Biendieu
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| Biendieu | |
|---|---|
| Product information | |
| Type | Short story |
| Author | Annie Reed |
| Pages | 9 |
| Interior Artwork | Alex Williamson |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | BattleCorps |
| First published | 29 September 2006 |
| Content | |
| Era | Succession Wars era |
| Timeline | 3 August 2989 |
Biendieu is a short story by Annie Reed that was published electronically via BattleCorps on 29 September 2006. It was also published in print in the third BattleCorps print anthology, Weapons Free, in 2012.
| “ | "As I watched, the thing hovered just over the jagged peak above us, moving slowly toward the jungle in the valley below. Its size was beyond my understanding. It seemed as if a second moon was falling from the sky but was taking great care where it landed. I heard bellows from the jungle, saw the tops of trees bend and sway as the beasts fled from the strange sound and light. Even the mightiest creatures of the land were afraid of this new thing that had come to our world." | ” |
Plot summary
The first-person narrator lives with a primitive Neolithic tribe on Farhome as a cleric to "Biendieu", a godlike being who is the tribe's protector. The tribe wears his symbol on their bodies and the narrator also paints it on the walls of their home cave.
Witnessing the landing of a spheroid DropShip one night but failing to understand its nature, the tribe's hunters gather under the leadership of their strongest warrior, Mautre (incidentally the father of the narrator's daughter). Over the warnings of the tribe's historian that the "thing" will bring hostile invaders from another world, the hunters set out to investigate it and fight it if it is hostile. The narrator includes herself in the expedition. After a day's travel through the jungle, they are near the DropShip's landing site where they come under attack from a great predatory lézard de tonnerre. The beast is in turn killed by a BattleMech that has implicitly arrived with the DropShip, saving the tribesmen. The narrator then identifies the 'Mech as "Biendieu" — it is revealed that the image she has been painting actually depicts a 'Mech.
Notes
- Neither the DropShip nor the BattleMech featuring in the story are described in any great detail. The DropShip is clearly a spheroid design. The 'Mech is a bipedal humanoid design with a "head squat on broad shoulders", armed with at least two lasers and described to possess "fists" clutching weapons instead of five-fingered hands. Its type cannot be conclusively discerned from the image featured in the story.
The BattleMech in the image going with the story partially resembles a Black Knight, particularly Chris Lewis' illustration. However, the narrative description does not precisely match any known variant of the Black Knight, and the publishing year predates Chris Lewis' illustrations in Technical Readout: 3039 or Technical Readout: 3050 Upgrade. - According to Interstellar Expeditions: Interstellar Players 3, p. 77 ("Who We Are and Where We Came From") it was a ComStar Explorer Corps vessel that rediscovered Farhome in 2989. Given ComStar's noted use of Star League–era BattleMechs, this makes the Biendieu's possible identification as a Black Knight more plausible.
- The story title's name appears to be a corruption of the French "Bon dieu", good god, the natives name for their divinity, which associated with the BattleMech.
