Twilight of the clans III: the hunters

by Thomas S. Gressman

  Talon Sergeant Raiko, sensing his commander's mood, stood up with a groan only utterable by senior noncommissioned officers.

  "Well, no wonder they gave you a hard time." Raiko grinned, robbing his words of any offense. "A senior officer, supposedly one of the best in the teams, goes charging full tilt into a fire-fight and gets himself greased by some no-rank marine." The Talon sergeant adopted the put-upon, Father-knows-best attitude common to every sergeant "saddled with" an officer.

  "When are you going to listen to me, Sho-sa! Sergeants belong in combat. Officers just get in the way."

  In the face of Raiko's good-natured kidding, Ryan's anger melted away.

  For a moment he glared at his senior noncom. In any other branch of the Draconis Combine Mustered soldiery, such impudence toward an officer on the part of an enlisted man was a court-martial offense. Though the DEST teams that had survived the purge were perhaps the most loyal element of the DCMS, and clung more fiercely to the traditions of the Combine, within their own ranks there was often a camaraderie found nowhere else in the Kurita military.

  "Huh." Ryan shook his head, amused by his Talon Sergeant's age-old jibe.

  Carter interrupted the banter. "So what did you tell them, sir?"

  "I told them just what happened," Ryan said. "They sent a platoon to do a company's job. Do you know what they told me?" Bitterness crept into his voice. "They said not to worry about it. We probably won't have to board any Clan WarShips anyhow."

  Carter rolled his eyes. "I wonder if my life insurance is paid up?"

  "I'd check on that real soon if I were you," said a strange voice from the hatchway.

  Ryan turned to see a tall, muscular man with close-cropped black hair, wearing the uniform of a Davion marine, swinging his feet through the opening. As he pulled himself upright, Ryan saw the unadorned blue epaulets of an infantry officer clipped to the man's shoulders. What especially caught his attention was the black fox's mask pinned to the man's collar. The nametape on his right breast read "Fuentes." A ripple of distrust and hostility flashed through Ryan's mind as he realized the collar flash's significance.

  "We haven't met yet, Sho-sa." Fuentes bobbed his head in what could have been interpreted as a bow. "I'm Leftenant Miguel Fuentes. I was the officer in charge of the marines you fought today. I just wanted to come by and congratulate you and your boys on your victory. Sorry you didn't 'live' to see it, sir."

  "Those were your men, Leftenant?" Ryan struggled against his wounded pride, making the conscious decision to let the jibe about his "death" pass.

  "Yessir, they were. And they were mighty upset at getting beat by a bunch of Dracs, if you'll pardon my French."

  Ryan repressed his distrust of the Davion trooper long enough to snort out a laugh. "I see. You aren't really Davion marines, are you?"

  "No sir, we're not." Fuentes tapped his collar pin. "Your guys beat up on Fox Team Four."

  Those of Ryan's squad who heard the quiet confession were open-mouthed with surprise. The men they'd fought and defeated were members of the Federated Commonwealth's elite M16 commandos. The "Rabid Foxes" had a reputation rivaling that of even the Draconis Elite Strike teams.

  "Listen, Sho-sa." Fuentes approached Ryan, and he clearly had something more than congratulations on his mind. "We've got to talk. Your op went down with, what, fifty-five percent casualties? That seems to be about standard.

  "A couple of years ago, my team had to recapture a civilian DropShip that had been seized by Liao Death Commandos during that mess in the Chaos March. We waxed the DCs, but took a lot of damage doing it.

  "Between us, we've got some of the best soldiers and officers in the Inner Sphere. Captain Montjar, that's my company commander, thinks it might be a good idea for us all to put our heads together and hammer out an alternative to Extra-Vehicular Activity or battle taxi assaults."

  For a moment, Ryan hesitated, fighting the ingrained response. Just a few months ago, he would have killed Leftenant Fuentes without a second thought. The man was M16, and M16 was the enemy.

  No, Ryan forcibly reminded himself. The Clans are the enemy.

  "Very well, Leftenant." Reflexively, Ryan began to bow, but caught himself. Instead, he offered Fuentes his hand. "It will be a pleasure to be working with you, instead of against you."

