BattleTech: Front Lines: BattleCorps Anthology, Volume 6, page 10
“Sir, I do not think MechWarrior Murray is well. He is looking worse than usual. But…” she paused, “I do not know old people well enough to know if I am right.”
Raymond looked at her for a moment, surprised at her insight. “I think you are, since Melissa and I have both noticed it, too,” he finally replied. “You were right to bring it to my attention, though. Thank you.” She smiled slightly and nodded at the compliment.
Moments later, they walked into the cavalry called their Headquarters “tent.” Nothing more than a camouflage net suspended from trees, it had two quartets of radios on field tables hissing and occasionally crackling with a report of the patrols and another field table to hold briefings around. By its open-air nature, it was roomy enough for all the MechWarriors, the two hauptmann commanders, and most of their primary staff, but easily and quickly struck when the diggers relocated.
Walking in, Raymond nodded to the two battalion commanders, who were in conversations with various other officers. He headed over to Melissa, who gave him a hug, and complimented him on his freshly showered smell. He laughed, then turned slightly when he realized that Tallara was no longer behind him.
“She’s over by Anthony. I think she has a small crush on our master logistician,” Melissa said. Raymond saw she was right, the cadet talking to Leutnant Grant in the corner.
Thinking of her interruption of his shower earlier, Raymond shrugged. “I can live with that. Where’s the other two?”
“I sent Dawn to find Murray. I think he’s getting worse.”
“I think you’re right. Tallara noticed it too.”
“That kid has as much common sense as a boomer, and if she’s noticed…”
He frowned. “She’s not that bad. Actually, she’s learned a lot, started adopting our ways a lot faster than I think I would convert to, oh, Drac culture, for example.”
Melissa cocked her head. “Must be the Clan mindset, always wanting to be a warrior, no matter which Clan they fight for. We’re not like that, which is why the FedSuns is still fighting guerrilla wars on Capellan worlds they captured centuries ago. As long as she knows we’ll put her in a ’Mech, she’ll become the model LAAF soldier.”
He shook his head. “Maybe.”
The room grew quiet as Hauptmann Graham moved to the table, cutting off any further comments.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” she announced, and the room groaned, Raymond included. Briefings that started with that phrase generally ended very badly.
* * *
OUTSIDE GLENSHEE, NORTH OF PORT ST. WILLIAM
COVENTRY
COVENTRY PROVINCE
LYRAN ALLIANCE
5 APRIL 3058
IT TOOK Raymond a while to find his cadet near the cavalry headquarters tent, feeding a carrot to one of the penned-up remounts and whispering quietly to it.
“They can’t hear you.” She turned quickly, surprised. “Good morning, Cadet. Everything okay?”
“Aff, sir. I was just…taking a walk, and ended up here.” She motioned toward the animals. “What do you mean, they cannot hear me whisper? Why do you call them kangaroos when they look more like giant rabbits? And why ride them at all?”
Raymond walked forward, putting his boot on the flimsy aluminum lower rail of the portable enclosure and leaned on the top rail, looking over the pen. A few of the mounts quietly moved in the predawn grayness, rustling the leaves and nibbling grass, some slowly hopping across the forest glen. He chuckled—only a Clanner who’d never seen a kangaroo before could mistake one for a rabbit.
Visually, they were nearly identical to the original versions back on Terra, except for the genetic manipulation to increase their size. With overdeveloped hind legs and short, stubby arms that could grasp or punch, small head perched on a long neck, somewhere in their genetic tinkering they had become more chestnut brown than red, but they were, for all intents and purposes, identical to their Terran-based ancestors.
The original hope had been to create a new form of pack animal, something the animals had turned out to be very unsuitable for, but it was quickly discovered that they made excellent, low-cost cavalry mounts. They were difficult to ride at slow speeds, taking short and high bounces while standing mostly upright forcing the riders to hold on tightly. However, as they accelerated, the mounts went more horizontal, stretched out their tails and necks for balance, and took longer bounces with lower arcs. At full speed, a boomer handled with the precision of expensive sports bikes, and was a smoother ride for an experienced trooper than a horse at full gallop.
