Twilight of the clans III: the hunters

by Thomas S. Gressman

  "General," Antonescu said, rising and coming to attention as he addressed her. "I'm only on Kikuyu for the graduation ceremony. All my battalion commanders and most of my personal staff are still on Mogyorod. Nobody had a clue you'd be scheduling a meeting like this." The nearby world of Mogyorod was the other planet the Light Horse garrisoned in service to the Lyran Alliance.

  "I know that, Charles. I've already sent word. Your people are coming in aboard the Buford. Mogyorod's only a jump away. They should be here sometime tomorrow night. Anything else?" She saw Antonescu's eyes narrow slightly as he worked it out that she'd been pulling strings even in the short time since her return.

  Unlike most mercenary companies serving the various Successor States, the Eridani Light Horse actually owned a number of JumpShips. The Star Lord Class JumpShip Buford was one such interstellar vessel, and had been assigned to Antonescu's 151st Light Horse. With Mogyorod but a few light years distant, the trip would be instantaneous. Still, it would take a high-speed shuttle some time to make the trip insystem from the jump point.

  "No, General, nothing else. Thank you." Antonescu returned to his seat.

  Winston nodded once.

  "Dismissed."

  The MechWarrior colonels saluted and left quietly. Only Scott Hinesick kept his seat.

  "I know you, Ria." He leaned back in his chair as he spoke. "There's more. Something you didn't tell them."

  Winston nodded. "I didn't tell them that Marshal Hasek-Davion personally requested that I serve as his second-in-command. And I didn't tell them that the Eridani Light Horse, as one of the few combat units able to trace its heritage back to the Star League, has been asked to help draft a set of general regulations for the new Star League Defense Force."

  "C'mon, Ria. That's not all. You're still holding back something else . . ." Hinesick's grin faded as realization set in. "Unless you mean . .."

  "Yeah, Scott, that's what I mean." Winston took a deep breath, trying to delay the moment of actually uttering the words. "You won't be coming with us."

  Hinesick stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. "Well, General," he said finally, fighting for control of his voice, which had become as brittle as frozen iron. "A little while ago you told me something wonderful and terrible was about to happen. You didn't lie."

  Without another word, Scott Hinesick rose from his chair and crossed to the door. As the door clicked shut behind him, Winston wanted to call him back. But what was the use? Nothing would change. She shook her head sadly, knowing how painful it would be for Hinesick to be left behind while she and the rest of the Eridani Light Horse rode off to meet their destiny.

  4

  Fort Telemar

  Kikuyu, Tamar March

  Lyran Alliance

  15 December 3058

  0900 Hours

  As Ariana Winston had predicted, the senior and staff officers of Charles Antonescu's 151st Light Horse Regiment arrived less than twenty-four hours after the meeting in her office broke up. They came aboard the Cossack, a Union Class DropShip assigned to the JumpShip Buford. That put all the various Light Horse commanders on Kikuyu.

  DropShips were an absolute necessity for space travel. With the collapse of the Star League, the secrets of building starships that could both jump between star systems and travel within those star systems had been lost. Only the occasional discovery of a forgotten Star League library core gave any glimmer of hope to those longing for a return to the glory days of yore. The latest, and perhaps greatest, discovery of these vintage storehouses of information was the so-called Gray Death memory core. With the decoding of the information recovered by the famous (or infamous, depending upon who you talked to) mercenary company, Inner Sphere scientists began to unlock the secrets known to their forebears. Adding to this already staggering wealth of information, ComStar broke its centuries-old veil of silence, revealing that they retained at least part of the old knowledge.

  The combination of the two, along with equipment recovered following the rare Clan defeat, went a long way toward returning the Inner Sphere to a shadow of its former glory. Still, it had been only six years since the Truce of Tukayyid, and just three decades since the discovery of the Gray Death memory core. WarShips and intra-system capable JumpShips were being built, but at a painfully slow rate.

