Twilight of the clans III: the hunters

by Thomas S. Gressman

  "Colonel?" Captain Daniel Umsont's dark brown eyes were full of worry.

  "I'm okay, Dan." Barclay sucked in several deep breaths, her right hand pressed against her roiling stomach. "Let's take a five, okay?"

  Without waiting for a response, Barclay pushed her chair back and quickly left the lounge. On unsteady legs she made a beeline for the nearest head.

  Umsont's eyebrows drew together, his handsome black-skinned face a portrait of concern, as he watched his commander depart.

  "She'll be fine, Dan," Captain Brian Fornal, the regiment's chief surgeon, laid a hand on Umsont's arm. "TDS."

  Umsont relaxed slightly. He'd been with the Light Horse for eight years, the last three of those as Colonel Barclay's adjutant. But, in all that time, he'd never been with her during a hyperspace jump. As a matter of military decorum, she'd been careful to keep to her quarters until the nausea and disorientation wore off.

  After a few moments, Barclay returned to the meeting. Her gait was steadier, and a bit of color had returned to her face, but there was still a tightness in the skin around her blue eyes.

  "I'm sorry, folks." Her voice was steady and clear, but carried a note of embarrassment. "I guess it can happen to the best of us."

  "Aw, forget it, Colonel." Kathy Lykken, the Eleventh Recon's commander, waved aside Barclay's apology. "Next time, stay away from the hard stuff. Hangovers and hyperspace are a bad combination."

  Barclay smiled thinly at Lykken's attempt to lighten the mood, appreciating her efforts to deflect everyone's attention from her condition.

  "That's right, boss," Dallas Bell chimed in, adding his own brand of gallows humor to the mix. "Listen to Major Lykken, she knows what she's talking about."

  Lykken growled sharply and flung an empty plastic coffee cup at the armored infantry officer, who easily dodged the harmless missile.

  "All right, people." Barclay controlled her impulse to laugh at the antics of her subordinates, knowing that they were carrying on like first-year cadets to take her mind off her own discomfort. "Can we get back to business?"

  Before the meeting could continue, a rolling beep sounded through the grav deck. Moments later, Corporal Ufko, her commo tech, handed Barclay a telecommunications handset.

  "It's General Winston."

  "General? Barclay."

  "How are you holding up, Colonel?" The metallic effect of the ear piece gave Winston's matter-of-face tone an eerie, alien quality.

  "Fine, General." Barclay was beginning to feel like herself again. "Is anything wrong?"

  "No, Colonel, everything's fine. I want you to get a breakdown of your regiment, indicating those troopers who are susceptible to jumpsickness." Winston paused, giving Barclay the impression that she was checking some sort of database. "I know this is only the first jump of many, but I'd like to keep track of how many of our people go down every time we jump. It may not make a difference now, but it sure will in the future. I'd rather not wait until we jump into the middle of a Clan battle fleet to discover that half our fighter pilots are out of commission."

  "Okay, General, I'll have my staff get right on it." Barclay's stomach did a slow flip-flop at the mention of jumpsickness.

  "Good." General Winston hesitated a moment. "And how are you doing, Sandy?"

  "Not too bad, ma'am. I had a bout with the green queasies, but I'm coming around."

  "Good," Winston repeated. "You're one officer that I can't afford to have out of commission when things start heating up. Get me that report as soon as you can, Colonel. Winston out." The commline went dead.

  Barclay sighed as she passed the handset back to the commo tech. Returning to the conference table, she fell heavily into her chair and began explaining the General's request to her staff.

  * * *

  The order to take a census of the jumpsickness-prone troops did not originate with Ariana Winston. It was issued by Morgan Hasek-Davion. When he received the final report four hours later, he learned that less than two percent of the soldiers under his command had suffered adverse effects from the jump.

  Seated in the large, synthleather chair behind Commodore Beresick's ready-room desk, Morgan used an electronic stylus to scrawl his signature across the bottom of the computer screen displaying the report.

  "Well, Alain, what do you think?"

