His mind was racing, even though his soul was drowning in a fathomless sea of despair. He would try to focus himself with the task at hand but then the furies in his essence would undoubtedly return. How he wanted to just lie down and try to sleep his troubles away, but he feared for the ones under his protection more than ever. Feeling that it was his fault that all of this came to pass, he hurried down the underground tunnel.

The concrete corridors were dimly illuminated by small strobes of incandescent yellow light that lined the walls every meter or so. As Jaime Wolf kept running down the tunnel, he tried to concentrate at staring down the subterranean corridor and tried not to look at the smoke colored walls beside him. His fatigue and stress were beginning to play tricks with his mind, as he would sometimes make out the faces of ghosts that were apparently manifesting themselves along the twilight recesses of the tunnel. Was this the price of his command, then? To see the visages of the dead as you ran down a tunnel that could have been mistaken as the glooms of Hades?

His lungs were aching as he heaved every gulp of air into his tired body. There were times that his eye would wander away from staring down the corridor and would instead focus on a grayish stain along the walls. It was then that his mind would imagine the faces of those that had died under his command. His own brother, his best friend, his confidant, his son; their cold gray faces would stare back at him as he passed them by, their distant eyes betraying nothing, like some monochrome mural that surrounded him, watching and judging to see if he was worthy enough to join them.

Sometimes, a muffled explosion from the surface would jolt him out of his thoughts, as reality would merge with his inner prescience; Wolf would occasionally stop and check the map in his noteputer as he would halt at an intersection. After checking where the cadet's escape routes would be, he would then change direction and hurry, down another branch of the tunnels. There were times when a passageway that he was suppose to travel into was blocked by debris after its ceiling collapsed; he would then have to backtrack and go down an alternate route. Although it took time, Wolf was obligated and saw no reason to turn back as he kept on moving into the breach while trying to come to terms with the ever deepening abyss in his soul.

As Wolf rounded a corner and ran into another tunnel that looked identical to the one he went into before, he heard a muffled whimper coming from an intersection up ahead. The throat that produced the cry could have only come from a child, Wolf thought as he immediately started running towards it. Just as he got to the dimly lit intersection, he saw that there were about two dozen of them, huddled together near the base of the tunnel walls. Judging from their uniforms, these were the missing cadets from the Dragoons Mercenary Training School that were unaccounted for during the initial attack. Most looked to be between six and seven years old with the exception of one child who seemed to be slightly older. Wolf immediately sensed he knew the kid; the boy had whitish blond hair and was slightly built. It had to have been Duncan McGavin; he had been briefed on the boy's phenomenal test scores in MechWarrior training and had ordered a more thorough scrutiny in regards to observation.

"Children, what are you doing here?" Wolf said as he stopped and caught his breath. "You need to head to the evacuation center quickly."

The boys looked up at him with nervous glances while Duncan, who was about to say something, instead turned his head towards the twilit tunnel to his right as if to indicate a warning. Wolf's apparent relief in finding the children immediately turned to alarm as he pulled out his auto pistol and whirled to face his right flank.

But he was too late. The first clump of flechettes ripped into his right side and made him drop the pistol. As Wolf cried out in pain, the second burst of polymer shards penetrated his right collarbone and sent him falling backwards to the ground. The agony was intense as the pain was both sharp and searing; Wolf felt like his very soul was on fire. As he tried to grope for his fallen pistol, a third clump of needles tore into his right hand, crucifying it into the concrete flooring. Almost immediately the pain along his body was compounded by his heart; Wolf felt the scene tightening around him as his breath seemed to come in shallow gasps; no matter how hard he tried to suck in the air, it felt like an elephant standing on top of him, squeezing the life from his lungs. As Wolf continued to wheeze while his face remained on ground level, he noticed a pair of boots coming out of the darkness, walking towards him until the metal toe guards stood only inches from his face.

He could hear the muffled sobbing of the children as a grizzled hand reached down to the ground near him and picked up his pistol. The boots then shifted sideways as the assailant walked a few paces back while pocketing the gun with his free hand and then turned to face him again. Even as he was blacking out, Wolf could smell the tanned leather from the boots and noticed the shiny silver spurs at the ankles, clinking like tiny bells as the assailant moved.

"Well, well, well. Lookie here. I got separated from my men so I took a trip down these evacuation tunnels and what do I find? Today must be the luckiest day of my life." A voice, no doubt coming from the man wearing the boots called out to him. "Don't die on me yet, Wolf. I got a hankerin' to talk to you, before you get to the great blue 'yonder."

Wolf blinked in between flashes of pain and shortness of breath. As he tried desperately to marshal the remaining willpower in his mortally wounded body, Wolf realized that the voice was indeed familiar to him. He had heard it only less than an hour ago, when he received an anonymous call on his personal communicator. It had finally registered in him just how and why the mercenaries from Temptown were now sacking the city. If only he had realized just how acute the danger was and now he felt doubly shamed that he let it go this far. The fault in the end was his, and his alone.