“Tallara, I can’t think of a better way for you to get into a fight than to tell a digger he rides a ‘Coventry Attack Bunny,’” he said, and she laughed. “Me neither. The reservists use them because this is a unit from the agricultural district: the boomers don’t tear up the crops as much as APCs or ATVs would, and they’re also a hell of a lot more nimble in the forest. Every so often, the simplest solutions work the best.”
She nodded as she moved down the fence to feed another mount.
“And to answer your first question, they can’t hear you whispering to them because they’ve been bred to be mostly deaf—it keeps them calmer in battle. War is a loud business, and you can only reduce so many instincts when training herbivores. Partially deafness cuts down on their natural inclination to flinch.”
She was silent for a moment, thinking, before responding. “Sigmund has been enjoying his time riding the…‘boomers.’ He says it is very challenging, and an exhilarating way to fight.”
“He’s one of the few diggers riding a boomer, actually.” Tallara looked at Raymond with a questioning glance. He swept his arm out. “These are all ‘flyers,’ female kangaroos. ‘Boomers’ is slang for males, but also what they call a group of trained ’Roos. Flyers aren’t as territorial as males, so they make better mounts in general; but since boomers are bigger, you normally find them in long range scout units, where they need lots of endurance and have lots of room away from each other.”
“These are females?” she asked.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You didn’t notice the pouches? These are marsupials, cadet, it’s an obvious giveaway,” he said, amused. The cadet, looking embarrassed, kneeled down to look at the bellies of the mounts. “You thinking of becoming a digger?”
“Neg!” she forcefully replied, shaking her head and standing quickly. The mount closest to her, still chewing the carrot, reared its head back in surprise at the sudden movement. Slowly stretching out a hand to pet and calm the beast, she continued more quietly, “I am a MechWarrior, Hauptmann. I will wait until a ’Mech is available, no matter how long it takes.”
He swung off the fence to face her. “Murray died a couple hours ago. Heart attack.” She froze, then slowly turned to him as he continued. “You heard the briefing last night. We’re heading east, linking up with some Coventry Military Academy cadets that escaped the initial attack. Once they cross the Ridesein, we’ll cover their withdrawal toward Whitting.”
Tallara tossed the carrot into the pen and headed back toward him.
“I’m putting Dawn in the Firestarter. We’ll need firebreaks to hold pursuit back, and she has experience in that. She’s not as good as Murray was, of course, but no one is. That leaves her Commando open, Cadet.”
“My Howler was also a light ’Mech, armed with missiles,” she said. Excitement lit her eyes. “I can pilot the Commando. Let me pilot the Commando. Sir,” she added, almost as an afterthought, and nearly sounding like a demand.
He paused for a moment, staring at her. “This isn’t simply putting on a blue jumpsuit and learning how to use contractions, Tallara. You’ll be fighting your own people. Like Sigmund, once you cross this bridge, you’ll no longer be a bondsman, and you can’t go back.”
“I am a MechWarrior, Leftenant. I want the Commando.” She frowned, and then added a word he suspected had been rare in her pre-capture vocabulary. “Please.”
* * *
RIDESEIN RIVER VALLEY, NORTH OF PORT ST. WILLIAM
COVENTRY
COVENTRY PROVINCE
LYRAN ALLIANCE
19 APRIL 3058
JEFFERSON SWORE as he triggered his Gauss rifle, hitting a Falcon Loki directly below the right torso missile rack; the round exploded the enemy ’Mech’s armor and sheared the launcher off, sending it flying. The heavy ’Mech twisted, maintaining its balance, before lancing out with twin cerulean beams of PPC fire. One beam destroyed a strand of woods to his left and ignited the remains. The other dug deep into his left torso, melting through his armor and nearly destroying his entire left side. His ’Mech groaned as it staggered, and he fought to find purchase with his Hollander’s claw-like toes. Melissa called out to him, the rush of her missiles firing clearly audible over the radio.
“Fall back, Hauptmann, I will distract him!” Tallara shouted, her Commando moving next to him and firing both SRM racks at the heavy Falcon ’Mech.