  10

  Fort Defiance

  Defiance, Crucis March

  Federated Commonwealth

  22 February 3059

  0615 Hours

  ""Ten-hut!" Master Sergeant Carole Cole barked out the command as the steel briefing room door hissed open.

  The officers of the Knights of the Inner Sphere shot to their feet as a token of respect for their commander.

  "Be seated." Colonel Paul Masters waved his officers back to their places. Most of the Knights had large mugs of coffee or tea in front of them. He envied his men the luxury of that small pleasure. It had been a few days since he'd offered his challenge to the Eridani Light Horse, and he'd spent every minute since then reviewing debriefing tapes, battle ROMs, and personal accounts of combat encounters with the Clans. Using this data, he and his people had put together what they believed was an accurate model of how the Smoke Jaguars would react if they were suddenly forced onto the defensive.

  Masters had spent most of the night planning his regiment's part in the coming operation and was feeling the effects of the lack of sleep. He knew the Knights' martial prowess, and had little fear that they would fail to execute the plan he had devised. What concerned him was the Eridani Light Horse. If they acted as he expected them to, his plan would work. If the wily mercenaries pulled off one of the battle-tricks for which they were so famous, his carefully constructed strategy would fall apart. Masters knew this was only an exercise, designed to familiarize members of the task force with one another and to prepare them to meet and overcome the highly aggressive Clan tactics. Still, this was not a contest he wanted to lose.

  The Knights were unique in all the Inner Sphere. They were a combat force built not only on military strength, but also on the ideal that a man might fight, kill, and even die, without losing his humanity. Masters viewed this exercise as a means of validating that theory before the fighting men of the task force, and, thereby, the rest of the Inner Sphere.

  Pushing aside his fatigue, Masters strode to the head of the conference table, thumbed a datachip into the proper slot, and without preamble began his briefing.

  "Gentlemen, today we will be taking the role of the Smoke Jaguars in a field combat exercise." A holographic map sprang up before the Knights as he spoke. "This is the Crossmolina Highlands, the site of today's operation."

  As Masters reeled off the particulars of the mission, a ComStar technician who had been assigned to the Knights manipulated the holoprojector's controls, causing various features on the laser-generated map to glow briefly. The map displayed a portion of the rocky upland region two score kilometers east of the Fort Defiance compound, separated from the installation by a line of tall, craggy hills labeled the Crossmolina Mountains.

  "We, as the Jaguars, will be defending the abandoned Basantapur mining facility near Darom." He pointed to a spot in the middle of the uplands, rocky and distinctly lacking in vegetation. "Our opponents will be the seventy-first Light Horse Regiment of the Eridani Light Horse." Masters' voice was level and even. He spoke clearly and slowly, making sure that each of his commanders understood exactly what was expected of him.

  "We will deploy by battalions. The First will take the center, about one kilometer south of the installation. Sir Gainard, the Second should deploy along this ravine to the east, and the Third, that's you, Dame Yanika, behind this line of hills to the west."

  As he laid out the details of his plan, tiny three-dimensional images of the mine and an array of Battle-Mechs popped into existence on the map. The terrain around the mine concerned Masters. The jumbled off-tan shading indicated rough ground, which would limit the speed of units moving across it, restricting his ability to re
spond to any unexpected moves by the Light Horsemen.

  "The Light Horse should be approaching our position via the Laurelton Gap. That is the easiest route into the Highlands." The gap appeared as a narrow defile, through which ran the centimeter-wide red line illustrating the Light Horse's projected line of approach. "Still, I wouldn't count on it. Colonel Barclay is no fool. Her regiment faced the Jade Falcons on Coventry and fought them to a standstill. She's just as likely to send a flanking force out through the Tel Burnas and hit the Third from behind." A red arrow arced in from the west edge of the map, through a series of low, rolling hills, and into the line of Knights' 'Mechs concealed there.

  "We'll have to be ready to react to whatever tactics the Light Horse throws at us. Now remember, today we're not the Knights of the Inner Sphere, we're the Smoke Jaguars, one of the most aggressive of the Clans. Nothing in their doctrine seems to indicate any defense strategies. Even when faced with an aggressor, the Jaguars attack. So, to make this exercise as real as possible, you are ordered to close with the Light Horse as soon as they are spotted.