  Thus, most in-system travel was accomplished by means of DropShips, massive spacecraft capable of transporting cargo and passengers between an inhabited planet and a JumpShip hanging in space above the local sun. Even in the heyday of the Star League, such ships were necessary, as no JumpShip could ever land on a planet's surface.

  Colonel Antonescu had met his officers at the spaceport and given them a synopsis of General Winston's briefing of day before.

  In the short time since that meeting, Fort Telemar, the spaceport city of Brandtford Heights, and the surrounding region had been transformed. Gone were the small knots of soldiers in Light Horse dress-greens lounging around sidewalk tables in Brandtford's central shopping district. In their place were pairs or trios of armed troopers, all wearing the age-old black brassard emblazoned with the white block letters "MP." At Fort Telemar's main gate, a black- and yellow-striped steel barrier had been placed across the roadway. Four armed troopers manned the checkpoint.

  As Antonescu's command car drew up to a halt before the closed gate, two of the troopers stepped forward, leveling heavy laser rifles at the vehicle's occupants. A third soldier, this one wearing the divided white and green square of a corporal, strode to the hovercar's left side, his right hand dangerously close to the holstered sidearm slung low on his right hip.

  "Identification." The corporal rapped out the word, as though daring anyone in the car to make trouble.

  Antonescu bit back a snarl and glared darkly at the young man for a moment before handing over his papers.

  The corporal seemed unimpressed by the Colonel's angry gaze. If anything, he took far more time than necessary to review Antonescu's identity card and gate pass. The rest of Antonescu's staff barely got a glance.

  "Thank you, Colonel." The guard returned the papers, stepped back, and motioned to the fourth man, who had remained in the guard shack.

  As the barrier rose with the whine of an electric motor, the guard corporal snapped a salute. Antonescu didn't return the courtesy, but merely nudged his driver, who engaged the car's fans and drove off.

  "For cryin' out loud, Colonel." Major Gary Ribic shook his head in disbelief. "What was that all about?" Rib was commander of the Eighth Recon Battalion.

  "It's General Winston's idea," Antonescu told him. "Did you notice? The only Light Horse personnel you saw in town were the MPs. All leaves and liberties have been canceled, quote 'for the duration' end-quote. Anyone with even the hint of a shadow on their security check has had their clearance revoked. No one outside this compound, and only a few inside, know what's about to happen, and we'd like to keep it that way."

  "So what is going on?"

  "Major Ribic, you will learn everything you need to know at tomorrow's briefing." That said, Charles Antonescu leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and began to gently massage his temples, leaving Ribic's curiosity no more satisfied than before.

  * * *

  The next morning, Major Gary Ribic and the rest of the senior Light Horse officers were getting their answers.

  The first to speak was, of course, Ariana Winston.

  "Gentlemen, what I am about to tell you cannot leave this room. As you all know, I have only recently arrived from Tharkad. There's been a lot of speculation about what went on there. Well, from here on, it's not rumors anymore."

  For the next few minutes, Winston outlined what she knew of the Whitting Conference. She didn't dwell on the political wrangling that invariably occurred between the crowned heads of the Inner Sphere, but stuck to the issues important to the men and women under her command. They learned about the plan to reestablish the Star League and that Sun-Tzu Liao would serve as the new First Lord of the League
.

  Then she said, "That's not all. The biggest news is that the armies of the Inner Sphere will unite to attack and destroy one of the clans so totally that it will shock and terrify the rest. The Clan chosen was the Smoke Jaguars."

  Winston paused to let her words sink in as absolute silence descended over the briefing room. She let the silence hang for a moment before continuing. "This invasion of the Clans will be carried out under the banner of the Star League Defense Force. It will consist of two carefully timed operations. Operation Bulldog will be headed by Victor Davion—a surprise attack on the Smoke Jaguar occupied worlds. The other will be a secret task force under the command of Marshal Morgan Hasek-Davion. The Eridani Light Horse will serve as a principal member of the second force, which will include units drawn from each of the Successor States, ComStar, and the Northwind Highlanders. We will be billed as the reserve force for the first operation, but that will be just a smoke screen."