"Get up and face me, Wolf. I know you can still do it. Fer ol' times sake." Once again the drawling voice taunted him.

With supreme effort, Wolf forced himself to sit up, propping his shoulder along the concrete base of the tunnel wall. As his tired old eyes tried to focus ahead of him, he finally knew who it was. Only one man could have had so much hate against him that even time itself could not bury, at least, not yet.

Colonel Wayne Waco made a toothy grin as he tipped his trademark ten-gallon hat to Jaime Wolf in a mock salute with his left hand while pointing the needler with his right. Waco was practically the same age as he was but Wolf could see a fire in the other man's eyes. Past the graying beard and the stooped shoulders, he and Waco could have passed off as old friends; but Wolf knew, the opposite was true: he was the most ancient of enemies, and he had come to collect what was due.

"You got anythin' to say, Wolf?" Waco continued to taunt as he casually kept the weapon pointed at him. "Them flechettes are tipped with a slow actin' poison, Wolf. Yer as good as dead but I just wanted you to know who it was that did this to you and yer damned Dragoons before you die."

"Why?" Jaime Wolf whispered as the pain prevented him from articulating.

"Why? You got a lotta nerve to even ask me that!" Waco flew into a rage, as it seemed like the veins on his forehead was about to pop out. "You know why. I did this for my son, John. You remember the New Aragon campaign in 3008, don't you? Almost sixty years to the day when your Dragoons ganged up on my son and tore his BattleMech apart. Even then your boys didn't stop, it was said that my son was crushed by one of your 'Mechs." Even in his wounded state, Wolf could feel the seething anger in Waco's voice.

"Not… confirmed." Wolf said softly.

"Say what you want, Wolf." Waco said with finality. "I swore an oath to destroy the Dragoons and now I have come to fulfill that promise. You don't know how long it took to plan this did you? It took years boy, years. The moment I set up shop in Temptown I recalled everyone who had ever served under my unit; like me, they all swore that death oath and I compelled them to complete their ends of the bargain. I had my boys smuggle in 'Mechs part by part; took us years to assemble a large enough force to overrun the city garrison in order to get at the weapons and 'Mechs you had under quarantine." It seemed that Waco was enjoying himself as he relished over the painstaking preparations. "Hell, the plan wouldn't have even worked because there was just so many of you and your fleet of WarShips too. But then the Blakists approached us with an offer that we just couldn't refuse- heck, it was an offer that we just had to take."

Wolf cringed as he realized the final piece of the puzzle. "Word… of Blake?"

"That's right, Wolf." Despite the sobbing children, despite the growing pool of blood on the concrete floor, Waco still grinned as he felt an exhilaration that he never even dreamt of. "When the Star League disbanded just last month, the Blakists felt that the entire Inner-Sphere needed to be cleansed and guess what? You and yer Dragoons are the first on that hit list. You won't be the last, but to me, you're what counts."

"I-if you want me… take me." Wolf said. "Please… spare the children."

"I already have you, Wolf." Waco said as he inched closer to the Dragoons' wounded leader. "As fer these kids, heck, I actually want to kill them all in front of you, just to spite you. These boys are gonna grow up to be Dragoons someday and I can't have that; I wanna wipe you all out. But I wanted you to know who it was that finally beat yer Dragoons before I send you to hell."

"Y-you're so… full… of hate. It… consumes you."

The words made Waco pause for a moment, as if someone had told him the truth about his own soul. When he spoke again, the spite seemed to have subsided just a little bit. "Just this once, I agree with you, Wolf. Fer years I would lie awake at night, thinking what to do if I ever got the chance to kill you and your Dragoons. Every minute of every day you were always on my mind, yer unit twisted my heart and burned my soul. Now here we are, you lying there, helpless like a fly on a spider's web. I haven't felt like this, well, since I said 'good luck' to my son just before that last battle."

Wolf's eyes had become bloodshot from the internal bleeding, but he hoped that Duncan would get the message. "What will you do then… after I'm dead?" He asked.

Waco stood still as he seemed to be momentarily lost in thought for a moment. He had never expected to be able to taunt his old enemy like this, to be so much in control that now he seemed to be at a loss for words as he tried to search for a meaning in his life other than vengeance. "To tell you the truth, Wolf, I really don't know. Maybe I'll try to live again. I gotta admit that I ain't got no other aim in life other than to see you and yer men die a thousand deaths fer what you did. But that thought is fer another time."

As Waco was philosophizing, Duncan continued to creep closer behind the hateful old man. The boy knew that he had only one chance at this and he couldn't let the other kids down, there was too much at stake. He had realized that Commander Wolf was buying time while talking to the other man and he needed to act now.