  "Any questions?" Masters looked around the room.

  "Yes, Sir Masters," Sir Pracha Seni, a lance commander from Yanika's Battalion and a chronic joker, raised his hand. "Are we to follow the Clan rules of engagement?"

  Many of the Knights chuckled quietly at Seni's question. Even Masters smiled. The Clans traditionally favored a system of fighting that emphasized personal valor above all. Their complex code of conduct required Clan warriors to engage each opponent one-on-one until he was eliminated. If an enemy warrior fired on more than one Clan target, or if an enemy tried to interfere in one of these single combats, then all bets were off and the Clan warriors could attack any foeman in sight.

  "Only until the Light Horse breaks them. Anyone else? No?" Masters clapped his hands and rubbed the palms together in a gesture of eager anticipation. "That's it. Equipment check in thirty minutes. Dismissed." Now, Masters told himself, I have time for that coffee.

  * * *

  On the other side of the compound, Ariana Winston was finishing up her meeting with the Seventy-first's officers. Throughout the meeting, her tone had been one of quiet professionalism, mixed with apprehension.

  "This will be a standard deployment. The Eleventh Recon will move out ahead of the column, conducting patrol sweeps to locate the Knights. When you make contact, hit them and fall back, maintaining contact. If I know Masters half as well as I think I do, he'll be pushing the Knights to respond just like the Jags would—attack. Keep them entertained, but don't get mixed up in a cat fight. Keep moving. Draw them out, get them to overextend. When they get strung out, the Eighty-second Cav will jump them. I want the Seventeenth Recon to draw up in reserve to catch any leakers.

  "Any questions?"

  Winston looked around the briefing room. Her gaze settled on the Seventy-first's commander, Sandra Barclay. Sandra sat leaning forward, her hands folded on the table in front of her. White smudges on her knuckles and a tightness around her eyes and mouth told Winston something was wrong. Barclay always seemed to be second-guessing herself since the bloody siege of Lietnerton on Coventry, and Winston had hoped that the exercises on Defiance would shake Barclay out of her funk.

  A question jerked Winston's attention back to the meeting.

  "I'm sorry, Captain Avilla, say again?"

  "Has there been any progress with getting the APCs to run in this rotten-egg soup they call an atmosphere?" The Eighty-second's commanding officer repeated. "I'd like to know if I'm going to have a motor-infantry company or just foot-sloggers."

  "Captain Zeek, that's your department."

  Telemachus Zeek, Jr. was, like Winston, second-generation Light Horse. The young man with the nearly unpronounceable name had started out as an armored personnel carrier driver in his father's infantry company.

  When Captain Zeek Sr. retired in 3045, his son "inherited" command of the Kingpins.

  "Well, General Ma'am, the techs are still fighting with the filtration systems for the ICE engines. Anything with a fusion engine is okay. That means that the Blizzards and Maxims are limited to about fifty percent power output. You can push those hover transports to about seventy-five if you have to, but you'll double the breakdowns. It'll also mean twice as much down time for maintenance."

  Winston rubbed her eyes, a bad habit she'd developed under the stress of command. Suddenly self-conscious, she forced herself to stop, putting her hands as casually as possible into her pockets before replying to the infantry captain's discourse.

  "All right, Captain, keep them at it. Have your chief technicians write me up a report. I'll bring it up at the next command staff meeting."

  Winston pulled her hands from her pockets. She'd just caught herself toying with the spent pistol cartridge she carried as a good luck piece. Another bad habit.

  The compulsive gestures told her how worried she was. Not only about the coming exercise, but Task Force Serpent as a whole. The Light Horse was more than a combat unit under her command, they were her family. Now, more than at any other time, she felt the great trap of soldiering. You had to love the army to be a good soldier. And to be a good commander, you had to be willing to order people you loved into a situation that would certainly kill some of them. She'd certainly ordered people into combat before, knowing that some of them wouldn't come back. Even during the dark and dreadful days of the Coventry campaign, which had nearly seen the destruction of the Seventy-first Regiment, she had been secure in the knowledge that the Light Horse, as a body, would survive. This operation was different. Failure meant the total destruction of the unit. Even if the task force succeeded in wiping out the Smoke Jaguars, there was no guarantee that the Light Horse would survive the attempt.

