Twilight of the clans III: the hunters

by Thomas S. Gressman

* * *

  "Bloody hell!" Mercia Winslow ground her teeth, as a series of explosions wracked the Ranger. "This Clan beggar isn't going to give up. Mr. Held, can you bring us under his stern?"

  "I'm trying, Captain. He's just a little too quick for us."

  In fact, the Congress was slightly slower than the old Lola Class destroyer. Her crew's greater experience gave the illusion of speed. Winslow and her crew had been trained as well as the Com Guards could manage, even to the point of drilling in full-scale replica control rooms buried deep beneath the Order's Rocky Mountain training facility. But there was no substitute for combat experience. The Clanners had been fighting each other for scores of years, and had learned the details of starship combat from actual battles. Winslow and her crew were learning as they went along.

  Suddenly, the Congress fired all of her portside thrusters, causing the humpbacked ship to swing sharply. Autocannon fire lanced out of her gun bays, spewing a cloud of tracers across the blackness of space. Unconsciously, Winslow flinched, bracing herself for another impact. Then she realized that the Clanner hadn't fired at the Ranger.

  There, driving in from the frigate's starboard side, was the battered shape of the Starlight. The Essex Class destroyer had finally made running repairs to the damage inflicted by the Clan ship's broadside. Gunfire sparked from the Starlight's nose and forward hull, even as Clan autocannon fire laced her thin armor with smoking craters. Missiles leapt from their launchers, adding to the destruction being wrought on the Congress' outer hull.

  Taking advantage of the Clan ship's temporary preoccupation with the Starlight, Winslow ordered her ship to run straight under the frigate's stern. At less than forty kilometers, every gun in the Ranger's port broadside fired into the Clan ship's aft quarter.

  Sensors indicated that the enemy had taken severe damage to his armor, but revealed little about which systems might have been hit inside the vessel.

  "All back full."

  In answer to Winslow's excited command, the Ranger's helmsman slammed his hand down on his control board. With speed guaranteed to turn an old-time blue-water naval officer green with envy, the massive starship's engines went from full forward to full reverse. The Ranger shuddered as the quartet of Rolls LeFay interplanetary engines brought the vessel to a dead stop directly under the Clan frigate's stern.

  "Mr. Fontanazza, hit him again!" Winslow yelled.

  "Captain, his weapons are powering down."

  "Belay that." Winslow gestured sharply at her weapons officers just in time to spare the Congress another shattering broadside.

  "He's hailing us."

  "To the commanding officer, Star League Lola III destroyer. I am Star Colonel Alonso Gilmour, of the Ghost Bear WarShip Shining Claw. My vessel has been disabled. In accordance with the batchall of your commander, I yield my crew and myself as bondsmen to you and your Clan."

  "Star Colonel, this is Captain Mercia Winslow, of the destroyer, Ranger," Winslow replied, using the Clan officer's stilted speech as a model. "I accept your surrender, and assure you that you and your men will be given fair treatment. Stand by to receive a prize crew."

  Winslow waved her hand, signaling the commtech to cut the connection. Taking a deep breath, she held it for a few seconds, then blew it out in a low whistle. Feeling the tension in her neck, she wearily rolled her head, massaging the aching muscles.

  "Patch me through to the flagship."

  * * *

  "Well, Marshal, our losses were light, much lighter than I had expected," Commodore Beresick said, referring to the notes displayed on his noteputer.

  Several hours had passed since the last Clan vessel was captured by Task Force Serpent. During that time, the crews of the Inner Sphere WarShips did their best to put their vessels back into some kind of fighting trim. Once repairs were sufficiently underway, Morgan called a full command staff meeting, to be held in the Invisible Truth's briefing room. The first item on the agenda was the one Morgan hated the most, the reading of the casualty and damage list, the so-called "butcher's bill." Being the commander of the task force's naval assets, the responsibility for this grim task fell upon Commodore Beresick.

  "Seven aerospace fighters, four of which belong to the Com Guards, have either been destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Of those, three pilots survived, although Lieutenant Bharie lost his right arm," Beresick intoned.

