Binding Force

by Loren L. Coleman

  “Do you see any difficulties?”

  “No.”

  Ty Wu Non swiveled around in his chair, reclining back in a too-casual posture. Aris could read the man’s attempt to cover his own impatience. There’s something coming, he thought. And it’s pointed right at me.

  “I’ve been thinking about the boarding party assignments again,” Ty finally said. “I’m considering some changes.”

  Aris frowned. Now that was a dangerous game to be playing. Once the House Master set a plan in motion, changes were only to be made in response to direct enemy actions. Her word was law and her will that of the House. Part of the reason behind that tradition was to maintain the bonds that wove the House into a close-knit family. Another—and perhaps more practical reason—was that the House Master was accountable directly to the Chancellor. When one was only one step removed from the Celestial Wisdom, mistakes were often dealt with at the highest level. “Your reason, Company Leader Non?”

  “Your advance teams are small in number, five to seven men each.” Ty checked his schematics. “We’re talking about a station fifteen hundred meters long, with a crew of a hundred and fifty.”

  Aris nodded. “But only two dozen actual soldiers, most off duty.” He took a deep breath and launched into the old explanation, though he was sure Ty Wu Non knew it and was only being difficult for the sake of antagonizing the younger warrior. “Small teams can move faster, and each member is an expert. We need to gain immediate control of the bridge, auxiliary control, any other docked DropShips, and the station communications center. With enough time, any of these will transmit a message back to Kaifeng and then we lose surprise. The secondary teams are larger, and move in to hold the area after we control it.”

  “Yes, yes.” Ty dismissed the explanation with a wave of his hand. “But the bridge team? Five men? The station has been transmitting video along with audio, and there are now at least seven people on the bridge.”

  “I still recommend no more than five.”

  Ty paused a moment, as if in deep thought. He then widened his eyes as if enlightenment had struck. “Then I will make only the most superficial change, but one that might make up the difference. I will take your place as leader of the bridge assault team.”

  Hidden by the way his arms were crossed over his chest, Aris’ left hand tightened into the ridge-hand he liked for making a strike. Step forward, knee bending, and catch Ty Wu Non in the side of the neck. He felt the shame almost at the same moment as the thought came. First of all, House members were not allowed to fight each other without the direct permission of the House Master. Second, it was not in keeping with the spirit of the family. So it must be endured. “And what would the Company Leader have me do instead?”

  “Well, I considered placing you in overall command, letting you try your hand at high-level tactics. The basic plan was yours, after all. But then that would be a slight to Infantry Commander Sebastian Jessup. So you will lead the assault team responsible for securing the station’s comm center.”

  Aris forced himself to relax. Infantry Commander Jessup was the highest ranking member of the House infantry and technically the third in overall command, though any MechWarrior could challenge his authority at almost every turn. Having served under Jessup for his first three years, Aris actually felt better than if Ty were in overall command.

  It still bothered him that Ty would pull something like this so very close to the operation. And that it was all in an effort to deny Aris what was only his right—taking the bridge. But at least Ty hadn’t cut him out of the fighting altogether. The other warrior still did not really understand him. Aris did not truly desire power, nor did he especially want to be in command. House Hiritsu was his home; he had made it such eleven years ago. All he wanted was to serve, and to belong. And it was a pity Ty Wu Non could not grasp such a simple fact.

  But he will, Aris promised. Someday, Aris would find a way to make him understand.

  3

  Kaifeng Recharge Station Jodo Shinsa

  Zenith Jump Point, Kaifeng System

  Sarna Supremacy, Chaos March

  10 July 3058

  The station alarm tolled off repeated peals of computer-simulated gong sounds that rang down through the corridors.

  A grunt of pain forced its way past Aris Sung’s lips as one of the recharge station’s technicians swung a wrench and caught him across the shoulder. The force of the blow sent Aris tumbling through the station’s low gravity until he fetched up against the corridor wall. He broke his motion with a flat hand-slap against the smooth metal surface, and with a quick tuck and kick rebounded back into the fight.

  Two bodies lay further back along the corridor, one already settled onto the floor and the other still shedding momentum as it rubbed along one wall. That left two others still up and moving. The tech with the heavy wrench obviously wasn’t used to low-gravity combat. He had forgotten to anchor himself, so his strike had thrown him away just as hard as Aris, but into the opposite wall. His rebound left much to be desired, so Aris counted him out of the fight for a few desperate seconds.

  When Aris hit that same wall, he came off at an angle that placed him between the two remaining techs. The fourth man had produced a screwdriver from within his coveralls, and had learned from his companion’s mistake. He had drifted near a life boat hatch, and had now anchored himself by curling one arm into the hatch’s large operating wheel. Then he reversed his grip on the screwdriver as if intending to throw it like a knife.

  Aris was grateful for the man’s stupidity. First of all, you never threw away your only weapon. Better if the tech had launched himself forward, trying for a stabbing attack. Second, the chances of the man throwing hard enough and accurate enough to actually hurt Aris were slim, at best.

  Slim did not mean none, though, and Aris couldn’t afford to take the chance. Especially as he was in danger of failing his House.

