“You don’t know who I am!” he screamed. “You don’t know who I am!”
The ’Mech, uncaring, lowered its foot.
THE IMMORTAL WARRIOR AT THE
BATTLE OF VORHAVEN
by Kevin Killiany
Vorhaven, Kathil
Capellan March
Federated Commonwealth
2 November 3062
The three MechWarriors ran ahead of her, their silver neurohelmets flashing in the sunlight. They were fast, but she was determined.
They would not escape the Immortal Warrior.
The three tried to trick her with a dodge toward the woods on the right, then dashed left. In an instant they’d disappeared behind a sharp corner of the cliff-sided mountain. Clutching her weapon tightly, she slowed and flared wide around the turn, giving herself room in case they doubled back and tried to dash past her in the opposite direction.
She needn’t have bothered. The three had used her caution to gain distance and were now well ahead of her. She felt her feet thudding against the grassy soil as she churned her legs to maximum speed, closing the gap.
Suddenly the three MechWarriors stopped, facing the cliff-sided mountain. She saw them pull to attention and salute something up on the cliff. She didn’t know why her targets had forgotten the Immortal Warrior was closing on them and she didn’t pause to see what they were looking at. They were in her sights and they were doomed.
Shrieking her best Immortal Warrior yell, she was upon them. She made a clean hit before they could respond. But, whirling and twisting, the MechWarriors danced away from her, laughing as they ran.
“I got you, Billy!” she screamed. “You’re it!”
“Missed me, missed me!” Billy called back, not even slowing as he dodged around a knot of adults. The other two MechWarriors were already halfway to the food tent, the open vests of their Halloween costumes flapping about their arms.
“How goes the battle, Jessie?”
Jessie turned to face the mountain, and saw Grandpa on the porch.
“Billy cheated,” she announced.
“I agree,” Grandpa nodded judiciously. “You tagged him fair and square.”
There didn’t seem to be much to say to that. Billy and the cousins were now too far gone for her to ever catch them. Besides, her new uncle was on the porch with Grandpa.
Uncle David wasn’t really a new uncle, of course; she’d seen pictures of him all her life. But he was a MechWarrior—a real one —and he’d been away since before she was born. She’d never really met him before the Halloween party two nights ago and this was the first chance she’d had to look at him closely.
He looked like Grandpa, she decided, only a little shorter and his hair was not grey. She wasn’t sure, but she bet he didn’t have a brown circle with no hair on top of his head either.
“You going to eat that cinnamon roll,” Uncle David asked, “Or just run around with it?”
Jessie looked down at the roll, which a moment before had been a weapon, though she’d never decided which one. It was smooshed slightly, the melted sugar frosting sticking to her fingers.
“Grandma made it,” she answered.
“I was hoping she did,” Uncle David smiled. She liked his smile. “I was also hoping you’d want to give it to me.”
Jessie considered for a moment.
“I already had two,” she announced. “And Grandma’s got more.”
“I’ll bet she does.”
Making her decision, Jessie climbed onto the porch and surrendered the roll to Uncle David. His hands were not as big as Grandpa’s.
“Thank you, Immortal Warrior,” he intoned seriously.
She giggled as she scurried into the house, propelled by a friendly swat on the bottom.
• • •
Billy was hiding from her again.
Jessie circled through Grandpa and Grandma’s house, keeping an eye out for signs of her brother. She avoided the rooms at the end of the west wing. Aunt Grace and the twins had taken those over. They’d moved in nearly a month ago, right after the Halloween party where’d she met her new uncle, because Aunt Grace said “things were getting bad in the city.”
She didn’t mind the twins so much; they were too quiet to be very interesting anyway. But Aunt Grace was always cross and saying how serious the situation was and worrying about Uncle David. Even her mother had stopped trying to cheer her up.
She set thoughts of her aunt aside and focused on finding Billy.
He wasn’t in the fruit cellar and he wasn’t in the pantry. He wasn’t under the library table and he wasn’t in the little attic room with his comic vidbooks. She knew he knew better than to go into the guest bedrooms or the formal living room.
He must be hiding outside.
Jessie stood by the dining room window, considering. Outside the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. No sign of the summer storms that sometimes blew down whole forests. It was a perfect day for being outside instead of in.
Her brother was a year and a half older than her, but he always hid in the same places. If Billy was hiding outside, he was either under the side porch, in the feed barn or up in the big lonely oak. That last was a favorite of his, because he could climb the rope holding the tire swing and she could not.
“Hey,” her big sister Cassie called from the family room, “the video just went out!”
Jessie ignored her. Cassie watched too much video; all she ever wanted to do was watch kissy stories, anyway.
She looked toward the oak. Sure enough, the empty tire was swinging without a breeze. Billy was up the tree.
And a giant metal man walked over the hill.
Jessie blinked.
“BattleMechs!” yelled Aunt Grace from somewhere upstairs. “Not the Militia!”
Throughout the house, Jessie heard the grown ups shouting.
“We’re surrounded!”
“Where are the children?”
“Everybody, get to the cars!”
“No!” Grandpa’s voice cut across the others. “They’ll cut us down if we try to escape. Get into the storm shelter!”
“The children! Find the children!”
Whirling from the window, Jessie dodged around Cassie
