Fortress Republic, page 28
part #18 of BattleTech : Mechwarrior Dark Age Series
Rescuer or not, the security team made him wait—one man holding him back with an upraised hand and another walking back to get verbal approval from Caleb. Which he gave, and Erik was allowed forward without the slightest insult taken. Three weeks of rough, cross-country travel and who could say how many harrowing moments, the man had earned a little cautious paranoia. And a whole lot of rest, was Erik’s guess as well.
Caleb had looked far more . . . polished, last time they’d met. At the viewing before Victor Steiner-Davion’s funeral, that had been, with Caleb in dress greens and well groomed. Now the prince wore a soiled and torn tanker’s uniform, had several weeks of growth bearding his face, deep scratches on the side of his neck, and a vacant stare that seemed to pass right through Erik as if Caleb looked for someone behind him.
Erik resisted the urge to turn and look.
“Prince Caleb,” Erik said by way of greeting. “Never a dull moment.”
Caleb also remembered their exchange, apparently. He smiled thinly. “When we are at war,” he said, finishing the sentiment they had shared during the viewing.
“We are tying up some loose ends here, Prince Caleb. Then we would be honored to escort you back to Jarman City’s DropPort where the First Sun awaits.”
“Loose ends?”
“A few vehicles left to salvage. And we are investigating a battle-communications report of a large vehicle or tank that broke free during the fighting and pushed off towards the southwest wilderness. We did find some tracks leading away from the station’s ruined walls. Fresh. Wide enough and deep enough to be a loaded J100 salvage vehicle. But we can’t really say if it had been coming or going.”
Caleb’s dark eyes flashed out once again over the nearby ruins. Then he nodded. “Let it go, Erik,” Caleb said.
Which implied that there had been such a vehicle.
This time Erik bristled. Just a bit. Felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “This is your world, Prince Caleb, and we are here on questionable terms, I do appreciate that.” It had taken some serious browbeating of Brevet-Colonel Hedges to even get permission to land. “I would not be doing my duty to my own people, though, if I did not point out that this mission to help throw Liao and rogue Republic units off New Hessen has cost us. That salvage could be useful.”
“And if I guaranteed your losses?”
Careful! Erik knew that Caleb would not make such an offer casually. There was more at play here than he knew. “I would hesitate to accept. Sire, I came here to offer you our assistance, and serve Tikonov’s needs in stopping the Liao advance. Not to take advantage of the situation.” Not in that way, at least.
“But if you ask it of me, I will leave off our search. As . . . a favor.”
That was part of a language every political leader knew. The language of compromise and barter. Caleb’s eyes drifted, his gaze searching among the rubble and returning men. Even checking around him from time to time as if someone might simply appear within the tight circle of security. Someone dangerous? No, it didn’t seem that way.
Someone missing. That was all.
“Very well,” Caleb said then. Nodded to himself. Distracted. “I can appreciate that. If the Swordsworn won’t take my bounty, I assume you do have a favor I can offer in return.”
It wasn’t a question, but Erik nodded nonetheless. “Just a moment of your time, Prince Caleb. To discuss some of the latest happenings within The Republic. And a potential future.”
“The Swordsworn are looking for new allies?”
Close. “The Swordsworn are looking for a new home,” Erik said, throwing his hat into the ring. A move he had never thought to make on his own, and made possible thanks to Exarch Levin’s decision to close the borders of Prefecture X. Isolationism was a knife that cut both ways.
Erik planned to wield it like a scalpel.
Caleb stared down at his own feet. Thinking? Considering? Finally, he nodded. Glanced up. Evaluated Erik with a measuring gaze. Nodded once, decisive. “By all means. Let us sit down and talk.” Then he turned to lead the way back into the Phoenix.
Erik paused for a few seconds, letting the security team close up around their charge, then followed at a discreet distance. He spared only a brief thought for Aaron, stuck on Ronel and sniffing around the scraps left to Prince Harrison’s table. Never appreciating that the feast had been moved.
And now dear uncle, dear cousin—there is no going back.