  Beresick, who had also seen the report, shrugged. "Two percent? That's not too bad. The average among the general population is somewhere between nine and fifteen percent, so I guess we're doing pretty darn good."

  The Commodore scanned his copy of the database, which his staff had assembled from the various reports it had received.

  "The greatest incidence of TDS seems to occur among the technical and support personnel. The least likely to be hit are ship crews and fighter pilots. Must have something to do with being a warrior."

  Coming from any other source, the statement would have sounded callous and self-serving. From what Morgan knew of Alain Beresick, the man hadn't a gram of conceit in his entire body. What Beresick had meant was that indefinable something that makes some people willing to strap themselves into twenty or more tons of armored steel, or a high-performance aerospace fighter, or a physics-defying JumpShip and push both the machine and themselves to the limit of their performance envelope, even if it meant dying in the act. Everybody knew the arrogant swaggering MechWarrior or fighter jock from countless B-grade trids and holoshows. Granted, there were some warriors who fit that stereotype, but neither they nor their attitude outlasted their first major engagement. Most professional warriors, whether they piloted a BattleMech, flew fighters, or slogged through the mud, were calm, quiet men and women, with a self-deprecating attitude and a real sense of their own mortality.

  Beresick had supposed that whatever drove these men and women to risk their lives in combat was probably the same factor that help shield them from the effects of Transit Disorientation Syndrome. Of course, this theory didn't answer the question of why some soldiers, like Colonel Barclay, suffered more severely than was the norm.

  "Okay, Commodore, we'll halt here and make a normal recharging stop. That'll give us time to fully recharge our jump drives and let these folks recover," Morgan said, gesturing to the report.

  "All right," Beresick nodded his agreement. "I wasn't too eager to push it anyway. Double jumps, quick charging, hot-loading—they're all bad for the drives. This mission is risky enough without straining the drives."

  * * *

  One leader not polled about the health of his force was perhaps the most worried. Fifty percent of his unit had been adversely affected by the jump. Though they were recovering as quickly as any other task force member, Rumiko Fox and Keiji Sendai were too important to the success of his mission for Kasugai Hatsumi to pass their illness off lightly. The effect of losing Fox and Sendai to jumpsickness was amplified by the fact that the entire team had not been assigned to the same starship. For reasons best known to their employer, he had been billeted aboard the Invisible Truth, while the rest of his team had been assigned to the Banbridge. Hatsumi shrugged and cursed whoever thought of dividing his team to the lowest regions of the Christian hell for their stupidity.

  Using what medicines they had at hand, along with those they could covertly pilfer from the ships' medical facilities, the nekekami treated their stricken comrades as best they could. Hatsumi fretted over his mission the whole time. Should they be called upon to carry out their assigned task immediately after a jump, or worse, a double jump, two of the nekekami would be out of commission, making the job that much more difficult.

  15

  Battle Cruiser ISS Invisible Truth

  Nadir Jump Point, Pajarito

  Draconis March

  Federated Commonwealth

  29 June 3059 1525 Hours

  The intercom unit built into Morgan Hasek-Davion's desktop emitted a sharp buzz. He acknowledged the signal with a brief flash of irritation.

  "Sir, all commands report insystem, and no problems."
<
br />   Morgan had given a standing order that he be advised of the fleet's status each time it jumped into a new system. It had taken eight weeks for Task Force Serpent to crawl across the Federated Commonwealth. In that time the routine reports had become boringly repetitious. The monotony was beginning to wear on Morgan's nerves. He had no formal reply to the message, merely a muttered "uh-huh," before returning to the mound of paperwork before him.

  Having been a soldier all of his adult life, Morgan was aware of the fact that an army traveled not on its stomach, as the old saying had it, but on its paperwork. Though paper had largely been replaced by noteputers and optical chips, the archaic term remained. Morgan was amazed at the amount of red tape he was expected to deal with, even considering the size and diversity of the task force. The weeks spent since leaving Defiance had been occupied by reading the reports submitted by the various unit commanders and writing summary reports of his own.

