Warrior: Coupé (The Warrior Trilogy, Book Three): BattleTech Legends, #59

by Michael A. Stackpole

  As her ’Mech hit, the landing did not jar Alanna as much as she’d expected, despite the speed. Either I’m better at dropping than I remember, or… She flicked a dark hand over the command console’s keyboard, then snarled as the requested information flashed onto her auxiliary monitor. “Damn! The last thing I need is for my company to land in a goddamn marsh!”

  The Victor’s sensors gave her full view of the wide, shallow valley that Invasion Command had designated Landing Zone Pulsar. Off to the west, on a slow rise, was an evergreen forest with trees so tall they dwarfed even the BattleMechs. The thick green growth broke against the rolling hills toward the north, where the Gray Mountains rose up to form the northern horizon. From their snowy heights flowed the broad, muddy river that had overflowed its banks to flood the valley. The mountains tapered off toward the east, but more hills in that direction restricted visibility as well. Only to the south, where the sluggish river escaped, was the landscape wide open.

  Alanna frowned deeply. Too much open ground. I wonder if Marshal Tamara Hasek picked this spot, or if the real power behind the throne chose this landing zone? She saw an Orion touch down amid the company’s other ’Mechs and jettison its temporary rocket assembly. Opening a radio link, she contacted that ’Mech’s pilot. “Look alive, Leftenant. This is an arcade shooting gallery if I ever saw one.”

  “Roger that, Captain. I bet old Heart of Stone closed his eyes and touched the map to plunk us down here. Yuck! A swamp.”

  Alanna found herself smiling at Rex Archambauld’s nickname for the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers’ “combat” commander. Tamara Hasek, the late Duke Michael’s seventy-year-old aunt, was listed as the unit’s supreme commander and reportedly did take part in planning all the Fusiliers’ activities. Day-to-day command, however, was handled by Duke Michael’s crony, General Gordon Hartstone. Though a capable commander, his attitudes and manners did little to endear him to certain members of his command.

  Rex knows he’ll get another slug on his record for that remark when the battleROMs are reviewed but I suppose it won’t make any difference to him. He’s too good to be busted out of the service, and the AFFS knows it. I think they keep him a leftenant just so he won’t stir up trouble among the enlisted personnel. Alanna smiled. I don’t mind... Couldn’t find a better second in command in the whole army.

  Alanna switched her scanner over to magnetic resonance and scoured the hills to the north. “Rex, the hills north look clear. Let’s get everyone out of this swamp and over onto the hill.”

  Rex’s strong voice filled her neurohelmet. “Good idea. Do you want anyone to go over the top?”

  Alanna chewed her lower lip for a second. “Yes. Get the company on the hill, then send Jack up in his Ostroc.”

  “Roger, out.”

  With a huge, sucking pop, Alanna worked the Victor’s right foot free of the marsh. It left a hole the size of a luxury aircar behind that the swamp rapidly filled with brown, muddy water. Laboring mightily, she pulled the left leg free. This could take forever!

  Suddenly, the computer painted a mass of highly metallic images on the edge of her holographic display. Like a swarm of bees, they headed down from the forest, speeding across the marsh. Alanna turned the Victor’s head to center the approaching craft on the display, then flicked the sensor-feed back to visual. “Heads up, children. We have company.”

  Leftenant Opal Karsten snapped an order over the radio. “Fire Lance, bogies, two-seven-oh degrees. Fire when ready!” After a pause, she asked hesitantly, “Cap, what the hell are those?”

  Alanna’s fingers flew over her keyboard. “The computer has no definite match, but profile and speed makes them Savannah Masters. Listed as experimental—a shipment of the hovercraft was lost to Periphery pirates a year ago.” Alanna narrowed her brown eyes as she studied the auxiliary information. “Hit what you shoot at. They’re fast and nasty.”

  Knute King’s voice, arrogant as ever, filled the combat channel with harsh laughter. “Bugs. Nothing more.”

  Alanna shivered with anger. On her screen, she watched the wedge-shaped hovercraft formation spread out as it came into range. Barely larger than a ’Mech’s foot, each one-man hovercraft was little more than a fusion engine, some armor, a medium laser, and a huge fan. Under normal circumstances, their attack would be suicidal, but with us stuck here and moving slow, we’re sitting ducks!

