Grave Covenant

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "You're a wise man, Kai Allard-Liao."

  "Not really, Victor, not really." Kai smiled. "If I was really that wise, I'd have long ago figured out a way to settle the Clan question so we'd never have to leave our lovers at all."

  * * *

  That night Victor found Omi waiting for him in the garden of her palace, the whole scene alive with the light of hundreds of candles. It surprised him to find her there since the garden was a place of painful memories. The happiness we've known has grown in other places in this building.

  She turned to face him when she heard his first crunching footfall and so casually brushed away a tear that he almost did not notice the motion. "Komban-wa, Victor-sama."

  He bowed his head toward her and extended to her the one perfect blue rose he'd found in Imperial City. "It should be this rose that cries, for its beauty pales in comparison to yours."

  Omi smiled and graciously accepted the flower. "You are most kind."

  "You put me to shame on that score." Victor held up a hand to forestall her reply. "I have something to tell you and I don't think I'll ever get through it unless you just let me talk so, please, hear what I have to say."

  She nodded and seated herself on a whitewashed stone bench.

  Victor started to pace, but stopped when the sounds the stones made beneath his feet reminded him of the crackle of shattered 'Mech armor being marched over by troops. "Omi Kurita, I love you more than I thought it was possible to love someone. I wish I was a poet so I could write you sonnets or an artist so I could paint pictures for you. I am a warrior, and proud of it, but offering to slay enemies for you seems wrong as a sign of love; but that's exactly what I will be going off to do. I will fight the Clans because they seek to destroy you and everything you hold dear. I will not let that happen.

  "Here, in this garden, on that night months ago, I was ready to die to save you. When I lay on the floor inside and I saw you in a bloody kimono, I thought you had been slain and I was happy that we would be together in death. What I know now is that you mean more to me than life itself, and that I never want to be separated from you. It's not as if you and I are each halves of a whole, because I think we're each more than that, and what we become together is nothing short of incredible. With you I can imagine no more perfect a life."

  Victor swallowed hard to force the lump back down out of his throat. "As much as I don't want to go away from you, I must. I will make this sacrifice because it's the only way I know to guarantee that we never need be parted again. Forgive me. Don't forget me and have no fear, I will return."

  Omi nodded again slowly, then looked up from the tear-anointed rose and gave him a smile. "I believe you, Victor, because I know you would not lie to me. I can only let you go because I know you will come back to me."

  She pointed the rose toward the palace. "When I saw you there, lying in your own blood, I felt my life draining from me. I had only one reason to live—to see you live. Had you died there, I would have joined you, so we would have been united in death."

  Omi stood and spread her arms. "That night I invited you into this garden because it was my sanctuary. Here you had kept me safe and sane during the Clan invasion of Luthien. Then, that night, you again kept me safe from forces that would destroy me. Since then we have both avoided this place because of the evil taint it had acquired. Tonight, on the eve of your departure to wage the greatest war humanity has ever known, I would ask of you a small favor."

  "Whatever you ask will be done."

  Omi worked slowly at the knotted sash holding her kimono closed. "Before you retake worlds from the Clans, help me retake this garden from any foul memories that still cling to it. When you are gone and I come here, I wish to remember this as a place of love and life, not hatred and death. Love me here, Victor Davion, be my sanctuary again in this place, and thus I will be sustained until your return."

  31

  Ragnarok Plains, Asgard

  Smoke Jaguar Occupation Zone

  27 May 3059

  Though encased in the Devastator's armored bulk, Kommandant Wendy Karner felt very vulnerable. Curiously enough it wasn't because of her battalion's exposed position in the hills that eased the transition from the mountains of Odin's Retreat down into the Ragnarok Plains. The Davion Heavy Guards RCT First 'Mech Battalion had taken its position for very specific reasons and, as night fell, she knew that the wisdom or folly of their deployment would be proven before the dawn.