  There are times when I think I'm little more than a high-priced clerk. Morgan snorted ruefully at the thought.

  The rear area bean-counters, who were the bane of every army since Hannibal, had insisted that accurate records be kept of the amount and kind of supplies consumed, the length of time spent recharging jump engines, which unit was running combat simulations on which date, and the outcome of those virtual battles. He knew there was some kind of purpose behind the requests for incredibly petty details, but he had yet to see it.

  For the average member of the task force, who did not have Morgan's mound of paperwork to occupy his or her time, an effort had been made by the mission commanders, through their respective quartermaster corps, to keep the soldiers and sailors, pilots and Mech Warriors occupied during their long march to war. Most of the JumpShips had seen a cargo bay remodeled into a sort of high-tech training center, outfitted with the latest in BattleMech combat simulation pods.

  Morgan was fascinated by the level of realism these training units provided. Developed during the latter part of the twentieth century, partially for the military, but more for use by the entertainment industry, each cockpit-sized pod was tied into a central computer, and could be configured to simulate any type of BattleMech or aerospace fighter currently in use by the various Successor State armies. There was also programming available to emulate the function of Clan OmniMechs captured by the Inner Sphere. As many as two dozen pods could be tied into the same processing unit. This allowed combat simulations on a company-to-company level.

  During his first run using the state-of-the-art simulators, Morgan, piloting a computer-generated model of his captured Daishi had squared off against Andrew Redburn in a simulated Atlas. The 'Mechs were evenly matched at one hundred tons, though the Daishi boasted greater firepower. Andrew fought fiercely, from the head, as he always did. He made Morgan work for every hit he scored. By the time Morgan had reduced his friend's assault 'Mech to electronic scrap, he was soaked in sweat. Cramps tugged at his arms and legs from manipulating the pod's realistic controls.

  Morgan had played many a simulated battle against Redburn, and had beaten him as often as not. Still, the level of realism provided by the pods caused him a pang of guilt at blasting his friend's 'Mech into smoldering junk. He breathed a small sigh of relief when he saw Redburn, his auburn hair matted with sweat and tousled by his neuro-helmet, emerge from the pod next to him.

  "I'm glad we're on the same side, Morgan," Redburn said, nodding a jerky, smiling greeting. "I'd never want to fight you for real."

  Morgan waved aside the compliment. "Ah, Andrew, you were just being nice to an old man." Morgan smiled broadly. At fifty-three, he was only a year older than his friend, and the effects of time, and an inherently dangerous profession had yet to catch up with him.

  "You're not that old." Redburn's grin widened until it threatened to reach his ears. "But I was just being nice to you. Mmumph."

  Any further gibes Redburn wished to level at his friend were stifled by Morgan's thrown towel striking him in the face.

  A smaller, less sophisticated version of the pods had been installed in the rec-rooms of most of the task force's seven WarShips. These simpler machines could be used to play more than two hundred computer games, including a commercial version of 'Mech combat. Understandably, this was the least used of the simulator's programs.

  Every effort had been made to keep the men and women of Task Force Serpent occupied. A rigorous training schedule, which included intramural 'Mech simulator combats, had been established. Sergeants and petty officers winked at, or, in some cases, bet on the outcome of these mock-combats. Every stowage space not holding vital stores was filled with chip and hardcopy books. An enormous library of vids and tri-D shows, including every recording of the past season's 'Mech games on Solaris, had been made available to off-duty personnel.

  Occasionally, while the task force ships were recharging, they were able to pick up a news or entertainment broadcast from the inhabited planets far below. Morgan was fascinated to see the depth and degree of the disinformation campaign being propagated by the Ministry of Intelligence and Information. Unlike the Draconis Combine, which held the news media as a branch of the government, the Federated Commonwealth had a free, civilian-owned press. Morgan knew that a free press was often the bane of the military, but it could also be a useful tool.

  Based upon the news reports, Morgan figured that the MHO was giving out just enough information to make the media suspicious of the press releases. In turn, carefully placed and well-developed agents were "leaking" information to the media, telling them what they "really wanted to hear."