  Alanna opened the radio channel. “All jumpers, blast off and move south two hundred meters. We’ll bracket them. They’re going to come at our backs. Make your shots count!”

  The Victor blasted toward the sky. Feathering the left pedal, Alanna flared the left leg’s jump jet and turned the ’Mech over so it stared down at the approaching hovercraft. Extending the ’Mech’s left arm, she targeted a group of five coming in at Archambauld’s mired Orion. Too fast to track, she thought. Just have to trust to luck. Without waiting for the computer lock she knew would never come, she tightened up on the trigger.

  One of her two medium lasers hit a hovercraft. The beam sliced through armor on the Savannah Master’s left side, dropping molten globules steaming into the marsh water. The craft skittered to the side as the pilot shied away from the intense heat, but it lost no speed. Firing in unison with the other four craft in its attack group, the pilot drilled his laser into Archambauld’s Orion.

  Four medium lasers hit the heavy ’Mech. Two lanced into its right flank, carving glowing red scars beneath its armpit. A third lopped a chunk of armor from the ’Mech’s right arm and the last lanced into the Orion’s right thigh. The beam played across the armor, vaporizing what it touched, but failed to pierce it fully.

  The Orion let loose with everything it had except for its short-range missiles. The autocannon sprouting from the humanoid ’Mech’s right hip fired high over its target, but the fifteen LRMs corkscrewing out from the launcher mounted in its left shoulder hit home. Explosions surrounded a hovercraft, lifting it from the water and pirouetting it through a fire cloud. Visible for a half second amid the smoke and brilliant flames, the hovercraft disintegrated, showering the water with metal splinters.

  Hovercraft swept in at Tom Clark’s Thunderbolt from behind. Two of them hit with their medium lasers, but the damage they did was minor. As one swept past his position, Clark tagged it with a medium laser, blasting armor from its nose. Even more devastating, Nancy Campion’s Grasshopper goosed one fleeing Savannah Master with a blast from her large laser. The beam ate through the small craft like swamp rot, filling the cockpit with fire and death.

  The third group of hovercraft targeted Karsten’s Crusader, slashing at the ’Mech’s rear. One beam blasted armor over the Crusader’s spine. The other two beams that hit stabbed into the ’Mech’s left flank and pierced its side. Steam and yellow-green fluid burst from the wound as the laser beams vaporized three heat sinks. Though Karsten unleashed two flights of LRMs and fired both medium lasers at the hovercraft, all five escaped unharmed.

  Heart in her mouth, Alanna watched as Eric de Chanoui, anticipating the strike at his Rifleman’s rear, rotated the ’Mech’s arms up and around to cover his rear arc. Mindless of the heat buildup it would cause, he blazed away with the large lasers and autocannon. If he doesn’t get them now, he’s history!

  The Rifleman’s autocannon fired a salvo that hit one hovercraft on the nose. The shells blasted armor into jagged little chunks of ferro-ceramic alloy that careened off the craft’s windscreen like hail. The impact slowed the hovercraft long enough for one of the Rifleman’s large lasers to sweep over it. The Savannah Master blurred in the ruby beam’s grasp, then exploded in a rolling fireball that skipped like a stone across the water’s tortured surface.

  The other four hovercraft swept on through the fiery cloud that had been their group leader. Three of them hit with their lasers, and two cored through the Rifleman’s back armor. A series of explosions detonated within the Rifleman’s chest as the lasers destroyed the fusion engine’s shielding and the incredible heat touched off the aut
ocannon ammo stored next to it. As the fire built within the ’Mech, the angular outline of its torso softened and flames shot from the hole in its spine.

  Seconds before a massive explosion tore the Rifleman apart, a gout of flame shot from the ’Mech’s chest. De Chanoui’s ejection seat shot straight up, then angled over toward the hills to the north. The ’Mech he’d left behind split down the middle as an argent spear of flame stabbed up toward the dawn sky. The ’Mech’s arms flew off in two different directions while torso fragments peppered the water. The ’Mech’s legs, untouched, but trailing smoke from where the torso had sat, remained stuck upright in the swamp.