  Her vulnerability, she realized, came from the fact that the Devastator smelled new. She couldn't remember ever being in a 'Mech that smelled new. Her initial training had been in the family AgroMech, and from there, through the New Avalon Military Academy and even the Clan War, she'd always fought from the cockpit of a 'Mech far older than she was and, in the case of the 'Mech she'd piloted just before being assigned the Devastator, she fought in a 'Mech that her mother and even grandfather had used in the Heavy Guards. She knew that new wasn't bad, and that the 'Mech's design was good, but the Devastator still felt weird.

  Despite her misgivings, she did like the ten-meter-tall, broad-shouldered BattleMech. Its lack of hands did bother her a bit, but since both arms ended in the muzzles of Gauss rifles, she overlooked that defect. Particle projection cannons were mounted on both sides of its chest, right below medium lasers. The 'Mech's other two medium lasers were mounted in the head and right over the 'Mech's spine— allowing her to shoot easily at targets to her rear. The humanoid 'Mech also packed a lot of armor, so not only could it hit hard at long range, but it could survive an extended firefight.

  She felt pretty certain that the firefight that was coming wouldn't be very long in duration. But it will make up in savagery what it lacks in length.

  The assault on Asgard had been accomplished with surprising ease. The Fourth Jaguar Dragoons constituted a single cluster of front-line Clan BattleMechs. That put their strength at approximately sixty 'Mechs, which was roughly half the 'Mechs in the Heavy Guards RCT. By all conventional reckoning that made the Jags and the RCT an even-up match for strength.

  Conventional military wisdom also dictated that an attacking force required at least a three-to-one advantage over their foe to be able to win with acceptable casualties. For this reason, the Star League force deployed on Asgard included both a Combine and ComStar regimental-sized unit. The Third Proserpina Hussars spearheaded the Combine regiment, and two battalions of the Third Benjamin Regulars brought it up to reinforced regimental strength. The Regulars had been included because they had originally lost the world to the Jaguars and desperately wanted to win it back and regain their honor. ComStar's contribution to the fight was the 278th Division, an elite unit that hailed from Rasalhague.

  When the Star League force arrived in the Asgard system, the Fourth Jaguar Hussars was stationed in Vernan, the largest city on Asgard's southern continent. Tai-sa Angus McTeague wanted to engage them there because the Regulars had been pushed from Vernan to Odin's Retreat and eventually onto the plains back in 3052. The Jaguars anticipated him by pulling back into the rocky mountains of the Retreat. McTeague then deployed the Com Guard unit to the south of the mountainous formation and let the Davion Heavy Guards slip behind them to set up on the eastern retreat route from the mountains, while the Combine force drove it at the Jags through the western approaches the Jags had used themselves to dislodge the Regulars seven years earlier.

  "Hammer One, this is Daniel Seven." Wendy keyed her radio microphone. "Go ahead, Daniel Seven."

  "Passive motion detectors are picking up movement on the way down." The forward infantry-spotter hesitated for a moment. "They're popping down into Grid Sector Twenty-three thirty-six."

  "Twenty-three thirty-six copy, Daniel Seven. You've done your job. Pull yourself and your people out of the Jaguar's den."

  "Roger, Kommandant." The relief in the man's voice was palpable. "We'll be out in two."

  "Roger, Seven. Haul it because we're going to make it hot." Wendy switched her radio over to the battal
ion's tactical frequency. "Hammer One to battalion. We have incoming. We don't know the number or size, but they'll be coming at us through Grid Two-three-three-six. Hold your fire until you are cleared to fire."

  Punching another sequence of buttons on her communications console, she brought up the regiment's artillery frequency. "This is Hammer One. I need a barrage on Grid Sector Twenty-three thirty-six—two-three-three-six—in one minute. Repeat, one minute. Follow with a second shot in thirty seconds."

  "Roger, Hammer One. You're first on the board."

  Finally she switched back to her battalion tactical frequency. "Okay, Hammers, let's light them up." She looked up at the holographic sensor display hanging in the air in front of her. It compressed a full three-sixty degree view of her surrounding environs into a one-hundred sixty-degree arc. Gold bars on either side of the display marked the firing arc for her forward weapons. She quickly punched up some magnification and shifted the scan over to starlight mode to make the most of the sun's dying light.