“No,” he ordered as he watched half the SRMs strike the Loki, joined by volleys from several squads of infantry. “All elements, fall back. We’re done here.” The missiles scattered all across the heavy ’Mech, joined by a half-score of long-range missiles from Melissa’s Charger. The Falcon ’Mech pivoted to its left to fire at the new, larger threat of Melissa’s assault ’Mech as the first wave of infantry began bounding backward.
“Thanks for the save, Cadet, now fall back,” he said, finally regaining control of his teetering Hollander, and brought his reticule to line up on the Loki.
“Aff, sir, withdrawing now,” she replied, turning her ’Mech around to weave deeper into the forest. Once the task force started to move north and support the Coventry cadets, the ’Mech lance had remained as a rearguard to set fires and distract their dogged pursuers as the rest of the task force broke contact. In her first action with the lance, Tallara had nearly gotten herself killed by challenging a Dasher to a duel. Though victorious, her Commando had been almost destroyed, and Raymond had nearly booted her to the infantry.
While Leutnant Grant worked miracles to get her ’Mech repaired, Hauptmann Howard had instructed Jefferson to let Tallara remain with the lance. Criticizing him for putting her into the cockpit without teaching her how to be part of an Inner Sphere lance, the older officer had firmly impressed upon Raymond that he had failed her, not the other way around.
Properly chastised, Raymond and the other pilots began a crash course in lance tactics. It took several patrols for them to break Tallara to out of her individualist Clan mindset. Incessant reminders about how much fragile her new ride was compared to most Clan ’Mechs worked well, and once it sunk in, she fit in so seamlessly it was as if she’d always been there. It was Dawn that soon became Tallara’s biggest fan: though she originally had been furious at the young pilot for what she had done to the Commando, Dawn began championing her progress at every occasion, and liked to remind Raymond that Tallara did, in fact, win the duel.
The task force had linked up with the cadets immediately following their skirmish on the Ridesein riverbank on the eighth, and Hauptmann Reffo, the cadre training officer commanding the Academy survivors, had taken advantage of his fresh reinforcements. Operating under the assumption that the Falcons didn’t know that the two forces had linked up, Reffo had instructed Jefferson and his forces to take the far north side and hit the Falcons in their flank when they began their inevitable assault on his command on the ninth.
Unfortunately, the light woods weren’t as thick as the Bosbeer forest that had so effectively blocked the active probe of the Shadow Cat, and a Falcon Fenris had easily noticed the hidden ’Mechs and infantry. It had all gone downhill from there: an entire heavy Binary immediately pulled out of the main assault and engaged the threat to their flank.
He fired his Gauss rifle again into the Loki, pleased to see the round fly into the gaping hole he’d punched into the ’Mech’s right torso before connecting. This time the shot sent the right arm and remains of the torso flying one way while the rest of the Clan ’Mech fell to the ground.
“Fall back, Cadet,” Jefferson repeated.
Before her ’Mech could get far, however, a Clan Black Hawk fired at her from nearly three hundred meters away. Most of the medium ’Mech’s lasers missed, but four hit, washing over the Commando and melting armor from most of her right side. The ’Mech staggered, and though she tried to regain control, fell to its right, landing on its right arm and snapping it off at the elbow.
Raymond fired over the downed Loki into the approaching Clanner, the Gauss round hitting the Black Hawk in the right knee and amputating the leg. The ’Mech went down with a crash as both the Loki and Commando tried to get to their feet, Tallara accomplishing the task first.
“Gives it character, right, Hauptmann?” she asked as her ’Mech ran past him, followed by a platoon of mounted infantry.
“You choose now to understand sarcasm?” he asked, firing again into the Loki and sending it—again—to the ground. Then he turned and raced his Hollander behind the cadet.
“Melissa, set up a new hide at five hundred meters. Dawn, firebreak at three hundred,” he called out, pushing his ’Mech through a stand of heavy woods as a large tree twenty meters away exploded from a laser strike. “Reffo, this is Jefferson, we’re falling back. We’ll draw as many of them with us as possible, and hopefully link back up with you tonight.”