"But enough of this." Waco said as he aimed the needler at Wolf's face. "Now that I told you everything, it's time fer you to die. We may meet each other again in the afterlife, Wolf, but I just wanted you to know who it is that finally beat you, not the Clans, not the Great Houses, just an old man who did it fer the memory of his son. Bye, Wolf." With those words, Waco began to squeeze the weapon's trigger.

"No!" Duncan screamed as he leapt at Wayne Waco's ankles, driving into the standing old man whose legs crumpled almost immediately. Waco made an ear-piercing scream as the boy's plunging attack broke his left ankle and he inadvertently dropped the needler onto the pavement. As Duncan and Waco tumbled onto the ground, Wolf made a supreme effort of will as he crawled towards the fallen needler.

"You little punk!" Waco cursed as he shoved the boy away from him and began pulling out Wolf's auto pistol from his jacket. Duncan tried to wrestle the gun away from Wayne Waco but the old man slammed his other fist into the boy's temple, flinging Duncan into the wall, dazed and in pain.

Wolf could barely see now, the agony and the pressure on his heart narrowed his vision to only what was in front of him, he was seeing double and there was nothing but blackness in his peripheral sight. But still, his indomitable will kept him going as he focused on the one, all-important task ahead while continuing his relentless crawl for the needler. Wolf subconsciously winced as he almost felt the slugs from his own pistol smashing into his side but he knew that he had nothing to lose anymore, so he kept on crawling towards the weapon.

Waco roared with both anger and pain as he finally pulled out the auto pistol from his jacket. Flicking off the safety, he tried to aim for Wolf's head and started to squeeze the trigger just as the other man grasped the needler with his left hand and aimed it at him.

Both fired simultaneously. Waco's shot went slightly wide, slamming into Wolf's ribcage and separated into several solid pieces that punctured his lungs and tore up his arteries. The clump of flechettes from the needler on the other hand, found its mark as the razor-thin needles tore into Waco's throat, tearing out his jugular vein and eviscerating his windpipe. Wayne Waco gurgled what seemed to be a bloody curse as he twitched on the ground, both his breath and blood gushing out from his body. Within a few moments, he lay still.

Fighting back the pain from his bruised cheek, Duncan got up and ran over to Jaime Wolf. He could see that the supreme leader of the Dragoons was literally torn up in pieces; pools of blood had stained the gray, concrete pavement where he lay as his wounds continued to bleed. "Mr. Wolf, we got to get help for you. Have you got a communicator?" The boy pleaded.

Wolf's voice was barely a whisper now that the boy had to kneel down in order to hear him. "What happened to Waco?"

"H-he's dead, sir. You got him." Duncan answered as he cradled Wolf's head in his arms, tears running down his cheeks.

"My communicator… is useless underground. No signal." Wolf made a bloody smile. It seemed that most of the pain had now subsided; all he could feel was a dull ache and maybe that wasn't so bad, at least it was a sign that he was still alive.

The other children formed a standing circle around them as Duncan tried to comfort him. "But there must be something we could do for you!" The boy begged.

"You… did well. Saved the others. Now get going." Wolf whispered. "Duncan, tell Tasha… that I will give her regards to my brother when I see him."

"Mr. Wolf," Duncan sobbed, "I can't leave you like this."

"I… order you… Bring the children to safety. Leave me… I want to be alone." Wolf closed his eyes.

"Goodbye, Mr. Wolf." Duncan whispered to the old man's ear as he lowered his head gently on the ground. "The Dragoons will never die, we will go on. Take care."

Gathering the other children, Duncan started to lead them away. Wolf heard their footsteps as they continued on into an adjoining tunnel and the sounds of their little feet finally subsided. He could still hear the occasional thump of an explosion from above as the battle for the city raged but even then, there was now a certain calmness that seemed peaceful to him. As he looked around one more time, he saw the faces of the dead along the walls once more, but their expressions were different now, some were smiling; it was almost as if they were now willing to welcome him to their fold. He had finally earned their respect.

His last thoughts were almost a dream, as he woke up and realized that he was a teenaged boy again, standing across the steppes of Strana Mechty, gazing out into the vast wildness and as he looked on, he could see a pack of wolves racing across the plains, their brown and gray furs shimmering in the sun, what a magnificent sight they were.

Another boy, slightly younger than him, came bounding over on the other side of the hillock where he was standing. "Jaime, the wolves are hunting, let us go see them!" The other boy shouted as he waved over to him.

"Coming, Joshua!" He replied.

The two boys then ran as one, their young bodies became shining beacons of light as they laughed, dashing over the veldt, their smiles and hilarity ever increasing, never wavering. It was a bright and glorious day, and they were going to do their best to enjoy it.