  The timetable for gaining control of the recharge station had been carefully set. Taking control of the maintenance bay had been easy, the Hiritsu infantry swarming out to surround and disarm the emergency teams that had shown up to assist the wounded JumpShip’s crew. That had even netted them the station commander, an unexpected but welcome bonus. Then the advance Hiritsu commandos had begun to deploy through the ship, staggered out in an order depending on who had furthest to travel. Aris’ team was first, needing to work their way through almost the entire station to get at the comm center located near the aft end.

  The team had first run into trouble when they’d discovered that their planned route to the comm center was sealed off by several decks of long-term storage lockers, a modification to the typical Olympus design. That had cost Aris and his party several minutes. And just when they’d managed to get back on track, the alarm sounded. At the intersection for every major corridor a small amber light strobed in time to the deep gongs. The one bit of hope to which Aris still clung was that the alarm was a general one, designed to wake the station crew and put everyone on alert until further notice. That would give him several long and critical minutes before the plan completely fell apart.

  But two armed sentries outside the comm center finally put a halt to their advance. The door to the comm center lay at the head of a T-shaped corridor junction. From the base of the T, Aris’ team could see the door and prevent anyone from getting inside. The station sentries, however, carried pulse laser rifles and had taken cover in the side corridors to either side of the door. It was a standoff. Aris left his four infantry troopers to keep the sentries from getting inside the comm center while he backtracked to find a way in behind them. He knew he couldn’t afford to waste another minute, but the main thing now was to act, and act fast.

  Then he’d run into the four technicians, who came at him with tools and bare hands the instant they saw his uniform and weapon.

  Rebounding off the wall, Aris reached out in both directions so that his Nakjama laser pistol was pointed toward the tech preparing to throw the scr
ewdriver and the other hand was directed at the wrench-wielding man. The counteracting forces kept his aim steady, and he caressed the trigger. His first shot hit the technician high in the right shoulder, making him let go of the screwdriver. Then he tracked the second man inward and burned a hole through his temple and into his brain. Then it was time to tuck and absorb another impact. Only this time he simply waited out the bounce, then twisted about to shoot the last surviving tech three times in the chest. The wrench flew and clanged down the corridor on its own path.

  Four bodies, a full minute wasted, and Aris was still two turns away from his own men. It was not going well.

  “Lance Leader Sung!”

  Aris twisted about and saw Infantryman Mikhail Chess flying up the corridor toward him. Aris was hoping his people had managed to take out the sentries, but the grave look on Chess’ face told him it wasn’t so.

  “Report,” he called out while Chess was still a good ten meters away, though flying fast.

  “All the shouting in the corridor finally got someone’s attention.” Chess reached out to slap at the closer wall, braking. He ended up a short way past Aris, finally catching himself against the same life boat hatch that the technician had used earlier. “The comm center door opened and someone stuck his head out. He lost it, but there was at least one other person inside.”

  And from little time, now we’re left with none, Aris thought, kicking his brain into overdrive. Biting down hard enough on his lower lip to draw blood, he inventoried their assets. Five House warriors, four with Intek laser rifles and him with a Nakjama pistol. Four dead technicians. Some small tools. He glanced back down the corridor. And one large wrench somewhere down that way that could do a real number on one of the sentries… or the comm equipment.

  He had it.

  “Infantryman Chess. Get back to the T corridor and help keep those sentries pinned down. I’ll take care of the comm center. Go!”

  Without an instant’s hesitation, Chess launched himself back down the corridor. Aris didn’t waste any more time watching him go. Instead, he grasped the hatch wheel Chess had used for an anchor and began wrenching it open. Any other accessway would have had a remote-operated hatch, but emergency escapes had to be ready to deal with worst-case conditions such as no power.

  With a final metallic clang the wheel reverse-seated itself. Aris pulled open the hatch and dove through, then turned and pulled the hatch shut after him and fastened it down. He was in a short tunnel that dumped him out into the small, rectangular life boat. Quickly making his way to the front and sliding into the pilot’s seat, he hit the emergency release at the same time he started to bring the engines up. There was a jolt and the feeling of a giant hand pushing him back in his seat as the boat released from the station and was kicked away by the explosive charge. And then complete freedom from even the limited gravity provided by the position-keeping thrusters of the massive recharge station. Aris prayed to the elder gods for another few precious minutes.

  The recharge station was theirs—he knew that for a fact. It had become theirs the moment the JumpShip Liu had been allowed to dock. A hundred or so technicians and, at most, twenty-four marines against a full company of Hiritsu infantry? No. What was left was to secure the station before someone could get an alert to the surface of Kaifeng. To maintain the element of surprise.

  He was gambling again, counting on the station crew to know their jobs and the bridge officer to be more politically than militarily minded. The comm center technicians would try to report to the bridge first, and then auxiliary control. They wouldn’t take it upon themselves to send an alert toward Kaifeng. Or they shouldn’t, anyway. Aris frowned, remembering the fanatic gleam in the eyes of those four technicians. Once they’d passed their report on to an officer, then it came down to how confident that officer was in himself. A true military man might send an immediate alert, accepting the risk of ending up embarrassed or even reprimanded, if wrong. A career officer would worry about making a mistake. With round-trip communication taking somewhere close to eight hours, and actual help more than a week away, that officer would wait for confirmation. Which would give Aris the time he needed.

