Destiny's Challenge
Destiny's Challenge | |
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Product information | |
Type | Short story |
Author | Loren L. Coleman |
Pages | 11 |
Publication information | |
Publisher | Catalyst Game Labs |
First published | May 2008 |
Content | |
Era | Star League era |
Timeline | 2721 |
Preceded by | Destiny's Call |
Destiny's Challenge is a short story written by Loren L. Coleman that continues his BattleCorps four-part serial Destiny's Call in the fashion of a fifth, epilogue-style part. Never published electronically via BattleCorps, it was included in print as an extra story in the first BattleCorps anthology, The Corps, which also contains Destiny's Call (although the two stories are not printed back-to-back in the anthology).
Plot summary
Now a Nagelring cadet, Aleksandr Kerensky, two months out of summer OCS training, is piloting a Striker assault BattleMech in a training exercise. He finds that the other cadets are better pilots because of their greater experience.
In the otherwise empty 'Mech hangar he muses about how he joined the Nagelring to regain control of himself after his attack on Elias Luvon in fear and anger. He is confronted by cadet Patrick Ward, the only one of his former tormentors who was not expelled and who had made a point of apologizing to Alek. They come to talk, and Ward suggests that Alek is holding back in the exercises. Eventually, Alek admits that "this whole thing" ('Mechs and MechWarrior training) scares him.