Fortress Republic, page 29
part #18 of BattleTech : Mechwarrior Dark Age Series
When the Legionnaire fell, Conner had pushed forward with his own counter-assault, knowing the kind of weakness he’d just chewed into Julian’s center line.
Except that the Guards were collapsing! Flanks not bending out and around, or even swinging forward on an oblique attack, but cutting the corner off and racing inward to rendezvous behind and around Julian’s Templar! Arcas loping in at eighty-plus klicks per from the west, trailed by a Centurion and the two safeguarded by a line of armored vehicles ranging from a twenty-ton Fox armored car to fifty-ton Maxims, the heavy hover transports leading in Anat APCs as well.
Worse news on his eastern flank, where the Corsairs had committed the same fatal mistake as Conner had. They’d assumed they had covered their bases, and as the storm-squall raged at the wrong moment, they pushed forward on a preset plan without checking instruments, without verifying targets or even sticking their heads out of a turret hatch to take a look!
The Corsairs’ Mad Cat led the charge south and east, followed quickly by the ’Hawk and a line of armor including both Goblin APCs, Pegasus scout craft and a squad of hoverbikes. But Ariana Zou had ducked beneath that line, curling in as her Griffin led an in-sweeping charge of an Enforcer and some Kinnol main battle tanks.
The equivalent of putting every last gram of strength into a left hook, only to have your opponent duck inside for a body blow deep into the gut.
And that was about how Conner felt as he backpedaled his Rifleman, called quickly for his line to fall back, fall back and regroup! Gut-punched. Nauseated; hollow inside. Head swimming as he tensed for the knock-out blow to follow. So many ’Mechs and vehicles swarming in against one spot, the storm about to be unleashed would make a Ronel autumn squall pale to the level of a gentle spring shower.
“Center-down,” Conner ordered. “Pull in. Pull in! Grab some terrain and hold!”
Then he stumbled back as a particle cannon whipped out from the storm, slashing the rain apart into a sudden mist as the manmade lightning slapped against his right side and burned a wide, red-tinged weal.
Julian’s Guards did unleash a storm. Like hell itself had opened up and its fires unleashed, a furious assault of laser fire burned out of the gloom, slashing at three well-chosen targets in different spots along Conner’s line. The Warhammer IIC that carried his best firepower, the M1 Marksman with its Gauss rifle and missile support, and a Hasek MCV that still had its infantry loaded, burning through the armored sides and rolling it into a fireball that claimed the lives of four battlesuit infantry as well.
And here came Julian Davion’s Templar, storming the gates like a paladin of old, forging forward at the side of Ariana Zou, a paladin of more recent vintage.
Conner burned his crosshairs over the advancing Templar, ignoring the haze of shadows and rain that danced outside his ferroglass shield as he relied entirely on electronics. Chewing though several hundred rounds of ammunition, his rotary cannons lit up the gloom around him with long tongues of flame and a flurry of white-hot tracer fire. One of his rotaries blasted into the side of the Templar and missed. He caught a piece of a Fox armored car with the second, but mostly buried too many rounds of razored metal into the rain-softened earth.
It was Julian’s second salvo, fast-cycling the Templar’s particle cannons, that finished off the Warhammer. A powerful blast cored through weakened front armor, skewered the machine’s heavy gyro, and then sliced all the way through the back of the eighty-ton ’Mech. High velocity metal and spatters of molten composite sprayed out both sides of the stricken machine, which shook with mechanical palsy and then collapsed forward. Hard. Burying one shoulder and the side of its head in the earth.
“Box formation,” Conner ordered. “VTOLs swing around their back door and kick them in the ass!”
He throttled down on his initial retreat, was joined by a Schmitt and a pair of Pack Hunters as Lieutenant Minor led the Storm Chaser ’Mechs in to tuck them against the side of Conner’s loyalists. Strength in numbers. At his back, the crippled M1 rolled in, barely escaping the Guards’ fury. Then a pair of JES tactical carries and from far, far afield Conner’s remaining Behemoth.
What they had was a wall, now. A solid formation, being joined every moment by more ’Mechs and vehicles. Kremmens’ Ocelot. A Spider. A lance of Jousts paired with Goblin APCs.