  Alanna saw another hovercraft explode as Eve Bors hit it with a burst from her Ostsol’s large laser. From her vantage point, Alanna could only see damage on the Ostsol’s right leg, but Eve quickly reported that the armor on her ’Mech’s back was all but destroyed.

  The hovercraft, which had attacked from the west, continued on toward the east. They followed the river as it curved north and quickly vanished behind the hills where de Chanoui had landed. Alanna frowned. I don’t like this at all. Those guys were too good to be Liao militia.

  Alanna radioed Rex Archambauld on their company’s command frequency. “Rex, get the others on those hills. Keep alert. Use the jumpers to act as outriders. I’m going over to the command channel. I want air cover.”

  She hit two switches, expecting to hear the bored voice of a radio operator in the invasion’s tactical center. Instead, a babble of voices and noise blasted through her neurohelmet. “We’re taking heavy fire on Boomslang Ridge,” she heard an excited voice report. The whine of an autocannon accompanied the transmission. “Get us some air support!”

  “Negative, Deuce Battalion. Support allocations are only assigned on request of a commanding officer. My screen shows you’re only a captain. Where is Colonel Harkness?”

  Irritation shot through the field commander’s voice. “Harkness bought it when he marched his Marauder into a Liao militia ambush. They had inferno rockets and roasted him alive.”

  Alanna felt as if an icy dagger had been thrust into her stomach. What a way to die! Inferno rockets exploded just before they hit their targets, covering a ’Mech or building with a jellied fuel that burned like hell itself. The heat buildup was enough to render a ’Mech inoperable. Alanna shot a glance at her own heat monitors and felt a cold trickle of sweat run down her spine.

  “If you don’t get it, Taccom, I’m the only command officer left in the Second ’Mech Battalion. I guess that brevets me to colonel, wouldn’t you say?”

  The command center’s radio operator came back with nervousness twitching through his words. “I guess it would, Colonel Moultrie, but I still can’t give you any air cover.” The man’s voice sank. “We don’t have any more.”

  Alanna broke in before Moultrie could curse at the radioman at the tactical center. “Colonel, Captain Damu, First Battalion. You’re east of our position. What’s your opposition?”

  Moultrie’s voice lost its edge. “’Mechs and armor in the foothills. They’re dug in, so we can’t do anything. Can you swing over?”

  Alanna summoned a tactical map of the area and thought she saw a way to hit Boomslang Ridge from the west. Before she could answer, however, Jack Cannon’s Ostroc crested the hill directly north of the swamp. A light flashed on her command console, indicating a message coming in on the company frequency, then it died abruptly.

  She looked up as the barrel-chested ’Mech staggered, then spun wildly. Armor flew in ragged sheets from its torso. Explosions from the SRM magazine began, shooting flame from the legion of holes opened in the ’Mech’s chest. The Ostroc stumbled back down the hill, then exploded, blowing the upper half of the ’Mech’s torso out into the middle of the swamp.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Colonel, we’ve just been hit by something!” Alanna hesitated, waiting for Moultrie’s reply, but heard nothing. “Colonel Moultrie? Colonel?”

  Rex Archambauld’s voice broke into the radio frequency. “Cannon reported two Saladins were on the other side of the hill before they got him. He IDed them as part of McCarron’s Armored Cavalry. We’ve got real opposition here, Cap. What the hell are we going to do?”

  The panic in Rex’s voice made Alanna get control of her own. These people are my responsibility. I’ve got to get them out of this mess. She swallowed past the lump in her throat before speaking. “Move everyone west, toward the forest.”

  Doubt bled into Rex’s words. “Cap, that’ll move us away from the concentration of our troops. We’ll be on our own.”

  Alanna shook her head. Can’t have you going rogue on me, Rex. “Leftenant, in case you’ve not noticed, we had opposition on what was supposed to be a milk run. We expected militia and we get trained mercs who’ve got a vendetta with us that runs deeper than a black hole. Command says our air cover’s been swatted down and the Second Battalion’s getting ripped to pieces on Boomslang Ridge. We’re talking a big-time snafu here. Some malfing idiot stuck our head in the chiroptopard’s mouth, and I’m not having anything to do with it.”

  Rex’s voice came back strong and full of fire. “Roger, Captain. What do we do when we hit the forest?”

