Fortress Republic, page 21
part #18 of BattleTech : Mechwarrior Dark Age Series
“This will not be an easy time. But it is a necessary evil we have been faced with. The alternative being years of stagnation—at best!—followed by the long, painful slide backwards into the worst examples we could pull from history. The Succession Wars. The Pentagon Civil War. The Jihad.”
A cold blue light had begun flashing in the bottom corner of the exarch’s screen, hidden from view from those below. As he spoke, he tapped the icon, opened up an unsigned window and saw the brief message displayed for his eyes only.
WE ARE FIVE . . .
No doubt who had sent that. Jonah knew a brief ease as muscles in his back and shoulders unclenched. He had been hoping for such a message. A forward paladin who had not been so surprised, and who was willing to take those first drastic steps.
“Exarch.” Tyrina Drummond. The large woman had always been one to sense the direction of events and position herself near the front. Half of leadership was knowing when to bend to popular will. Which ended up being part of her argument. “Exarch, how do you think the people will react? Such an iron-clad restriction on the borders? The political spin that will follow, casting us in a dark light indeed, Devlin Stone’s blessing or not.”
Jonah leaned forward. He used a slide-control to move the lighting back up by ten percent, restoring more of the chamber to something less than shadows and gloom.
“They will react poorly,” he said, acknowledging the problem that was certain to come. “They will be frightened and ignorant of most of the facts. They will strike out blindly. For a time. But we must and will provide the leadership they have come to expect. We must be resolute and supportive. And when necessary, we will stand firm against any threat to our common goal: to keep The Republic’s light burning for the future hope of all humankind.”
SEVEN NOW. PERHAPS EIGHT.
A new message, scrolling into the same open window.
A consensus slowly built among his paladins. And, by extrapolation, his knights as well. It was a routine he expected to see repeated at many levels, on larger and larger scales the further they moved along. Shock. Resistance. Distress. Acceptance. And then . . .
“Can it be done?”
Leadership.
David McKinnon. Paladin exemplar, with the passing of Victor Davion. A man so many of them looked to for guidance. Pushing past the century mark was impressive enough, of course. But his greatest accomplishment was the spark of divine fire that still blazed in his eyes. That he still believed, after everything he had seen and experienced, including—as a veteran of the Jihad—some of humankind’s darkest hours. That capability to keep seeking a better path for all. That gift drove people to support men like McKinnon.
“Can it be done?” Jonah asked.
“You hope to seal the borders. And security will be maintained with ‘all necessary force’ as you promise.”
“Yes.”
“Can that be done? Is it possible to create such a . . . star-spanning fortress?”
A practical question. Always a good sign. McKinnon might not be one of the seven or eight ready to follow him into the hardship ahead, but he was at least willing to consider the merits.
“It can,” Jonah promised. “As much as I have given you, it is not everything. Not because I do not trust you.” Though Jonah did not. Could not. Completely. “But there will be assignments, hard tasks, ahead for many of you. And some things that you could learn might hurt those missions. Could endanger us all, in fact.” Playing on mission security was another tactic that could only work with seasoned veterans. The elite of the Sphere.
TEN.
“It remains to be seen if we can make it work, Paladin McKinnon. But I promise you, the resources and the technology exist to attempt it. If you are willing to pay the cost for ultimate victory.”
Now that made an impression. The elder paladin recoiled as if struck, having his own Founder’s Movement motto thrown back at him. Victory at any price. Nothing was worth more than the continuation of Devlin Stone’s dream. The survival of The Republic.
CALL YOUR VOTE. NOW, JONAH!
“This can be done,” he said. “It must be done. But, even as exarch, I cannot do it alone. This august body; this circle of men and women, and the cadre of knights who support it, and still support The Republic, are the only ones who can make it happen. If I do not have your full support, if you no longer trust my leadership, then we are at a loss. What say you all?”
There could be no official vote. Not as such. There was not even a procedure to follow, except for the election of an exarch. But this was important. It was as close to a reaffirmation of the exarch’s mandate as one could ever conceive. Jonah felt the incredible weight of his office, of the task left for him, settle down into his chest. For a moment, he found it hard to breathe as he waited for someone to make the first display of support. For, or against.
