The Shaded Light

The Shaded Light
Short story by Jason Schmetzer
Publication
Published4 April 2007
PublisherBattleCorps
illustrator(s)unknown artist
Pages24
Chronology
EraJihad era
Timeline4 October 3068


The Shaded Light is a short story by Jason Schmetzer that was first published online on BattleCorps on 4 April 2007. It was later republished in print in the fourth BattleCorps anthology, Fire for Effect, in 2013.

Teaser Text[edit]

Gibson Prow doesn't much care about the reasons behind the internecine warfare between Com Guard and Word of Blake; he just cares about the paycheck the Word gives him and his unit to hunt down the Com Guard stragglers on Terra. But when he's finally able to interrogate a Com Guard prisoner, Prow finds that his Word of Blake contact may have been shading the truth of the conflict...

Plot Summary[edit]

During the mop-up operations following the Case White invasion, Gibson Prow and his mercenary unit track down scattered ComStar units. They start to wonder about the dedication of the enemy forces who rather shoot themselves before being captured, and why the area to the north around Rushville is restricted to them and the exclusive responsibility of the Word of Blake Militia to the point of Prow's unit not being allowed to pursue retreating enemy forces there (costing them their potential salvage).

When they finally manage to take a Com Guard MechWarriorHal Parker—captive, Parker denies that the ComStar invaders had used nuclear weapons or any of the atrocities the Word of Blake accused them of. Suspicious, Prow sends two of his battle armor troopers to Rushville. They return with news of a "reeducation camp" or rather, a concentration camp complete with mass graves from which they secured unit patches from all across the Inner Sphere.

On a hunch, Prow informs their Word of Blake liaison, Demi-Precentor Dixon Leis, the fabricated story that they had obtained information from their captive indicating St. Louis to be a secret enemy staging area. Shortly afterwards, a nuclear blast eradicates the city and Word of Blake media blame it on ComStar.

Prow and his unit realize that their employers will eventually find out they lied, and also that it is the Word of Blake who are committing atrocities and giving them false information. They kill Leis and decide to undermine the Word of Blake to the best of their abilities forthwith.

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