  Fortunately, life boats were designed for a fast startup. As the chemical engine came up with a low vibration of the boat’s hull, Aris used the attitude jets to spin around and the small main thruster to arrest and then reverse his momentum. Shortly, he was thrusting back toward the station and slipping around toward its after end, where he found what he was looking for nestled down between the massive pylons that held the station’s immense solar sail.

  Ask most citizens of the Inner Sphere how a recharge station sitting out at a system jump point transmits messages into the system and they would probably guess it to be by radio. The more knowledgeable might know that what the ship actually did was to send a video and audio transmission on a microwave carrier. What most didn’t realize—and was the one fact that might save House Hiritsu’s element of surprise—was that the transmissions were also directional. They had to be. Jump points were millions, often billions, of kilometers above or below the elliptic plane. Even the strong electromagnetic pulse of an arriving JumpShip could rarely be detected after a billion kilometers, and radar emissions couldn’t be tracked much further than a million.

  So the answer was either to build a transmitter so large that it ate up incredible amounts of station space and power, or to focus the transmission into a tight beam that had to be pointed fairly accurately back into the system. Accurate to the tune of a million kilometers. Though that might sound like an incredibly wide margin, taking into account the incredible distances of space actually allowed for less than a single degree of error.

  The transmitter was a huge, double-barreled device that looked like some kind of giant weapon. Thirty meters long, it sat on top of an equally large platform and was held almost parallel to the station’s hull. Sitting near the base of the transmitter, like some kind of high-powered rifle scope, was a large contraption that looked like a combination radar dish and telescope. It was this last device that allowed the precision aiming back toward Kaifeng.

  Aris carefully maneuvered the small life boat nose-first down into the valley formed by two rising pylons. Walls of gray metal rose to either side of him. The transmitter, backed by the main hull of the station itself, filled his entire front viewscreen. Using attitude jets only, he nudged the nose of his craft down against the transmitter barrels until contact came with an echoing clang. Then he kicked in his thrusters.

  For a moment nothing happened. There was only the faint, steady roar of the boat’s small engine punctuated every few seconds by the creak of protesting metal. Aris began to wonder which would give way first—the transmitter, the actuators that positioned it, or his limited fuel supply. Life boats were supplied with ninety seconds of fuel at full thrust. Aris had already counted over sixty seconds when there was a small shudder as the entire transmitter assembly shifted over a full meter, and he quickly backed off on his thrusters. That would do it, he decided.

  He used the attitude jets to back off a few meters and then leveled out the life boat in relation to the recharge station. He had given the Hiritsu warriors their chance. Providing no alert had already been sent, it no longer mattered if the bridge or auxiliary control was captured quickly or not. Or the comm center, for that matter. Only the dry-docked DropShip could make a difference now. Smiling to himself, the amber lights of the boat’s control panel in his eyes, Aris engaged the engine on minimal thrust and started the boat moving toward the shuttle bays, where eventually the House Hiritsu warriors would let him in.

  His final pass clipped the aiming dish, wrenching it about on its own precision gearing. Just in case.

  4

  Kaifeng Recharge Station Jodo Shinsa

  Zenith Jump Point, Kaifeng System

  Sarna Supremacy, Chaos March

  11 July 3058

  The officer’s wardroom, located on the massive grav deck of the Kaifeng recha
rge station Jodo Shinsa, stank of old grease and scented cleaning products intended more to overpower other odors rather than to actually clean. With its narrow tables, hard metal seats, and poor lighting, the room left much to be desired as a meeting hall. Especially with the recent arrival of the House Hiritsu JumpShip Tao-te, meaning the Way of Power, whose modern war room was only a quick shuttle flight away.

  But Aris Sung knew that House Master Virginia York preferred to be close to wherever House Hiritsu’s main interests lay. She had transferred to the station immediately upon her arrival in the Kaifeng system for a personal inspection and to oversee the next, short phase of the operation. Shortly after she’d called this meeting.

  And, he had to admit, there was also something to be said for gravity. Aris had spent two years learning the acrobatics of zero-G operations, and took pains to keep proficient, but every ’Mech pilot felt more comfortable with some weight around him. Preferably about fifty-five tons, Aris thought, with a smile. That was the weight of his Wraith. With only a few things left to tie up on the station, he looked forward to hitting the surface of Kaifeng.

  “Has there been any progress in locating the origin of the alarm?” Virginia York asked, drawing Aris’ attention back to the here and now. The House Master’s once-dark hair was shot through with silvery-gray. And there were a few more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Other than that she still carried herself with a strength warriors half her age would envy, and her bright blue eyes could still cut through a warrior’s resolve.

  Company Leader Lindell, who had been assigned to oversee that investigation, met her gaze evenly. “It came through a remote fire-station panel, two bulkheads over and one deck up from the maintenance bay where the Liu is stationed. The crew who responded were caught by our secondary teams.”