McKinnon surprised him. The venerable warrior was the first to nod his head in a bow of affirmation. Silent. Still.
Then Heather GioAvanti and Gareth Sinclair. Thaddeus Marik. Tyrina and Maya and Kelson Sorenson. Janella Lakewood. A cascade of support sweeping across the line of paladins as every one of them to the man bowed their heads and held the pose, hands clasped before them or spread out over their station panels.
Then, nearly as one, the knights rose from their seats in the Gallery. Standing in silent obedience to the will of the exarch and his paladins.
“Four weeks,” he said. Mournful and yet not completely without hope. It was a death sentence, but as with any wake there remained a promise of the next life. “Four weeks until the completed shutdown. There is much to accomplish. Much to discuss. I am opening more files at every level, knight-errant to paladin. We need debate and challenges as to the specifics. And if any man or woman can find a better path, let him bring it forward. But no matter what, we shall endeavor to persevere. Many of you will have a special charge. They will not be easy. They will not always be clear. Trust in your fellow warriors. Trust in yourselves. The way shall always be open.”
A flashing icon. A new one. Also unsigned. He thumbed it open as he finished his short speech. Read the entire text in a glance.
YOU HAVE MADE A GRAVE MISTAKE.
So not every paladin was with him. So be it. But as with any challenge in his life, Jonah planned to meet this one with every weapon still at his disposal. And faith defend any man or woman who crossed him now.
“This is not the beginning of the end,” Jonah promised, looking out over his paladins. Studying each one in turn. Fifteen pairs of eyes stared back in open support, or challenge. And either was fine with him.
“Merely the end of the beginning.”
SOLITUDE
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
—Margaret Mead, republished in “A Treatise On Leadership,” New Avalon Press, 3066
Change so often comes by such difficult and painful means, that we take great pains to avoid it. We erect grand fortresses to safeguard our most cherished beliefs. But change will not be denied forever. Eventually, if they must, the heralds of progress take up arms to tear down the high walls of ignorance. Brick by painful brick.
—Julian Davion, Lord Markeson, “Theories on Political Upheavals by Military Means,” published first on New Avalon, 12 February 3132
22
Civilian unrest on Hoan and Ankaa was quelled only when Swordsworn officers enforced the public’s call for an airing of grievances against the local governments. Debate continues to rage over the likely need of a special election to recall the current world governors, both of whom are applying for assistance from Terra and Exarch Levin.
—ComStar INN, Ankaa affiliate, routed by JumpShip Silver Bell, 27 August 3135
Ronel
Republic of the Sphere
4 September 3135
Sho-sa Jirobi Katanga bought time for his warriors as he ordered the Dragon’s Fury back another half kilometer. Throttling into a run, he raced his Panther across the Mitchell Dry Lake Basin at better than sixty kilometers per hour, swaying his head side to side in time with the BattleMech’s swinging gait. Swallowing against the bitter, dry taste left behind from one adrenaline rush after another. Sweat-salt crusted at the corners of his eyes, dried to a flaking scale against the dark coffee skin of his forearms. Every muscle ached after ten hours in his command chair, overseeing this running battle, this rout. With no sign of relief on the horizon, not until every member of his unit was dead, destroyed, or captured, he accepted his karma.
Let it be him, then!
He moved laterally along the battlefront, pulling to his side a pair of Maxim heavy hover transports and his remaining SM1 Destroyer. A Shandra scout vehicle raced up from behind as well, arguing against his orders to fall back with a simple shout of “Banzai!”
Four armored vehicles and a lone BattleMech, holding their side of the basin. Challenging the mercenary Storm Chasers, the Senate loyalists.
Long-range missiles and light autocannon sniped at them, worrying away their armor a few kilos at a time. The enemy force hesitated, even outnumbering his force at better than two-to-one, and Jirobi smiled. If nothing else, the assault force Conner Monroe had brought to Ronel had learned to respect the Dragon’s Fury. Knew better than to push forward blindly. Wait. Observe. Attack. These were the enemy’s tactics now, which they’d followed dogmatically this day, pushing forward again, and again, and again.