  A murmur ran through the room. Though no one spoke aloud, Winston could sense the excitement and pride rippling through her officers.

  "The target of this coalition task force is one the Clans wouldn't expect in their worst nightmares. We will be launching a strike against a planet known as Huntress, the homeworld of the Smoke Jaguars!"

  "God in Heaven." Antonescu's voice was hushed and full of awe. The news was so momentous that the utterly proper Colonel abandoned military protocol, interrupting his commander with his stunned utterance.

  "The overall objective of both operations will be the same," Winston continued, unfazed by her subordinate's uncharacteristic breach of custom. "To destroy the entire Smoke Jaguar Clan."

  Again, there was silence in the briefing room. Even the normally unflappable Edwin Amis looked dumbfounded. The scope of the mission was so huge, and its objective so far reaching, that Winston's subordinates could scarcely comprehend it. She had felt almost exactly the same way at first. Colonel Charles Antonescu broke the silence.

  "How is all this possible?" he asked. "Nobody knows the location of the Clan homeworlds. Did the Explorer Corps and Teddy finally find what they've been looking for?" The Draconis Combine had been hit hard by the Clan invasion, and Theodore Kurita had long been insisting that the way to defeat the Clans was to find their homeworlds and destroy them there. He had been actively working with ComStar's Explorer Corps to discover the route to the Clan homeworlds.

  "Not exactly, Colonel," Winston said. "Seems it was actually a Smoke Jaguar who gave up the information needed to map a route. Believe it or not, a Jaguar warrior defected to ComStar not long ago."

  Scott Hinesick was shaking his head in wonderment. "The various units could probably pull together enough JumpShips to do something like this, but what happens when the Clanners send out their capital ships against the task force attacking Huntress? Nobody in the Inner Sphere's got the WarShips for this kind of operation."

  "Nobody except ComStar, Scott."

  "What?"

  "I still don't know the whole story," Winston said, "but ComStar has apparently held and maintained a secret fleet of WarShips ever since the Exodus."

  Now it was Hinesick's turn to be speechless. He sat back in his chair with a start, gaping at Winston as though she'd just demonstrated that pigs could fly.

  "General, did we hear you correctly?" asked Sandra Barclay. "Did you say that we're going to destroy the entire Smoke Jaguar Clan?"

  The Smoke Jaguars were considered to be the most bloodthirsty of the Clans. Like their namesake, they had raced across the Inner Sphere, gobbling up worlds and warriors with appalling speed and ferocity. Only Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon had matched or exceeded the Jaguar conquests. None matched them for ferocity. During the invasion, the Jaguars had directed a naval barrage against the city of Edo on Turtle Bay as a means of suppressing rebellion. The entire city had been leveled by the massive energies generated by the Clan WarShips. Such a thing hadn't occurred in the Inner Sphere for centuries.

  "That's the plan, Sandy," Winston confirmed. "The Whitting Conference figures that if we wipe out the Jags, a Crusader Clan, it will make the rest of the Clans see us differently. Not only as the new Star League, but as a force to be reckoned with instead of barbarians to be conquered. In effect, wiping out the Jaguars will make us their peers."

  Winston heard a muted oath of surprise, but couldn't determine which of her officers had spoken.

  "And," she continued, "by destroying a Crusader Clan, we'll hurt the Crusaders' credibility as a whole. We will also be sending a message to all the Clans. How can they claim to come here to restore the Star League if we've already done it? And how can they maintain their taste for the fight if we destroy a whole Clan?"

  "Well, damn, General," said Edwin Amis. "I don't exactly know what to say. I don't think any of us do. First, you stand there and tell us that we're going off to re-form the Star League Defense Force—and that makes me want to raise six kinds of ruckus.

  "Then, you say that our first job as the SLDF is to wipe out a Clan. Do the politicians really think we can pull that off?"

  "Yes, Ed, they do," Winston said. "They've got this model of something they call 'entropy-based warfare.' I'm not going to go into it all right here and now, but, given what I heard in the military briefing on Tharkad, it sounds like we're going to grind the Jags down and then destroy every trace of their ability to make war."