  The gist of the reports was that the units of Morgan's task force had been called to Defiance for training. Once that training had been completed they were being moved to "an undisclosed location," ready to back up the coalition force now battering its way through the Smoke Jaguar occupation zone.

  In what Morgan considered a brilliant move on the part of the MHO disinformation officers, the various news media were getting reports from all over the Federated Commonwealth. "Reliable sources" claimed to have sighted the task force everywhere from Aldebaran to Broken Wheel. Some of these sightings were genuine, most were not. The carefully crafted and timed reports coming out of the Ministry had spawned a rash of copycat reports. The latest sighting, it seemed, claimed to have spotted the task force lying dormant at the nadir jump point of the Hyalite system on the border between the Commonwealth and the Taurian Concordat, just about as far from its actual position as you could get.

  At least the disinformation campaign is going well, Morgan thought with a sigh.

  To maintain the intentional confusion over the task force's actual location, the Whirling Conference had also imposed a total communications blackout. No one in Task Force Serpent had been permitted to post or get letters, send or receive HPG messages or maintain any of the usual contacts with the outside world. Morgan knew personally of at least one case where such contacts perhaps should have been allowed. A young tanker in the St Ives Lancers had been sent a priority HPG message telling him that his father had passed away. For security reasons, the message was not delivered, the blackout was that complete.

  Two more casualties of this bloody war. Morgan cursed vilely to himself. Truth and compassion.

  Everyone involved in planning Task Force Serpent knew that, for the first several months of the year-long mission, the greatest enemy they faced would be boredom.

  After a few more minutes of desultory pecking away at his keyboard, Morgan sighed, heavily slapped the Save key, and pushed his chair away from the desk.

  I'll finish up the reports later, he told himself as he snatched up his green uniform jacket. Unlike the fatigues he'd worn as an officer of the AFFC, this new uniform dispensed the synthleather jerkin in favor of a hip-length, long-sleeved jacket. Despite the fact that he'd been wearing the new uniform for several weeks now, he still felt a bit strange wearing fatigues designed for the legendary Star League army.

  As he passed out of his office and into
the corridor encircling the flag officer's quarters (to which he was entitled as task force commander), Morgan silently cursed the lack of gravity. Of all the aspects of space travel, he hated the prolonged periods of weightlessness that must necessarily be endured by passengers on commercial or military transport vessels. The average JumpShip could generate just enough thrust, using its station-keeping drives, to orient itself above a system's star, and to hold that position while its jump sail gathered the necessary energy to charge the massive Kearny-Fuchida drives. A WarShip, with its larger, more powerful maneuvering drives, could generate enough forward thrust to give the illusion of gravity, but that burned up so much fuel that it made acceleration-induced gravity impractical.

  Of course, the passengers and crew of a transport ship could use magnetic boots to move about the ship with relative ease, but such devices gave no impression of gravity. Morgan could remember a number of times when he was rounding a corner aboard a Jump or DropShip, only to bump heads with another passenger who was coming from the other direction, walking on the vessel's wall or overhead. Then, of course, there were the physical effects of prolonged exposure to freefall. To combat the loss of muscle tone, neurological atrophy, and bone decalcification, most large ships carried so-called grav decks. These large, doughnut-like sections revolved around the ship's central structure at a specific rate, imparting a kind of centrifugal gravity. By allowing each crewman and passenger a certain amount of time each week to use the recreation facilities housed in the gravdecks, the ill-effects of long zero-G missions could be averted, or at least reduced.

  As Morgan approached the elevator in the port-dorsal corner of the corridor, the lift doors opened, allowing a pair of Com Guard officers to exit. Each touched his brow in the palm-outward salute used by the Guards (and the long-ago Star League Defense Force). That was something else Morgan hadn't yet grown accustomed to— receiving salutes from everybody in sight, including the Com Guards, who had for so long held themselves aloof from the other militaries of the Inner Sphere.