A Condor’s crew gave up on patience first, their vehicle sporting the blue and gray thundercloud colors of the Storm Chasers. They thought enough of themselves to probe too far forward, Arbalest launcher and Mydron Excel autocannon hammering away at Jirobi’s ad hoc unit. He turned against them with righteous fury.
The Panther’s Lord’s Light PPC spoke for Jirobi’s insult, slashing across the basin’s dried, cracked mud to grind into the side of the Condor’s primary drive fan. Sparks exploded and metal ran bright molten red to the ground where it smoked itself down to charred cinders.
The Maxim transports could do little from their range except add several handfuls of LRMs to the Condor’s misery. The missiles cratered the hovercraft’s deck, cracking its armored lift skirt. But an SM1 was never to be taken lightly. Skating forward on a cushion of air, its own drive fan reaching for a top-end speed of one hundred thirty kilometers per hour, the Destroyer broke from Jirobi’s pack just far enough to grab range with its ultra-class one-twenty-mill autocannon.
A long tongue of flame ripped from the barrel.
A gray haze of hot metal and bright, white fire-flashes from tracer rounds.
With its furious razor-edged storm, the SM1 neatly sliced off one entire side of the Condor’s skirting, spilling its cushion of air in a quick and violent dust devil. Digging the left-hand side of the speeding hovercraft into the lake’s dry basin, sending it in a rollover tumble that spread scrap metal along several hundred meters of open, desolate ground.
Jirobi’s communication system did not come with a voice-activated mic. He toggled for an all-hands circuit and left the channel open. “Back to the pack!” he ordered.
Turning his Panther to the southwest, he trailed after the much faster Maxim by an easy hundred meters and was quickly overtaken by the returned Destroyer as well. He left his throttle shoved up against the forward stop. Counted the distant silhouettes of two BattleMechs waiting at the head of a battered armored company.
All that was left of his garrison. His charge, given by Katana Tormark, that Ronel be held until further orders.
Now his failure and his shame.
“Jirobi-san! Our Shandra . . .”
By the Dragon’s teeth! He’d not thought! Jirobi read his tactical screen with a trained eye, and pulled up a rear view just in time to catch the Shandra scout vehicle on a dead-center race back into the teeth of the advancing mercenaries. The death of their Condor had mobilized them, a few of their faster vehicles leading the charge forward to get something back for the dead crew, the destroyed machine. The Shandra, with its heavy minigun and two samurai-hopefuls armed with laser rifles, was no match for the Bandit hovercraft or even the Striker light tank that led the way.
Not that the two men had any thought of coming back from the battle.
Shedding armor composite and with smoke chuffing out from under the engine housing, the vehicle accelerated directly into the oncoming Striker, which was having trouble bringing its missile launchers down hard enough to anticipate the charging Shandra.
Two Streak-SRM warheads finally pounded into the Shandra’s front armor, but too little, too late. The armored vehicle plowed into the front of the Striker at ninety-plus kph. It erupted into a soot-stained fireball that looked to Jirobi like a wilted apple blossom, overturning the Striker, leaving it tilted up on one side.
“A single measure of relief,” Jirobi whispered. “One more day, and I shall compose haiku for their sacrifice.”
“Wakarimassen, Jirobi-san?” Lieutenant Vallence in the SM1. Another samurai hopeful who had joined his honor with that of Katana Tormark.
He had left his communications open. “Iie. It was nothing.” A warrior’s final, desperate request.
Which the gods answered not a dozen heartbeats later as a fresh, strong voice crackled out over his antiquated comms system.
“Dragon’s Fury. Dragon’s Fury.” A confident, female voice. Her ki, strong. “We have you holding the southwestern border of Mitchell Basin. If your honor permits, we stand ready to assist.”