29
Northwind is under military blockade. Attempt no DropShip landings or you will be fired upon. Do not approach the local recharge stations or you will be fired upon. You are allowed no aerospace patrols, no active sensor emissions. Retreat from this system within six days. (message repeats)
—Automated message received at Nadir Jump Point, Northwind, 16 September 3135, relayed by Captain Jack Trader of the JumpShip Achilles Best
Richmond Lowlands, Ronel
Republic of the Sphere
26 September 3135
“Now!” Julian called out, having pushed his flanks as far forward as he dared before Conner’s loyalists thought to clip away one of the thinning wings. “Go! Hard and fast. Forward the Guard!”
Almost immediately his Templar stumbled, right leg shoved back as a Gauss slug buried itself in his armored thigh.
An M1 Marksman had pushed forward just enough to throw a hitch into Julian’s stride, letting Leftenant Andrew Giles take the lead as he pushed his Legionnaire forward at its full flank speed of nearly one hundred twenty kilometers per hour.
Julian wrestled with his controls, fighting the forward pitch of his war avatar by arching backward, using his own equilibrium to adjust. Deep within the Templar’s armored body, the gyroscopic stabilizers screamed in protest, but obeyed.
He dropped crosshairs over the M1’s blocky nose, his targeting computer acquiring solid tone almost at once despite the distance. Like coiling serpents, the particle cannon streams twisted outward along a running path, sliding together into one great, sinuous beast before they smashed into the M1’s right forward corner and slagged armor into charred, useless crisps. A dream shot. Julian could only thank the weather for holding off long enough to get it.
It would not remain so for long. The rain had fallen all day long in brief, desperate squalls, some of the strangest weather he had ever seen. First pounding down so hard against his armor he could hardly tell when the rain ended and the autocannon fire he took from Conner Monroe’s Rifleman began. Then, as the black, leathery clouds pushed hard to the west on Ronel’s autumn trade winds, a wide sun break baked the sodden ground and stepped up humidity percentage point by percentage point until the air shimmered with collected moisture.
Just now they were between cycles, with a thickening cloud cover the dingy gray-white of overwashed shorts. And growing dingier as missile exhaust trailed across the battlefield and chuffing gouts of oily smoke boiled up from Julian’s burning Behemoth.
Callandre still wasn’t taking that loss well, he saw, skating her SM1 Tank Destroyer right on the edge of suicide as she edged out again and again to the fore of Julian’s advancing line. Already she’d caught a VV1 Ranger and a lone hovercycle where they never should have been, leaving both of them piled up for scrap, but hardly an equitable trade.
She grew bolder by the minute as the loyalist forces all but ignored her; the missile-laden JES carriers having learned not to chase after her with their depleted supply of warheads and most others unable to track her well enough at one hundred thirty kilometers per hour. Waiting for their shot.
Julian would not let her hand it to them so easily. “Back away, Callandre.”
His voice-activated mic picked up the command and relayed it over a general officer’s channel. Levering his arms forward, he sniped at a Warhammer IIC that crossed Conner Monroe’s line of fire, and burned away a good amount of armor from its left leg. Gem-colored laser fire and arcing missiles criss-crossed back and forth over the flat lowlands.
“They want you in close,” he said. “Don’t give it to them.”
“I’ll give them something,” she snapped back. But she did pull her Destroyer back into the shadow of the allied forces. “Just let them—right flank!”
She called it first. Saw the defensive hook slip in past a thin stand of ponderosa pine. Two Pegasus scout hovercraft leading in a MadCat III and a Shadow Hawk IIC. Elements of the Storm Chasers mercenary force under Conner’s employ, sliding in from the western approach. Trying to throw off his advance without realizing that this one was different than the ones that had come before.
“On it,” Ariana Zou said before he had a chance to pass along any order. Her Griffin anchored the right wing, sweeping far out in a possible envelopment or pincer maneuver. Always on the edge, to keep Conner guessing from where the other shoe would drop.
“Guard-West forces, with me.”
She led out a brief foray, StarFire missile launcher belching out flight after flight of LRMs while her extended-range laser probed and prodded with a lance of scarlet fire. A pair of Fulcrum heavy hovertanks guarded her flanks, adding their own missiles and lasers to the ceaseless barrage. A Fox armored car brought up the rear, on picket detail, there to make a quick pick-up should a crew (or Ariana herself) end up stranded.