  "One Avenger Class DropShip was destroyed fighting the Fire Fang. Half of her crew escaped, but most of them are wounded. Captain Cho is missing, reported dead. Our total casualties are twenty-six dead, thirty-two wounded, and four missing. I don't think we'll find any of the missing alive."

  Beresick paused, allowing Morgan time to assimilate the surprisingly low number of casualties.

  "Losses to our ships were a little heavier. As I said, we lost seven aerospace fighters and one assault ship. It's that last that concerns me the most. Fortunately, there were no special forces teams or marines aboard. Next time, we might not be so lucky. The Haruna, Starlight, and Ranger each took a couple of heavy hits, mostly to their armor. That can be repaired in the field. The Starlight lost her number two PPC to a missile hit. That can't be fixed in the field. We've got her patched up pretty well. The engineers tell me that they plan to weld a big armor patch over the wrecked mount. As you know, the Invisible Truth lost her main communications array. Right now, we're maintaining contact with the rest of the fleet through a picket ship. We should be back on line in a couple of hours."

  "What about the Clan ships?" Ariana Winston spoke for the first time. As the task force's second-in-command, her presence at the meeting was required, though she felt awkward, having watched the battle from a safe distance away, aboard the Gettysburg.

  "The Invader is a write-off. Her field initiator looks like a piece of modern art." Beresick smiled in bitter amusement. "It seems that Captain Winslow took my orders to prevent the ship from jumping a bit too literally.

  "The Fire Fang is the least damaged of the Clan War-Ships. She's lost a couple of her weapons bays, and both of her after autocannon batteries are gone for good. Our biggest problem is her jump sail. There's a hole through it the size of Montana. We can try to repair it, but I'm not too certain of the results."

  "What about using one of the sails they cut adrift before the battle?" Paul Masters suggested. "Or the one off the Invader!"

  "Well, maybe." Beresick shrugged. "The other Whirlwind, the Ursus, cut her sail away, and it may be drifting around out there. Nobody reported running into it during the fighting. The problem is that each ship is designed to take a jump sail of a certain size. Smaller than that, and you may never get a good enough charge to make your jump. Bigger, and you won't be able to fit the array into your sail locker. Nah, it's going to have to be repair the Fire Fang's sail or find the Ursus'."

  "And the Congress!"

  "Well, she's somewhat the worse for wear. Her starboard quarter is pretty shot up. One of her docking collars is shot to pieces. She's lost most of her after and starboard broadside weapons, and her rightside maneuvering thrusters are really chewed. To top it all off, her armor looks like a sieve."

  "How long to complete the repairs?"

  Beresick tapped his data unit's keyboard a few times, then said, "Fifty-two hours, assuming that all goes well and that no more Clanners show up."

  "What are the prospects?"

  "I'd say about fifty-fifty. The Fire Fang and all of our ships are definitely repairable. The Shining Claw? Your guess is as good as mine. And, like I said, the Invader is ready for a scrapyard.

  "The upside is that we captured a dozen OmniFighters relatively intact. We've also got a couple of damaged Union-C's and an intact Broadsword."

  "I meant to ask you about that." Morgan leaned his elbows on the conference table. "Why didn't they ever launch that DropShip?"

  "They couldn't." Beresick grinned. "It was one of those freak things. The missile that breached the Winter Wind's hull warped one of her docking collars. They couldn't get the
locking clamps to release, so the Broadsword was stuck. It'll take about twenty hours to pry her loose and strip out the Invader."

  "There's more to it than that," Major Ryan interrupted. He explained that while securing the Invader, Team Five had cut into the trapped Broadsword. In its 'Mech bays, the special forces troopers had found a Star of brand-new OmniMechs. The DropShip's cargo bay also held several tons of consumable supplies, including ammunition for their autocannons and missile launchers.

  "Hmm, that could be a bonus." Morgan turned to look at Andrew Redburn from beneath hooded eyelids. "What do you think, Andrew?"

  "Yes, it could." Redburn's lips curved wickedly into a smile of delight. "I'll get the techs to working on it as soon as those 'Mechs are shipped."

  "Now, wait just a minute, Morgan," Marshal Bryan snapped angrily. "Why should those OmniMechs go to your Kathil Uhlans instead of another unit? I didn't see any of them assaulting any Clan WarShips."