  "Okay, people, if there's nothing else, have your companies formed up at the rally point in one hour.

  "Dismissed."

  11

  Crossmolina Highlands

  Defiance, Crucis March

  Federated Commonwealth

  22 February 3059

  0845 Hours

  "Watch it, Boss!" Corporal Penelope Greene's voice cut sharply across the Light Horse's communications channels. "Gladiator on your 'nine.' "

  Captain Stanley Crosetti wrenched the controls, as though twisting his own body would hurry the seemingly millimetric rotation of his Hunchback's torso. As the machine continued its turn, he could see the Knights' Zeus that the battle computers and vis-mod shells reconfigured into a Smoke Jaguar Gladiator. Flame belched from the boxy autocannon perched bazooka-like on his 'Mech's right shoulder. The simulated armor-piercing explosive shells stitched a bright, flashing line across the aggressor 'Mech's hips. Even that huge war machine designed for close-assault battles couldn't stand the kind of punishment Crosetti's huge gun could dish out. Armor shattered and spalled away, leaving the enemy with little protection on his lower torso.

  A veteran of several campaigns, Crosetti was impressed with the realistic images generated by the mock-engagement computer programs. His long combat experience hadn't, however, helped him against the Knights.

  His company had, according to plan, spearheaded the advance of the Eleventh Recon Battalion. They had tracked down the Knights a few kilometers to the west of the abandoned Basantapur mine. Instead of pulling back into a tight defensive position, the OPFOR 'Mechs lunged after him. By the time he had pulled his company back to what he thought would be the protection of the Tel Burna Hills, he'd lost the entire Recon and half of the Strike Lance.

  The Knights' response to his advance had been so ferocious that Crosetti had a brief feeling of deja vu, going back to that fiery hell of a battle on Coventry. That campaign had left him in charge of the Slashers, as the Third Recon Company was nicknamed. Captain R.C. Gutjahr, his former commander, was killed by a Gauss slug from a Falcon Mad Cat. During the all-too-brief rebuilding period, General Winston had bumped Crosetti into the driver's seat of the Third at Colonel Barclay's request.

  The Gladiator
lifted its left arm. An actinic flash glared from the stubby muzzle replacing the machine's left hand.

  Crosetti's Hunchback reeled under the simulated impact of a 125-kilo chunk of metal accelerated to supersonic velocity. The virtual Gauss slug "splintered" the reinforced steel armor on the 50-ton 'Mech's left leg. Before Crosetti could get his staggering machine under control, the ersatz Clanner completed the destruction with another blast from his weapons. Unable to withstand such punishment, the engagement program determined that the Hunchback's leg had snapped off in mid-thigh. The machine froze up as the battle computer determined that Crosetti would have been knocked unconscious by the 'Mech's fall.

  Over his still active radio, Crosetti heard Corporal Greene's stunned shout.

  "The boss is down! Slasher One and Two, form up on me and withdraw to Phase Line Tamarack."

  * * *

  Four kilometers away, General Ariana Winston, ensconced in the cockpit of her CP-ll-C Cyclops, turned as far as the command couch would allow to look at the neurohelmetted figure of her passenger. As the command 'Mech for the entire Light Horse, her Cyclops had been refitted to include a command console. Normally, the slot would be occupied by a sensor and communications technician. Today, her back-seater was none other than Morgan Hasek-Davion.

  Morgan had known Winston by reputation for much of her military life. The relationship became more personal when he'd called a number of units to Sudeten at the start of the Clan invasion. In the course of that strategy session, the two had come to appreciate each other's military acumen and integrity. Ever since, when time and location permitted, they exchanged the odd personal message, developing what had started out as a professional acquaintance into a long-distance friendship. Morgan had barely thought twice about selecting Winston as his second in command of the long strike. The Light Horse's dedication to the traditions of the Star League was icing on the cake.