The MadCat III had good reach with its long-range missile launchers, but against the kind of firepower and accuracy Ariana Zou could throw at it, the mercenaries quickly retreated.
Ariana anchored herself to the pines, taking temporary refuge within the stand as the rest of Julian’s line pushed forward to catch her. Julian raced after the advancing Legionnaire. Guided Lars Magnusson up on the eastern flank where he held a mirror position to The Republic paladin.
Lars’s Arcas. Ariana’s Griffin. Julian’s Templar. The three ’Mechs held flanks and center of the allies’ bowl-shaped line. Julian had kept Leftenant Giles’s Legionnaire in close on his position. Split the difference to Lars and Ariana with his Centurion and his Enforcer III. Half a dozen ’Mechs, backed by armor and infantry, and then a second line of reinforcements under Aaron Sandoval’s command pushing up right behind them. The lord governor crawled along the back lines with Julian’s command staff in the First Guards’ Tribune mobile HQ.
More autocannon fire hammered away at him, cutting deep wounds across his ’Mech’s chest and upper arms. Conner Rhys-Monroe, holding the forward edge of his own line, bending his flanks back in a slight wedge. He’d done that in response to Julian’s possible envelopment. A game of strategy and tactics at which both men excelled. Guessing and second-guessing every order, every maneuver.
Conner had pulled back into a wedge, protecting the lowland access to Richmond and encouraging the attempt to envelop. Giving up ground for time and as a way to stay out from under Julian’s artillery, which was now left far in the backfield out of effective range. Waiting for Julian to try for the envelopment, at which time he’d spear forward to either side, rolling up Julian’s line.
“Not going to happen.” Julian raced after the Legionnaire, calling Giles to throttle down, and started counting the seconds until they passed the make-or-break mark.
Thirty-five . . . and Callandre powered into a wide turn to ease out from beneath the guns of a squadron of attacking VTOL gunships. Warrior HW copters and a pair of Peregrines.
Aaron Sandoval moved forward the Swordsworn’s Aesir AA vehicles to drive back the VTOLs with their quad-linked twenty-mills.
Twenty . . . The first, fat desultory drops of rain smashed into Julian’s cockpit ferroglass, leaving long spatters. “Flanks thin. East and west. Giles, back down.”
This time the M1’s Gauss rifle took Julian high in the left side of his chest, smashing armor into shards and splinters that rained down over the ground. The shot left them strewn over several dozen square meters.
Conner’s rotary autocannon slashed across from shoulder to shoulder. A handful of bullets spanged into the side of the Templar’s head, throwing Julian against his restraint harness and making his ears ring.
Sixteen . . . fifteen . . . fourteen . . .
“Giles?”
Fire intensified against Julian’s forward line. A stiffened defense on the part of the loyalists. Ruby lances burned in all around him as the Warhammer cut loose with first one pair of lasers, then the other.
Ten . . . nine . . . eight—
Not soon enough.
Tempted by the same disdain the loyalists had shown Callandre earlier, ignoring him for the Templar that followed, Andrew Giles had pushed his Legionnaire forward too far, too fast. He got caught out as the Warhammer pilot hot-cycled his weapons and put three of the ’Mech’s four lasers dead center into the chest of the fifty-ton machine, followed by long pulls from the Rifleman’s RACs and a sudden spread of warheads as the retreating Mad Cat III spun about, raced in on an oblique, and piled more misery on the Davion Guards’ warrior.
“GILES! Dammit, Giles, no!”
The Legionnaire had caught a bad break, with so many of the Warhammer’s lasers spearing into its centerline. Armor melted and runneled to the ground in a fiery stream, leaving a gaping wound for the rotary autocannons and the in-falling missiles to exploit. No telling which of them found the weakness, or if both did, but one moment a fifty-ton machine stood there with its own rotary autocannon blazing, dishing back a measure of the horrific damage being served it, and the next the ’Mech was bleeding golden fire out of every seam, every ruptured joint as its fusion engine let go in catastrophic failure. The air shimmered and pulled to one side as the pressure wave washed out from the explosion, and the ’Mech flew into a thousand fiery pieces.