Was this . . . Jirobi knew the gods never looked kindly on distrust of their gifts. But this seemed too fortuitous. Assistance? By whom and from where? In every direction, nothing but sun-dried, weather-scoured plains that held water and life six months of the year, but now was a death land waiting to claim its next drink of blood.
He dialed over to a general channel, matching frequency with the original call. “Hai!” he said. “Hai, if this is real. I am Jirobi Katanga of the Dragon’s Fury, and no one’s honor is served in defeat to mercenary ronin!”
“Good enough,” the new voice said. “I am Yori Sak . . . Yori Kurita! And I offer you a message from the First Davion Guards.”
Jirobi throttled back as he raced up within the confines of his ragged company. Looked through his ferroglass shield at Lestrade’s beaten Griffin. Olna Takari’s limping Spider. The scarred and pitted armor on every vehicle left to their unit. Which was not many.
Kurita? The House of the Dragon! Here? And with Federated Suns troops? Well, why not. If the gods were to provide . . .
“What message?” he asked.
“To stand by and hold. Hold your line, Jirobi-san.” And here Yori paused. Then, “We are about to . . . shake things up.”
“Julian. Go.”
Yori Kurita’s assurance of a favorable beachhead was all he had been waiting for, though walking an eighty-five ton BattleMech out of an open DropShip hatch was by no means an easy step to take.
The Markeson Pride hovered nearly ten kilometers over Ronel’s Mitchell Basin, camouflaged by the afternoon sun as it held station high above to preserve an element of surprise. Wanting to send a clear and challenging message to Senator Conner Rhys-Monroe, that the First Guards had arrived and their agenda was nothing less than taking Ronel back from him and his budding alliance, Julian and Yori had worked together to form a hammer-and-anvil strategy to do just that.
“But this hammer is about to take a nine-kilometer swan dive,” he whispered, louder than he’d meant.
“You are complaining again?” Callandre asked. Fortunately his transmitter was dialed to a private frequency the two of them often shared. So only she had heard his last-moment misgivings. “Living in the Federated Suns made you soft?”
He’d show her soft! Stepping his Templar through a tight shuffling turn in place at the head of a short line, he faced his back to the open bay door and looked back across the nearly empty bay. No technicians. No support personnel of any kind after exposing the interior to such thin atmosphere. Just his waiting lance, a few battlesuited infantrymen, doing their best to wave vehicles into a double-column line, and on the far end of one line Callandre’s Destroyer.
“You just wish you were along for the ride,” he said. And levered himself back, taking the spill in a backwards fall.
Which was certainly true. Though his awkward departure rattled her for a moment.
“Verflucht! Jules, are you insane?!”
High praise from the Nagelring’s darling rogue. The same woman who had once driven a Hunter light support tank out onto one of Tharkad’s alpine lakes and intentionally sunk it through the ice to prove a bet on whether she would have enough time to power free of the freezing water before the engine drowned.
“No,” he gasped. “Not insane.” Just very, very stupid from time to time. Damn, but Calamity had a way of getting under his skin at just the wrong moment. Dropping through the thin atmosphere, Julian gritted his teeth as he went through the procedure for high-altitude insertion in a tumbled BattleMech.
Extending both the Templar’s arms straight out to the side, increasing drag.
Pulsing his drop pack’s burners for a few seconds at a time. Using them to cancel his ’Mech’s end-over momentum.
Within thirty-five seconds he had easily brought the falling machine under control. Ten seconds to spare, in fact, before the full burn point. Which he hit, and let the drop pack’s internal controls take over. All directional lifters fired, burning through their reaction mass at an incredible rate. They balanced him out by taking a feed off the Templar’s internal gyroscope, which was in turn controlled by Julian’s own sense of equilibrium as translated by the neurohelmet’s sensors.
One of the lifters pulsed hard, steering him onto a level drop. It held him there for another handful of chest-bruising heartbeats. Then one final hard burn that pressed Julian into his command chair at four gravities, making it difficult to even breathe, much less raise a single hand towards his controls. The automatics would work, or they wouldn’t. His ejection seat would fling him out of harm’s way in the event of a catastrophic failure, or not.
