All Write, Already!

Nietzche theorized that all living beings (but in particular those which are self-aware) proceed naturally towards the accumulation of power to the ends of forcing their desired outcome/environment upon all other living beings. He described this as the principle upon which moral theories are designed, and in particular used it to justify his own, subjective moral code. Boil it all down, however, and it's still just a contest to see who has the bigger gun.

Which would not be me. The thought barely penetrated through the pain lancing up from his arm. The shoulder was dislocated at best, the rotator cuff torn at worst. It had not been his best bailout ever, but under hurricane conditions, with zero cover, and nothing but barren, windswept rock to land on, he figured he should be pretty grateful to the engineers at General Motors. His Marauder was a hopeless wreck, the expensively upgraded electronics had sweetly informed him of exactly how fucked his ride was just prior to the explosive bolts becomming the last thing he heard before his whole world became wind, hail, rain, and rock.

The memories, up until thirty seconds before his graceless impact with the ground, had filtered back to him as he drifted upwards, back to consciousness. He hadn't landed in the water, which was probably a good thing what with the hurricane on. He also handn't landed in the secondary blast radius of his own 'mech, which was also a plus. All in all, he gave his emergency egress a B-. He'd make a note of that in his logs if he managed to survive.

The air was warm, at least. And the battlefield was surprisingly high-visibility to the naked eye. He could see the downed wreckage of his Maurader, well enough to guess that it was the Jade Falcon Gladiator that downed him that was inspecting what was left. With any luck they'd expect he failed to eject, presumeably having disabled his autoeject prior to a battle in such brutally dangerous meterological conditions. Autoejects had a habit of being far more cautious than most battlemech pilots - punching them out under 'serious' conditions where most pilots would prefer not to eject unless under 'holy-shit-we're-all-going-to-die' conditions. Most pilots turned them off if they thought they might make a situation worse - for example by ejecting you into a hurricane when it wasn't absolutely necessary. The downside, of course, was that ammunition explosions, unleashed reactor plasma, and incomming fire all moved faster than a pilot's hand could get to the manual eject lever. (Really the thing was purely a cosmetic feature on today's battlefields anyway.) He'd always made it a unit policy that pilots kept their autoejects active. That policy had just saved his life, and even if it cost a few extra thousand in repairs and inconviences, the preservation of those under his command and employ was far more important. The meat was always worth more than the metal.

Which was precisely why the Falcons wanted his meat. Apparently the notion that a pilot remaining in that downed 'mech wouldn't leave behind enough to fill a coffee can, let alone a coffin, didn't faze them very much.

Which left out the 'wait for the storm to blow over and S&R to find me' plan. The sharp pop, flood of agony that made his vision swim, and the sudden need to vomit from the pain all told of good things - the shoulder was just dislocated and would now be okay... once he could figure out which way was up again. That was another few seconds of investigation. Turning off his pilot's recovery beacon took another few seconds. By the time he was crawling his way from the downed command seat, dragging the emergency field kit with him, the clanners had surmised he'd punched out okay.

On the other hand, they should've known better than to stand still on a battlefield. Even over the storm's constant winds, he could hear the ripple-stutter of rockets peppering the area. The Gladiator would be a huge target, and now had what would most likely be third fire lance to worry over. Which just left those little bastards in the power armor - where little included people thrice his own size, and four times his size in those suits.

Still, it was a little better than facing off against one of the largest 'mechs the clans ever put out.
He wasn't going to loiter like a polite little clanner, wating to be scooped up and 'bonded' or whatever verb they liked to use. His unit was beaten, routing by now in all likelyhood, and his command might never recover - but sometimes it wasn't about the guy with the bigger gun getting his way. Sometimes the little guy could get his way too.

Sometimes it wasn't about what you force upon others, but what you didn't let them force upon you.