  "Well, for that matter, Marshal Bryan," Redburn said, "I didn't see any of your Lyran Guards out there either."

  Morgan saw the scarlet flush creeping up the Lyran officer's neck and intervened. He informed Bryan that the OmniMechs were not automatically being signed over to the Uhlans, or to anybody else. "I merely want them checked out, and I trust my own techs to do the job right. Do you have a problem with that, Sharon? Besides, if it comes down to who actually captured the 'Mechs, Major Ryan here would have the first OmniMech-equipped DEST team in history. Isn't that right, Major?"

  "Well . . ." Ryan let his voice trail off, giving the command staff the benefit of an inscrutable, I-know-something-you-don't-know smile.

  "Now, what does that mean?" Bryan demanded.

  "People, let's get back to the business at hand." Morgan rapped the table lightly with the knuckles of his right fist. "We can save the cat-and-mouse games for later, all right?

  "Right now, we have bigger problems than who gets a Star of Clan 'Mechs and how long it will take to make repairs. As a result of this battle, we now . .. own, I guess is the right word, roughly three hundred bondsmen. Most of those are technician, scientist, and laborer caste. Only a few dozen are warriors. The question is, what do we do with them?"

  "There's more to it than that, Marshal," Beresick said quietly, fearing the reactions of those among the command staff who had been opposed to the idea of taking prisoners. "Records recovered from the Fire Fang indicate that this was a personnel transfer. There were almost a thousand Ghost Bear civilians packed into the Winter Wind and those two Unions."

  The conference room exploded into startled gasps and exclamations.

  "If I understand Clan society properly, Clan civilians are not covered by the bond-oath," Morgan explained. "But those who give their word will stick to it, just as though they were warriors. They would rather die than break their word. And I'm sure they'd rather go bondsmen to us rather than meet some worse fate out here in deep space."

  "Begging your pardon, Marshal, but I don't give a rat." Captain Montjar threw out his hand in a gesture of refusal. "Oath or no, I just can't bring myself to trust a Clanner."

  "Me, either." Ryan agreed.

  Paul Masters, still smarting over not being consulted on the fate of the pirate leaders, was quick to voice his opinion. "Those who will give us their bond should not be disgraced any more than being forced into bond-service makes necessary. I say we accept them."

  "That's all well and good, Sir Masters," Ariana Winston interrupted. "But what about the rest? What about the techs and the civilians? I want to know what's going to happen to them, before we go any farther."

  Morgan shook his head wearily. "General Redburn and I have developed a contingency measure," he said. "We hoped it would never be used, or at least not before we had a chance to discuss it with the staff. We plan to hold the prisoners who do not wish to offer us their bond-oath until we jump into the next system with a habitable planet. There they'll be herded aboard a DropShip and marooned."

  "All right, General," Winston sighed heavily. "I'll accept that."

  "I'm sorry, Marshal," Montjar cut in. "But I can't see the wisdom of taking an enemy who was just trying to kill you and making him a trusted servant."

  Before Captain Montjar could continue, Masters shot to his feet in anger. "Rabid Fox? Huh! That's a good description." Suddenly, Masters drew his sidearm. Before any of the commanders could react, the Knight threw the heavy Rugan automatic onto the table in front of Montjar. The autopistol lay there, gleaming in the diffused light radiating from the overhead panels. "If you are so anxious to see them die, why don't you do it yourself?"

  For several seconds, Montjar's furious gaze flicked back and forth between Masters and the pistol.

  "Dammit, that's enough," Morgan roared, shooting to his feet. Snatching up the weapon, he ejected the fifteen-round magazine, snapped back the slide to eject the round in the firing chamber, and pitched the gun back to its owner with enough force to make the Knight bobble the catch.

  "I have had it with you people. What do you think this is? A bloody church social? I am the commander of this military operation. You are my subordinates. You will abide by my decisions, or I will bloody well court martial the lot of you.

  "Those Clansmen are bound by their oath to this task force, and we will treat them properly. Some of you don't want them working on your ships or 'Mechs? Fine, you won't have them. If necessary, I'll assign all three hundred of them as my personal technical staff. Those who don't want to be part of this task force will be treated according to the Ares Conventions. We will hold them until we jump into a habitable system, where they'll be marooned.

