in under twelve minutes while hunting that poor rookie down.
Her personal record so far.
As Mason looks down the road he sees one of the Enforcer's arms lying on the ground roughly onehundredfifthy meters ahead of him.
Other smoldering wreckage lies scattered across the road. The arm is crushed as the Jenner backs into view with it's left flank towards him.
It is rocked by the easily recognisable explosion of an autocannon shell to the remaining podlike arm.
The Jenner does it's best to answer with it's short range missiles but another shell follows like the opponent mostly ignored the missile barrage.
Masons cockpit is still extremely hot from the alphastrike he performed against Wilkins so he hesitates to add to the damage the Jenner suffers from.
Instead he strides forward and takes the first left he encounters and goes southwards again along the same road he used to escape after his first kill in mech combat on Solaris.
He sees Backels Urbanmech just as the top of it comes over the roof of a building using his jumpjets.
Mason doesn't hesitate and targets the Backels before he can land on top of the building. He fired all of his missiles and they hit Backels mech in the lower body and it's legs.
Backels loses control quickly and crashes into the building so hard that he tears through the top floor and then falls backwards towards the ground.
Mason pushes his throttle all the way forward as he runs towards the crashsite.
He finds the Backels mech lying there motionless with the autocannon completly demolished under the wreck. He opens the communications channel and hails Backels.
I got you in my sight Backels. Do you surrender? He is only meet with silence. Backels? You there? Are you alright?
He breaks out in a sweat as he worries that he might have accidentaly killed the man. Backels? Backels!! You the....
He is interrupted when his damage display lights up and a series of explosions hits his right leg and completly shatters the armor there.
He looks about to try and find his assailant when the right leg gives in and his HUD flickers crazily. His mind briefly takes notice of the flickering HUD and comes to a conclusion.
That must have been a particle projection cannon. Wilkins!
The ground swiftly approaches the cockpit glass as his mech falls forwards and his head is smashed into his overhead control panels.
His neurohelmet took most of the blow but he faints shortly afterwards.
He awakes to a mindshattering headache and he stares right up at a white ceiling. He manages to look to the sides of his hospital bed and sees his brothers snorring away with their heads on his bedside.
His sister sleeps in a in a chair with a blanket covering her. He hears his fathers voice as he notices that he is awake.
How do you feel son?
Mason answers in a feeble cracked voice. I feel like there are several mining mechs drilling into my skull.
He remembers the reason he is in the hospital. Backels! Dad! Backels didn't answer my call. Is he allright?
His father hesitates for a moment but answers after a moment thought in a shaking voice.
He will be allright. He just fell unconcious like you did when he crashed. It is good that you are concerned about your opponents wellfare.
It makes me proud to know that you have such compassion despite your occupation. Many mechwarriors lose that compassion.
Wilkins won the match as everyone expected her to.
His brothers wakes up and start to ask questions quicker than he can answer them.
A week later he learns the truth about why his fathers voice shaked. Backels lived but he had to amputate his left leg and arm as they were exposed to coolant leaking into his cracked cockpit.
Godinau had managed to eject but he was hit by shrapnel from his exploding mech while he was in midair.
Mason's Commando had it's right leg severed at the ankle and the faulty left knee actuator was twisted to the point that it was no longer useable.
Other than that the mech only needed some repair to it's armor. But that was far beyond his financial means.
He also received visitors from two lesser stables but their reputation was dirty and their offers were less than appealing.
Clearly they believed they could take advantage of his inexperience to greater personal gains.
He didn't meet the third unfamiliar visitor in person since he was deeply asleep at the time.
But he left a letter with a blue wax zeal with a big looking feline creature with big tusks inprinted in the wax.
It said that his name was Zelekin and that he was the commanding officer of a mercenary corporation. He had talked to his father regarding his mechs condition and numerous other subjects.
He invited Mason to an interview to see if he would be interrested in joining his corporation. The pay was actually quite generous and with good conditions for his mechs maintainance.
At least i won't know the names of my opponents if i joined.
One month later him and his Commando was on a jumpship on it's way to a borderskirmish between the Free Worlds League and the Cappelan Confederation to earn more C-bills than he would have made in three years of fighting for one of those lesser stables.