The Corsairs were also pulling back, but too slow, too slow.
Conner tightened down on his triggers, firing quickly though he continued to spend his ammunition in short bursts. Conserving ammo as the Guards came together in a solid column three wide and dozens deep, and punched in against the wall.
Punched in, and shattered.
Somehow, from whatever deep reserves his warriors had left, they held up as the Guard speared in to point-blank range, then threw the enemy back. First once. Then again. Lasers slashing back and forth like quick, stinging blades out of the night. White-fire lances of particle cannon streams. Missiles arcing out and down, out and down, hammering armor from both sides into new scrap.
Julian’s PPCs slashing at Rifleman, Marksman, a line of Hauberk infantry spreading out of a nearby APC. The best target of the moment.
Conner doing the same. Digging into the side of Julian’s Templar as the tide of battle threw them together, then ripping in half a Condor hovertank the moment the two leaders were swept apart again.
Rising and falling. Slashing. Probing. Hammering. Vehicles rolled over and burning. The fight quickly degraded into a short-range slugging match.
Which would be won by whoever was willing to pay the higher price.
30
To all captains in port, to be relayed to all ships at space among the trade routes. Attempt no jump across the borders of Prefecture X, as redefined in the attached cartographic file. A zero tolerance policy will be in effect as of 1 October 3135.
—Transmitted first from Towne, 22 September 3135
Richmond Lowlands, Ronel
Republic of the Sphere
26 September 3135
Too high a price. Too much blood.
Julian’s vision swam as the heat build-up from hot-cycling his weapons turned his cockpit into a sauna. The place stank of scorched metal and fresh mud and gunpowder. The acrid stench clawed at the back of his throat, shortened his breath. Nothing he could do about it, with his ferroglass shield cracked and a fist-sized hole shoved through it. Nothing he could do but wait for the next stream of autocannon fire to walk across the ruined shield and slash through the cockpit like a frag grenade. Wait, continue to maneuver in the close-quarters battle, and lay about on all sides with his particle cannons and lasers.
Turn, throttle forward. One PPC. Two. A blister of four ruby darts and maybe—maybe!—his TharHes SRM four-pack when he thought he could afford it. Which wasn’t often.
“Swinging behind,” Callandre called out, skating her hovercraft right in at his heels. There was a tremor and a slight swoon as the Templar rocked hard to the left.
“Are you crazy?”
“You have to ask that?” He checked his rear monitor, saw the Destroyer fishtailing across a muddy stretch of torn earth, a hulking weight hanging off its left side. “I have a hitchhiker to scrape off. Coming around again!”
Two lasers criss-crossed over his ’Mech’s left shoulder, drawing in too close to his cockpit. Julian stepped back, pivoted, and sank to one knee in a quick duck-aside that left the lasers searching through empty air and Callandre’s SM1 barreling in at his planted leg. Trusting her to make the course correction, he dropped his crosshairs against the side of her hovertank, and used his left-arm medium laser. He scored a large glowing gash down the side of the Destroyer, cutting off an arm and slicing away a large chunk of helmet.
The Infiltrator trooper peeled off to the side like dropped baggage, bounced hard against the ground, and slid into a muddy pile.
“Verdammt, Jules! That cost me . . . armor.”
A burst of static interrupted her as he triggered his right-arm PPC into the nose of a charging hovercycle.
“And at no extra charge. Now slide around on my left and prepare to fall back on my order. Cover the crippled vehicles best you can but don’t you dare hit the slow side of ninety.”
“Retreat?” Aaron Sandoval asked. They had been transmitting on one of the officers’ channels. “Julian, you can’t hand Conner Monroe this . . . victory and expect a second chance like this one.”
More static. His second PPC. Stagger-firing kept his heat levels from building up to dangerous levels. Shaved a few degrees off his reactor temperature every other volley or so.
He knew Sandoval had a point. A good one. Julian’s strategy had half-paid, rolling up the loyalists’ eastern flank as Carter’s Corsairs struggled again and again to break back through the line of death Ariana Zou had set. Her Griffin and the Guards’ Enforcer, and a pair of Swordsworn Fulcrum hovertanks for support, had already dropped the Mad Cat III with a busted right femur and some gyroscope damage. The Shadow Hawk IIC, as impressive a design as it was, simply couldn’t get the job done by itself.