  "Whew," Amis said, for once at a loss for words.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Ariana Winston answered questions and responded to comments, most of which ran to elation at the reformation of the Star League or awe at the prospect of trying to wipe out a whole Clan. When the last of her officers had taken his turn to speak, she addressed the whole group again.

  "As the entire combat arm will be involved in this operation, the Lyran Alliance Armed Forces will be sending a couple of their line units to relieve us here and on Mogyorod. They will be arriving in a week or two, so you gentlemen will have to shoulder the task of getting the replacements up to speed, as well as getting our own people ready to move. The whole idea is to have them move in as quickly and as quietly as possible. We're awful close to the Jade Falcons, especially here on Kikuyu. The Clanners may not be up to the level of the Fox Fives or Loki, but you can bet your last C-Bill that they're watching every garrison along the border. Remember, it was a Clan intelligence officer who got Waco's Rangers wiped out on Coventry.

  "We will make our way, with all possible speed, to the planet known as Defiance, in the Cruris March of the Federated Suns. That world is currently ungarrisoned, but it has all the 'Mech-handling facilities necessary to serve a task force of the size that will be training there. I gather that the base at Fort Defiance was constructed to service the Armed Forces Federated Suns, which has occasionally used that world for military exercises.

  "While Defiance's environment isn't hostile, it's not pleasant. The atmosphere has moderate concentrations of sulfur and sulfur dioxides—enough to require the use of respirators and filter masks. Officially, we are being assigned as part of a 'reserve force' to be commanded by Morgan Hasek-Davion. So, even if word of our move leaks out, troop deployments to and from Defiance will be explained as our going to join the main body of the assault. I'm told that the various intelligence services involved are going to launch a disinformation campaign to cover troop movements and the training exercises on Defiance. They'll also try to explain away our absence once we launch the operation."

  Winston steeled herself for the firestorm of protests she knew would follow her next announcement.

  "The Sixth Donegal Guards Regimental Combat Team will be moving into our garrisons here at Fort Telemar and at Fort Shannon on Mogyorod."

  The room erupted into a riot of shouted objections. Many of the complaints were identical to those Winston had voiced in a blistering protest to Field Marshal Nondi Steiner, commanding officer of the Lyran Alliance Armed Forces. The Field Marshal's answer had been less than polite. It was also the answer she was now prepared t
o give her own troops. The answer hadn't entirely satisfied her, nor did she expect it to satisfy the men and women under her command. But first, she had to get control of the situation in the briefing room.

  "Ten-hut!" The shouted words rose over the babble of fifteen voices all talking at once. Most people forgot that Winston had come up through the ranks, and had never heard the drill-sergeant bellow she could still muster at a pinch. The arguments ceased as though a switch had been thrown.

  "I don't like this any more than you do, but this is a military organization, not a quilting circle. I was given an order, and I passed it along to you. There is no room for debate."

  Winston was surprised at the heat in her own voice. She'd thought she had put the resentment at having to entrust the lives and safety of the Light Horse's dependents to others behind her. Now that she had given the order, the feeling of anger came creeping back.

  "General, you've given the order, and we will obey it." Major Kent Fairfax got to his feet and stood at rigid attention. "But may I remind the General that responsibility for the lives and safety of Light Horse dependents is solely the province of the Fiftieth Heavy Cavalry and Eighth Recon Battalions?"

  "I know that, Kent." Winston's voice softened as she gazed at the blood-red "50" embroidered on the younger officer's left sleeve. "But we need the whole Light Horse, especially considering that we're under-strength already. If we leave the Fiftieth, or the Eighth, behind, it'll be like going into battle with one boot off."

  "I'm sorry, General, it just seems to me that we'll be abandoning our charges to the care of others. We haven't done that since Sendai."

  "I'm aware of that, Major. So is the Archon. She is also aware of what happened on Sendai following the massacre. She has assured me that the Sixth guards will take very good care of our people. I, in turn, assured her that they'd better." Winston's voice dropped to a kind of low growl as she spoke the last few words.