  Alanna shuddered the image of Colonel Harkness’s death by inferno rocket flashing through her mind. “We torch the forest and try to stay one step ahead of the flames. With any luck, that’ll flush our opposition and we can break out of what is obviously a very big trap.” Her hands curled into claws. “And if we survive that, then we go looking for the idiot who got us into this situation and kill him!”

  Chapter 18

  COMSTAR FIRST CIRCUIT COMPOUND

  HILTON HEAD ISLAND

  NORTH AMERICA, TERRA

  29 MAY 3029

  Myndo forced her fists open and held her head high. I can feel their fear. They know the day of reckoning has come. They called the tune, and now they must pay the piper. She smiled coldly. This piper is more than ready to collect.

  The Primus looked at her with unconcealed rage in his dark eyes. “I believe we all know the reason Precentor Dieron has called us here for an emergency meeting.” He inclined his head in her direction. “Precentor, I believe you have a motion to put forward?”

  Myndo waited a second or two before killing her smile. “Hanse Davion’s troops landed on Sarna yesterday morning. I demand, as we have agreed before, that we vote on a complete and total interdiction of service into and out of the Federated Suns—this to include information from Davion agents inside the Capellan Confederation or any other nation.”

  The Primus looked around at the other precentors gathered in the wood-paneled, dome-shaped First Circuit chamber. “Is there any discussion?”

  Precentor Tharkad nodded his gold-maned head. “My esteemed colleague from the Draconis Combine is correct that our threshold event has been reached, but the conquest of Sarna is not complete. I would suggest, therefore, that her motion is premature.”

  Myndo’s eyes blazed. “You hypocritical fool! We agreed that an attack on Sarna would trigger interdiction! I delayed calling for this meeting until Davion’s troops actually landed on Sarna because I expected you to balk before war was enjoined.” She stabbed a finger toward her enemy. “How can you justify delaying a stroke that might save Sarna?”

  Ulthan Everson rose to her challenge. “Have you forgotten, Myndo Waterly, that the holovid of a raid on our installation that you manufactured uses a location that appears to be the substation in the Weng-chu Prefecture of Sarna’s Gold Coast? Davion’s troops have not pacified that area yet. How can we base our interdiction on so transparent a piece of fakery?”

  Before Myndo could reply, Precentor Sian cut in. “I must agree with Precentor Tharkad. Despite earlier agreements, it would be an error to interdict right now. Davion’s forces have taken a terrible beating on Sarna. Interdiction would prevent knowledge of their defeat spreading back through the Federated Suns. The bloodbath might be enough to kill support for the invasion a
ll by itself.”

  The ghost of a grin twisting the Primus’s lips made Myndo angry and then suddenly cold, with a clarity of vision she’d never experienced. Everything fell together. Of course! We’re so busy watching the Fox’s hands that we ignore his true motives. A small laugh escaped her.

  The Primus stiffened. “Ridicule has no part in this place of reason, Precentor Dieron. Control yourself or be censured!”

  Myndo bowed her head apologetically, then saw the other precentors watching her as her head came up. They’ve noticed the change. Now, while I have their attention, I must use what I have learned.

  She focused upon Villius Tejh. “Precentor Sian, why do you think Hanse Davion pursues this war?”

  Tejh regarded her carefully, probing the expression on her face for the hint of a trap. “I am not fool enough to be taken in by his speeches about the threat Liao presents to the Federated Suns. The Prince must have realized, after Galahad 3026, that any assault by the Capellan Confederation would result in disaster for Maximilian Liao. Hanse Davion wishes to be the First Lord of a new Star League. He married into part of such a new government, and now he conquers yet another.”

  The Precentor New Avalon shook his head. “With all due respect, Precentor Sian, I believe my own vantage point is better than yours. Quite simply, I believe the Prince has launched this war to capture major portions of Liao industry. Wars have repeatedly been fought for technology and the means to produce it. The NAIS is learning much of the old ways and has even branched out into areas that the early technologists did not study. The Prince needs facilities to move these discoveries from the lab into the real world.”

  Ulthan Everson smiled broadly. “This has been my thought concerning his motive for war. His marriage with Melissa and the agreements made with the Archon before the wedding have linked the Lyran and Federated economies. The inclusion of Liao production facilities will expand both economies and enrich both realms.”