Neither could Julian’s First Davion Guards, though. Every push was thrown back with a high cost of armor and blood on both sides.
“It’s a butcher’s bill out here, Aaron! What do you expect us to do?”
“Pay it!” Callandre jumped back in. “We pay it, Jules. For Giles and for every warrior who has already put up the—Verflucht! Hard right!—the down payment.”
Unrequited commitment. That was still what it came down to. Julian had never set a goal on the battle for Ronel except that he would see it through to the end. It was the pledge he had made to Jonah Levin and to Harrison Davion. To his people. And they had pledged it right back to him.
A Pegasus made an end-run-around, strafing a squad of Cavalier infantry troopers. This time Julian damned his heat curve and put both PPCs into the side of the hovercraft, stripping away its lift skirt and spilling the air cushion. Its nose dug into the soft ground, crumpled, and then the back end kicked over as it tumbled end-over-end and right into a loyalist Hauberk squad.
“Ariana?” Julian asked, gasping for air as the Templar’s reactor spike tortured the atmosphere in his cockpit.
“Pay it.”
And Lars echoed her. “Sometimes you do not get to make the choice for yourself,” he added.
Julian nodded to the empty cockpit. This was also what Harrison had taught him. “To lead. To win,” he said. “But at what cost?” A question he asked of himself more than the others, just as the loyalists’ VTOL squadron shot the gap between his front line and the advancing Swordsworn reinforcements, burning down a Fox armored car that had strayed too far from cover.
“I’m not sure how much coin we have left,” he said, and made the final call. “But we put it all on the counter. One final push!”
“As to that,” Aaron said, voice strong and confident, “perhaps we can offer a bit more. If you are still ready to lead, Julian, my Swordsworn are here to follow.
“And all of us,” he said, “are here to win.”
* * *
Conner Rhys-Monroe struggled his Rifleman back to its feet. Blood tasted warm and salty in his mouth. His chest ached where the harness straps had caught him after the rough face-plant.
“Someone . . .” Chips ground between his teeth. He spit dryly, clearing them. Clacked his teeth together twice to check them present and accounted for. “Someone draw a bead on that Destroyer and chase it the hell away! Skyhooks,” he ordered up what was left of his VTOL squadron, “handle it.”
Twice now, that damned skating assault cannon had slid into his blind spot, using the heavy downpour as cover. Twice it had savaged armor from one side or the other, and escaped back into the sheeting rains.
He checked his weapon systems, his control systems. All good, except for a wrenched lower upper arm actuator. A bad shoulder joint. And there, a flashing telltale light that warned of an ammunition jam in the same-side RAC.
Okay, not so good as he’d first believed.
“On my order, back another two hundred meters. Hook left, left! Thin the distance to Carter’s Corsairs.” He checked over his HUD, ran mental lists. “Can anyone break that line on the east?”
“We’re on it!”
Lieutenant Blake Minor of the Storm Chasers. He’d lost his second Pack Hunter, but had snagged a JES tactical carrier to guard his flank and deliver close-in damage to anyone who fixed overmuch on the ’Mech. He backed out of line, running down the backfield.
“Then go!” he ordered the bulk of his forces. “Minus two hundred . . . now.”
About two seconds too late.
He had throttled back on his own stick, walking his Rifleman at a good clip towards the rear to put a little distance between himself and Davion’s First Guards. Buy some breathing room. Save lives (if only to hurl them back into the grinder once he could set a better battle plan than “keep slugging at them”). A dozen long strides . . . Two dozen . . .
. . . and straight into a storm of falling missiles and lancing fire.
Warheads erupted in overlapping waves, falling out of the dwindling skies to geyser clods of muck and scorched earth and fire and smoke back into the air. Several score slammed iron fists into his Rifleman, cracking armor, crushing it, digging deep for critical systems.