“Understood. If you can pull that Binary with you, I think we can give these guys a pretty bloody nose,” came the response.
“Getting them to follow us isn’t the hard part,” Raymond muttered, running his one-armed Hollander around a stand of trees as hard as he dared push his gutted light ’Mech. Tallara’s Commando ran ahead, pacing a wave of infantry, their kangaroos springing along at full speed, skirting saplings with ease.
A trio of large hardwoods far ahead exploded as what appeared to be a PPC from a pursuing Thor barely missed Tallara. Wooden shards exploded like a nova, ricocheting harmlessly off the light ’Mech, but shredding a half-squad of infantry.
Barking, “Cover me,” Tallara brought her ’Mech to a halt and then down to one knee. Raymond, slightly stunned at the abruptness of her quick stop, took two more steps in his Hollander before pivoting it back around. Both feet shredded the forest floor and his internal structure screamed as it twisted, but he managed to bring his ’Mech to a sliding halt, absorbing a dozen long-range missiles launched from the Thor for his trouble.
“Let’s go, Cadet!” he shouted, firing a Gauss round back at the odd-looking but dangerous opponent. He missed, but it did convince the Falcon to duck behind some heavy trees and out of sight, which was almost as good.
“I have them,” Tallara announced, her Commando springing forward. Jefferson wrenched his Hollander around to follow her.
“Them?” He focused in on Tallara’s BattleMech, running with an odd gait. Her remaining arm was held close to her ’Mech’s side, and he saw infantry in her Mech’s palm, some clearly wounded, others holding on to the Commando’s fingers for purchase.
“Good work, Tallara,” he broadcasted, unable to hide the pride in his voice. “Damn good work. Dawn, get that blaze going. See if you can’t slow these Falcons down some. Melissa, let the Cav know Tallara’s bringing in wounded.”
* * *
NORTH OF GLEN MOHR
COVENTRY
COVENTRY PROVINCE
LYRAN ALLIANCE
21 MAY 3058
IT DIDN’T TAKE Raymond long to find her, simply because the pen was the first place he looked. As he expected, she was feeding a carrot to one of the mounts, giving him a half-glance as she walked along the fence. Another flyer, clearly used to her, stretched its long neck through the fence to nuzzle her pocket, looking for a handout.
“Do you do this every morning, Cadet?”
She shrugged. “Anytime I am not on patrol.”
He nodded—it had been a busy few weeks. After conducting screening operations for cadets in their retreat to Whitting, and finally to Leinerton, his task-force had stayed outside the city and continued their skirmishing campaign. They’d conducted flank security for the militia on their ill-fated attack toward Port St. William in April. Defending against Falcon probes while the militia had withdrawn back to the mountain town, Jefferson’s forces had been left outside the city, and was finally reinforced with the third digger battalion to continue ambushing enemy patrols. But by besieging the main bulk of the Coventry defenders in Leinerton, the Falcons had been able to dedicate more assets to hunting down units still fighting guerrilla warfare campaigns such as theirs.
Relentlessly hounded by a tightening Falcon noose, and with the three battalions barely able to field five troops of diggers between them due to losses, Hauptmann Graham had suggested the idea of breaking local contact. Heading further down the continent, they could open up a new front and hopefully face sparse Falcon garrisons instead of front-line Galaxies. With their plan approved, the task force slipped away from their pursuers, avoiding contact as it ran south, finally burying themselves in the deep forests lining the continent’s southern coast.
Hiding among the heavy firs, the ’Mechs were being repaired and re-armed from the last small cache squirreled away by sympathetic locals, while their infantry scouts were quietly conducting reconnaissance missions on the Falcon garrison holding Glen Mohr, a small but busy commercial port supporting several fishing fleets.
“Why?”
She looked at him for a moment, then glanced away, patting the eager mount on the head and rewarding it with a half of an apple before she pulled out a handful of carrots. “It is personal.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough. It’s really not why I came to find you. The approval for our strike has come in from Leinerton, and we’ve been reminded to do it as loudly and visibly as possible. They’re hurting back up there, and any units we can draw down here to chase us around will help them immensely.”
