Book excerpt: MASTERS OF WAR… The battlefields of the 31st century are commanded by the BattleMech, twenty-meter-tall, 100-ton bipedal engines of destruction. Piloted by MechWarriors, commanded by neo-feudal officers, owned by national governments and bands of mercenaries, loyal to one of the interstellar Successor States or the martial Clans, these ’Mechs make every other ground combat vehicle obsolete. This is the warfare of fusion-powered giants. This is BattleTech. The Chaos Irregulars are mercenaries, born on the battlefields of the planet Acamar at the dawn of the Word of Blake’s horrific Jihad. Orphans of shattered mercenary battalions, they were forged in the crucible of combat into one of the most reliable mercenary battalions in the Inner Sphere. Chaos Born: Book One of the Chaos Irregulars chronicles the battalion’s formation and first few contracts, battling intrigue, betrayal and other mercenaries. First published on the BattleCorps fiction site, these stories comprise the first half of a duology that culminates in Chaos Formed: Book Two of the Chaos Irregulars.