  "That... is .. .final.

  "Now, get out of my sight."

  Morgan sat down heavily, refusing to acknowledge the salutes or muttered farewells of the departing command staff. Soon, only Alain Beresick was left.

  "Well, Marshal," Beresick said, reaching into a breast pocket of his khaki jumpsuit. "Looks like the task force won a victory for its first time in battle."

  With a snort, Morgan leaned back wearily in his chair, accepting both the attempt to change the subject and the proffered victory cigar.

  "Yes, Commodore, we won a pretty victory, but we were lucky. The next time we cross swords with the Clans, luck may not be on our side."

  28

  Battle Cruiser ISS Invisible Truth

  Deep Periphery

  16 December 3059 1000 Hours

  Fifteen hours after Task Force Serpent's first major engagement ended, the task of repairing the ships damaged in the fight had barely begun. Sir Paul Masters and Colonel Samuel Kingston had advocated jumping outsystem immediately. The Capellan officer recommended returning to the last system visited by the task force. As much as he hated to agree with a Liaoist, Morgan had to admit that there was some wisdom to what they said. Kingston argued that they had encountered Clan WarShips in this system once already. The task force was victorious only because they had, as he put it, "gotten the drop on the Clanners."

  Commodore Beresick reassured the command staff that, by assigning the undamaged Rostock and Emerald to picket duty, and deploying their fighters as a BARCAP, the fleet would have sufficient warning to either jump outsystem or prepare for a fight.

  The highest repair priority had been assigned to locating the Ursus' jump sail. Despite its great diameter, the polymer disk proved difficult to find. Only a few millimeters thick, made of a dead black energy-absorbent material, the sail didn't show up well on scanners. It took an educated guess, a detailed visual search, and a great deal of luck to spot the drifting sail. Fortunately, the delicate fabric hadn't suffered much damage. The sail was towed back to the fleet. Extra Vehicular Activity-suited engineers mated the array to the captured Fire Fang.

  During the search for the jump sail, the wreckage of two of the missing Com guard fighters were discovered. One was so badly mangled that the rescue teams had to cut the canopy open with a laser torch, As expected, the pilot was dead, as badly mutilated as his
Rapier. The second fighter carried a few minor scars. When the rescuers cycled the ship's canopy open, they saw that the pilot's body was undamaged, except for a small, deep gash in her left leg. An examination of the corpse revealed that a tiny sliver of steel no bigger than a man's thumbnail had pierced her flightsuit, entered her thigh, and nicked her femoral artery. The flight data recorder indicated that she had been trying to make it back to the Ranger when she fainted from blood loss. The enemy had apparently decided that the drifting Hellcat was no longer a threat, and Flight Lieutenant Debi Petrillo had bled to death.

  Of the other fighters lost in what the task force members had begun calling "the Battle of Trafalgar," no trace was found. The rescuers gave up after twenty hours, assuming that the ships had either been blasted into unidentifiable fragments or that the destroyed fighters had drifted outside their search parameters.

  A single event brightened the otherwise grim and depressing search. Badly wounded, "Badger" Sarti had been rescued from the wreckage of a Clan DropShip. Unconscious, his upper body a mass of second- and third-degree burns, the young pilot was pulled from his escape capsule. It had ejected from his disintegrating Gotha seconds before its long-range missiles detonated, blowing the ship apart. Sarti was doubly lucky. When the rescuers finally pried open the blistered escape module, they saw that the charge on the capsule's life support system was less than five minutes.

  * * *

  Aboard the Winter Wind, some of the newly sworn bondsmen had been detailed to salvage crews struggling to free the relatively undamaged Broadsword from its warped docking collar. The Invader's hull had been breached by the Ranger's crippling attack, and several of her pressure bulkheads had been holed during the struggle to possess the JumpShip, leaving large areas of the vessel with no atmosphere. In some places, salvage crews welded pieces of sheet steel over the breaches, allowing the ship's still-functional life support system to reestablish a safe environment. The DropShip docking bay was one such area.