So close and running up fast, Julian’s ’Mech took the brunt of the explosion right against its front. Armor plating turned into ’Mech-sized shrapnel, several large pieces cratering huge webs across his ferroglass shield. At least one fist-sized chunk crashed through to slam into the back of the cockpit, leaving a gaping hole in the shield’s lower left-hand corner.
Buffeted, shoved off kilter, he had to throttle back. He barely kept his balance as the Templar stumbled forward and into the scattered, burning wreckage that had once been one of Julian’s strongest machines.
One of his best warriors.
And then the heavens opened up once again, and down came the rains to drop a heavy gray fortress of solitude around him.
* * *
Eject eject eject!
Even as he held into extra-long pulls out of his rotary autocannon, hammering the struggling Legionnaire with a razor storm of hot, fifty-mill slugs, Conner Rhys-Monroe had been hoping to see the cockpit split open and the MechWarrior rocket to safety on his ejection thrusters. Knowing the machine was doomed from the moment his Warhammer pumped so many megajoules of energy into the Legionnaire’s chest. Doing his duty by his people and his own honor, dropping crosshairs dead center on the ’Mech and, along with the Mad Cat III, hammering in the killing blows.
Watching the great machine come apart like a paper doll soaked in fuel oil and set alight by the strike of a match.
Then Ronel’s terrible, autumn showers had hammered down once again, falling by buckets out of a sky of dark, boiled leather. Dropping a curtain across the stage. Putting him back on sensors again.
He made the switch with practiced ease. Checked his own formation first, counting icons by groups as they fanned out across his HUD. Carson’s Corsairs in silver-blue, spreading out over the eastern flank, while his left side—Mad Cat and Shadow Hawk IIC—led forward a spreading envelopment of their own to enfold Julian Davion’s line (and pull that paladin’s Griffin once and for all time).
And the Storm Chasers in dark blue, clumping up in a tangle to the west, to his right. Pack Hunters stalled in their own charge . . . and Captain Kremmen’s Ocelot actually in retreat! Quick-stepping backward at fifty klicks per.
Half of his loyalists’ armor assets had pushed west regardless, though now they, too, stalled.
“Beta-flankers, hold and secure!” He toggled up a tactical screen and drew his targeting reticle over the silhouette of Julian Davion’s Templar. Outside, through the gray veil of downpour, the eighty-ton machine was a shadow lost against the gray backdrop. “Captain Kremmens, your Storm Chasers should be swinging out west. West!”
He pulled into his triggers, chopping at the distant Templar with short, controlled bursts.
His automated warnings beat Kremmens’ response by about half a second, filling his cockpit with a wailing siren and the sharp, piercing ring of a proximity alert.
“I’d be swinging west if the Davion Guards weren’t punching up our gut!” Kremmens shouted back.
A good thing he did, or Conner might have lost him against the alarms and the sudden, deafening ring of angry hammers beating his armor into fresh scrap.
The Destroyer! Racing forward under cover of the early downpour, front edge bursting through the curtains of rain like the prow of some armored cutter, it sped out of the gloom, fishtailed into a side-slipping glide, and barked out with its assault-class autocannon to savage his left side.
Before he could even think to drag his crosshairs down, depressing his weapons at the close range, the Destroyer turned tail and powered into a sharp-angled retreat. The damnable crew no doubt cheering their quick taste of blood.
. . .upourgut. . .
Like a message queue, his brain jumped from alerts to communications to alarms to his tactical screens. Tracking down the immediate threats, sorting out and discarding the chaff as quickly as it could.
Not quick enough. What the Storm Chasers’ commander had warned him of was true. Julian Davion’s line had not thinned out into the envelopment he’d threatened to deploy, or a pincer that was the next most likely maneuver. Conner had planned for either one, stretching his wedge, ready to spread out in a quick push and then collapse over both wings of the Davion Guards. Chewing them apart before the Swordsworn line could push forward and reinforce.