The rains were lessening, so instead of vague shadows on the other side of his ferroglass shield, there were quite a few low-to-the-ground definite shadows that looked like Demon wheeled tanks and Condors, a trio of laser-packing hovercycles and a Fulcrum hovertank. All circling around him in wide, sweeping arcs. Throwing back roostertails of mud, drive fans chopping the rains into a fine mist that swirled up in miniature funnel spouts.
And with weapons slicing as they wheeled by, each turning onto one of three different headings to spear deep behind his main line.
“NO NO NO!”
The Swordsworn! Driving forward on suicidal runs, pushing so deep behind his lines there was no going back. Spearheading the Guards’ final and hardest-hitting push. Cracking his line in two . . . three different places as they rolled in, chewed up armor and shoved around his smaller vehicles.
Getting in the way of Blake Minor’s charge to the Corsairs’ assistance.
Tripping up Kremmens’ Ocelot, the light ’Mech sent sprawling with an Anat APC dropping Cavalier infantry in a quick swarming attack. Leeching onto the thirty-five ton machine. Working away at it with hand lasers and sharpened steel claws.
And following in right behind, Julian Davion’s Templar, hurling fistfuls of lightning around the field. Crippling Conner’s remaining Schmitt. Dancing electrical discharges up and down the sides of the nearby Spider.
Conner dropped crosshairs over a troublesome Demon, the wheeled tank plowing through one of his infantry lines as if the armored troopers were little more than bowling pins. He reached out with his rotary autocannon and smashed it flat. Then he drifted the targeting reticle over to a fast-moving Maxim heavy hover transport leading forward a second Anat. Saw the crosshairs flash between red and gold—a partial lock—and chanced it.
Missed. The left-side weapon dug into the ground far short, jamming yet again, and his right arm RAC passed high over the turret.
The Maxim never slowed. But it did roll back its main door as it charged up on the backside of Minor’s Pack Hunter. Without pause the Maxim dove in front of the Pack Hunter. A squad of Elemental-style battle armor soldiers jumped free of their carrier, rising on fiery lifters, their arm-mounted lasers already spiking scarlet daggers into the Hunter’s side.
The Pack Hunter’s PPC caught one in mid-air, blowing it apart. One tumbled while trying to adjust for his high-speed exit. Two of them leaped over the wide chasm to grapple onto the machine’s side.
“Get them off me! Where are they? Get them OFF!”
Minor’s JES hover carrier slid in, possibly thinking to use any of its several short-range missile systems to peel the Elementals away from the ’Mech. Like swatting at mosquitoes (deadly ones that they were) with a knife. The battlesuit troops would not survive. But the cost to the ’Hunter would be terrible as well.
It never got the chance. The Maxim, having disgorged its infantry, ran head to head against the carrier. A combination of machine guns and SRM launchers spread out a few light punches.
Which the JES took, and then spat back a knock-out blow of its own. Eight six-pack launchers, spreading out a curtain of fire and smoke across the front of the Maxim. Shredding armor down to internal supports. Carving into the forward launchers, detonating a new round of warheads. Blossoming fire deep inside the crew compartment.
Throwing the stricken transport out of control as it powered ahead blindly and rammed into the JES’s forward corner.
The Maxim had weight and momentum on its side. It plowed low and left, then grounded out to slide to a graceless stop.
The JES was not so lucky. It jumped up onto the ruined nose of the transport, the impact throwing it up and back as it sailed in an awkward pirouette through the air to land on its roof. It tumbled side-around, crushing launchers and spilling out a trail of unfired warheads like garbage falling out of a rolling dumpster. Several missiles detonated under stress and impact, blossoming what was left of the vehicle into a rolling, roiling ball of fire and metal.
“Get them off!”
Minor had yet to realize how much trouble he was in. And Conner was too far to reach as the Anat APC, which had snuck up in the Maxim’s wake, slid to a halt nearby and dropped a combat engineer squad. Lightly armored, and armed with grapple rods for scaling BattleMechs, the engineers quickly swarmed up the back and sides of the Hunter with every intention of cracking open the cockpit hatch and taking the machine captive.
And all Conner could do was watch it happen through the drifting, silvered rains. Listen to the mercenary’s shouts over the communications band, and then the sudden silence. Hope they tasered Blake and weren’t forced to kill him.