  In the distance, well outside her 'Mech's maximum range, she saw a group of eighteen BattleMechs. They bore the mottled paint scheme favored by the Smoke Jaguars, but most of it had been obliterated from the 'Mechs' armor. They gave every indication of having been in a hellacious series of fights, and if the flashes near the top of Odin's Retreat were any indication, the fight was still raging furiously.

  Though First Battalion made no attempt to hide their presence, and had even courted danger by daring to skyline themselves on the hills, powering up their sensors should have alerted the Jaguars that the Guards weren't hanging around just to watch. Flicking their sensors on was the equivalent of an old Terran knight lashing another knight with a gauntlet in challenge.

  The only real problem with challenging the Clans that way was that Clan BattleMechs could actually hit at that range. The strikes wouldn't be hard, but they would do some damage and would come with impunity since the Guards couldn't shoot back. To some that would hardly seem sporting, but Wendy had learned that the only people who worried about fairness in war were writers who'd never seen combat and the poor slobs getting pounded without being able to strike back.

  She keyed her mike. "Steady now, people. They've got us where we want them."

  Taking advantage of their weapons' superior range, the Jags spread out and fired at the Guards. Green bars of coherent light from large lasers stabbed through the darkness and hit Guard 'Mechs. Long-range missiles jetted forward from the launchers mounted in the Clan 'Mechs, filling the air with smoke and fire. Two missile groups hit Wendy's Devastator, grinding away at the armor over her 'Mech's heart and on its left ankle. A tremor rippled through the BattleMech, but the damage itself was insignificant.

  Reports of battle damage filtered in through the radio, but no one had been hit terribly hard. The Davion Heavy Guards used some of the largest BattleMechs available, which meant it would take more than one scattering of shots to bring any of them down. Looks like the Smoke Jaguars are sticking with their traditions of honor and picking out single targets instead of combining their firepower to take any one of us down. She could almost see that action as noble, but it came all wrapped up in stupidity, moving her more toward pity than admiration.

  She dropped her cross hairs onto one of the heavy-set 'Mechs featuring metal talons built right into the massive hands. Her targeting computer wouldn't give her a lock, but it did report the 'Mech to be a Kodiak. Wendy smiled. So the Jags are using Kodiaks. Good, we'll get experience with them before we go hunting Ghost Bears.

  The first artillery barrage hit the Jaguars just as they were preparing for another long-range assault on the Guards. A couple of small explosions presaged the attack, then fire washed the sector with gold and red sheets. It seemed for a second as if the very air had detonated. An instant later the strike's rumbling roar reached the Guards, and Wendy frowned. No one should be subjected to that kind of pounding, but I'd rather have them die there than be here killing my people. Somehow, though, I don't think that's an option.

  Boiling out of the smoke came the surviving Clanners. The artillery strike had cut their number by a third, taking down most of the smaller, weaker 'Mechs and leaving the heavy ones to lumber on into combat. On they came, up the slight incline toward where the Guards waited for them. Their weapons blazed in the dusk, flashes of light freezing them into nightmare images for an instant, then cloaking them with darkness in the next.

  "Guards, you are clear to fire." Wendy dropped her cross hairs onto the outline of a Kodiak. She had no idea if it was the one she'd seen before and, she realized, she didn't care if it was or not. The second a gold dot pulsed at the center of her cross hairs, she tightened up on her triggers, firing the Devastator's twin Gauss rifles.

  Two silvery balls shot from the rifle muzzles and nailed the Kodiak. Each supersonic slug hit on the left side of the Clan 'Mech. One shivered a ton of armor from the left arm while the other reduced the armor over its shin to crumbling flakes. The twin impact twisted the 'Mech to the left and, for a moment, Wendy thought it might go down, but the pilot proved skillful enough to keep the machine upright.

  The Kodiak fired back at her with the large laser mounted in its chest. The verdant beam sizzled in at the Devastator's right leg. Kilojoules of energy boiled armor away in a molten furrow across the 'Mech's thigh. Despite the loss of armor, the leg had more than enough protection to survive several more attacks like that. And you're not going to get that many shots at me.

  Ted Mooraine's Falconer swung its weapons in line with the Kodiak. The Falconer always seemed to be broken, primarily because its body thrust forward from the hips as opposed to standing tall like the Kodiak or the Devastator. Mooraine had always maintained that that made him a smaller target for the enemy to hit. Wendy knew it was more his ability to hit with his weapons that guaranteed his survival than his 'Mech's low profile.

  The particle projection cannon built into the 'Mech's left arm spat a jagged line of azure energy at the Kodiak. The PPC's energy whip flayed armor from the Kodiak's left arm. Half-melted ferro-fibrous armor plates dropped from the 'Mech's arm and ignited small grass fires. The Gauss rifle in the Falconer's right arm launched a ball straight into the Kodiak's chest. It skipped off what would have been the sternum in a human, reducing armor to scree that poured in a landslide to the ground.

  The Kodiak, having closed enough to reach a range where the rest of its weapons became effective, shifted the focus of its attack to the Falconer. The change made no sense to Wendy, since the Falconer had taken no damage and could deal less damage to the Kodiak at that range. It's as if the pilot is incensed that Ted would interfere with our battle. If so, what comes next will really torque him off.

  The Kodiak opened up on the Falconer with everything available to hit at that range, which made for a very impressive display of firepower. The 'Mech thrust both fists forward, bringing the hand-mounted medium lasers to bear. Of the quartet mounted in the right arm, three hit. The trio of beams slashed armor from all across the Falconer's torso, from right to left. The left-arm beams also achieved seventy-five percent accuracy and vaporized armor on the Falconer's left breast, arm, and leg. While none of the shots got through the armor to do serious damage to the targeted BattleMech, the loss of so much armor threw the 'Mech seriously out of balance. The Falconer wavered slightly, then went down on its left side.

  "Ted, get up and out of there. Guards, fall back after this exchange!" Wendy started her Devastator backing up, but still trained her cross hairs on the Kodiak. The silver ball from the right-hand Gauss rifle careened off the Kodiak's chest, compounding the damage done by the Falconer. The other argent projectile spanged off the ursine 'Mech's right arm, blasting fragments of armor away in a blizzard of ceramic slivers. Despite the devastation, the Clan pilot kept his 'Mech upright and right on coming.

  Wendy's battalion retreated in good order. Ted's Falconer sprinted past while her Devastator backed its way down the hill's reverse slope. In her display she sa
w the Falconer come back around and aim its weapons upslope, taking advantage of the cover offered by the crest of the hill. They've got to know we're lying in wait for them here, but do they have any choice except to attack?

  At a full charge the Clanners came up and over the hilltop. Their momentum was such that even if they'd chosen to stop, it probably would have been too late for them. If they'd intended to stop, they showed no signs of it and instead bravely came on despite what awaited them below.

  Unlike the Combine units the Smoke Jaguars had faced at Odin's Retreat, the forces of the Federated Commonwealth fought by a doctrine of war built on a combined-arms approach. A Regimental Combat Team was not just a regiment of 'Mechs and support services, but a unit that worked in conjunction with armor, infantry, air, and artillery elements. The artillery had already devastated the Clan 'Mechs, and the air units had swept the Clan fighters from the sky. Now the retreating 'Mechs lured the Clanners into a valley where FedCom armor was deployed to turn it into the Valley of Death.

  Though it was true that BattleMechs were the most powerful weapon system ever devised, armor was not without its uses. The heavy armor regiment of the Guards RCT had dug into the reverse slope of the hill and waited with their vehicles hull-down and ready to fire. Once their own BattleMechs had retreated past them, they were clear to fire as their Clan foes appeared at point-blank range.

  A half-dozen Alacorn Mk VII heavy tanks opened up first. Each one sported a trio of Gauss rifles mounted in the turret, and two targeted the Kodiak. The first hit with a pair of shots. One shattered armor on the 'Mech's right breast, and the other pulverized armor on the Kodiak's right leg. The second Alacorn's attack proved more critical as the two of its projectiles that hit did so on the right side of the Kodiak's torso. The last of the 'Mech's armor disintegrated under the assault, and the second slug careened through its chest. Splintered metal shards spilled from the 'Mech's side, and a secondary explosion shot smoke from the muzzle of the autocannon built into the Kodiak's chest.