Binding Force

by Loren L. Coleman

  Aris looked toward the alleyway behind the garage, where he could see part of the Huron Warrior standing just inside the mouth of the alley. By the flickering light of Kyle’s still-burning car, he noticed that the sensor array—often referred to as the bonnet—was painted a dark, solid color. That told him it must be Raven Clearwater in the Warrior’s command couch, for her ’Mech was painted a dark green. The bonnet of Lynn Trahn’s Huron Warrior was black with light, almost-bilious green striping. Even in the poor light conditions Aris could tell there was no accenting color.

  Then Aris thought he heard the distant cracking of concrete. He sat forward and held his breath, waiting for some further sound. From the south, maybe southwest, came a squeal of protesting metal, and there was no doubt it came from deeper within the city. Aris placed his fingertips lightly against the paved street, and could just barely feel the light but steady tremors that warned of nearby BattleMech movement. It had to be another member of the mercenary lance, searching for the Hiritsu force. The sounds had a hollow quality, as if echoing from out of a side street—and the next intersection wasn’t more than thirty meters away. That could mean trouble.

  Harder tremors and heavy footfalls shook Aris’ attention away from the approaching threat. Raven’s Huron Warrior backed out of the alley, turning to face south and continue its mission. Aris exhaled in pained exasperation. This was one of the problems of city ’Mech warfare, he thought. Mech Warriors, strapped into their command couches, were forced to rely on sensors and visual data. In the narrow confines of a city, buildings blocked line of sight and severely limited those sensors. Unless the enemy was on the same street or you had a spotting unit, combat could easily take place at an intersection, with one or both warriors disagreeably surprised. Infantry could prevent that. Aris could prevent that.

  Aris headed toward the intersection. He moved in brief runs, always dashing toward a new spot with cover he could exploit. He wanted to signal Raven—wanted to get into the safety of her cockpit, for that matter—to warn her about the other ’Mech approaching and the trap being set at the ’Mech yards. But there wasn’t time to approach safely, in a manner that would keep her from burning him up with her lasers. And—dammit!—he was the only Hiritsu warrior on the ground and right now Raven needed a spotter. He ran from the cover of a lamp post, back to the street and another parked car.

  Now all he had to do was make sure she didn’t target him as a possible enemy infantry threat.

  With a deep breath, he abandoned the relative safety of cover and darted into the street. He kept himself crouched low, right hand tucked in and cradling his last cocktail bottle against his chest. His left hand was held near his knee, palm facing down and parallel to the pavement. It had been a long time since Aris had done infantry work. Over seven years. He’d forgotten how exposed you could feel, running out in front of the monolithic death machines. After so many years inside a BattleMech, the thought of those massive weapons tracking him was unnerving.

  Reaching the other side of the street, Aris edged up toward the corner while breathing a silent prayer of thanks for Hiritsu infantry training techniques. He glanced back, saw the Huron Warrior still paused near the entrance to the alley. From his new position, he could distinctly hear the plodding, pavement-crushing thuds of BattleMech footfalls. Risking a quick glance around the corner, he saw a Vulcan moving cautiously down the street toward the intersection. Every few paces it would pause, checking nearby buildings and alleys for possible ambush.

  Aris knelt and quickly lit his last cocktail. The idea of trying to signal Raven entered his mind. But he couldn’t be sure she was even watching him right now, and he didn’t have much time. Hopefully this will get her attention.

  When the cloth ignited, Aris rose and ran around the corner. He allowed himself five paces to build up momentum, and then threw the bottle with every last iota of strength he possessed. It arced out, sailing a good thirty meters before smashing down against the Vulcan’s, right knee and splashing fiery liquid down the giant leg.

  That got the pilot’s attention. The Vulcan’s left-arm machine gun spoke first, sending a stream of bullets into the pavement only steps away from Aris. He quickly about-faced, dodging back around the corner. Behind him he heard again the now-all-too-familiar throaty roar of a BattleMech flamer being set off. The fiery jet slammed into the corner of the building, flames licking around as if still trying to reach the fleeing Hiritsu warrior. A rush of warm air brushed at the nape of his neck, encouraging greater speed.

  Aris balled his right hand into a fist and brought it up to touch the top of his head. It was an automatic response, drilled into him during his years in the infantry. It warned of an approaching enemy ’Mech. He thrust his hand into the air then, with one finger held out. One enemy BattleMech.

  Glancing up, he saw the Huron Warrior tracking him with its head movement. Damn! Wasn’t Raven paying attention? This was the second time he’d drawn fire, quite literally, from a BattleMech in order to warn her. She should be getting ready to strike at the approaching Vulcan. What was she thinking? She’s thinking what the hell am I doing in Tarrahause.

  Aris knew he had her attention, but there was no way to warn her of the trap set at the Tarrahause aerodrome and ’Mech yards. No direct way.

  He slowed and then stopped. It wouldn’t be more than a few seconds before the Vulcan came round that corner, but he had to try. He held out his right arm, and then with his left hand made chopping motions against it. An infantry-scout signal to others. Counting off enemy lances. He hoped Raven remembered her infantry training. He stopped at a count of six lances. Next he placed a balled right fist in his left palm and inscribed a circle in the air. DropShip. Finally he slashed his left hand across his chest and then pointed it back up the street, toward the center of town. Abort! Get the hell out of here! There was no signal for trap or ambush, a deficiency Aris would correct if he ever made it back to Randar.

  He heard the violent rush of the flamer, still burning and growing louder, and glanced back. The Vulcan, flame unit still operating, was coming around the corner and sending a wall of fire straight down the walk toward Aris. There was no time to run and no cover available. Aris had one way out and took it. Covering his head protectively with his arms, he dove through a window of the building he stood next to.

  The shattering glass cut through the sleeves of his light jacket and into both arms. Another shard stuck into his calf about two centimeters and broke off. Pain lanced through his body as he hit the floor inside.

  Aris rolled to his feet, teeth clenched against the pain, and counted himself lucky as the flame tracked away from the building and toward the Huron Warrior in the street. He limped deeper into the building, which was filled with offices of some kind. Then the building shook with violent force, knocking Aris off his feet. Chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling, and he heard wood and brick giving way behind and above him. He scrabbled into the next room, a conference room, and dove underneath some kind of large hardwood table.

  Most of the roof fell in on top of that a moment later.

  * * *

  Aris Sung! Raven tightened the video image, shocked at the sudden appearance of her company leader and needing further reassurance that it was indeed him. She watched him light a rag sticking out of the neck of a bottle, and then run around the corner.

  And just as quickly he came running back into view, a reddish-orange cascade of fire chasing him. She tracked him, relieved to see that the flames were sufficiently blocked by the edge of the building. Suddenly the events surrounding the Hermes II made sense. Aris must have blown up that burning vehicle, and thrown more of those bottles—filled with gasoline, or something similar—in an effort to warn her of the enemy BattleMech’s position. And the Hermes II had been hiding in a dead-end alley, which meant it must have been in place before she ever arrived. Either this was shaping up to be an extremely unlikely coincidence—Aris and an enemy ’Mech in this section of the city—or…

&nb
sp; A chill washed through her, and it had nothing to do with the circulation in her cooling vest. They knew we were coming? But that couldn’t be. Not after all of Ty Wu Non’s security precautions. Then Aris stopped and signed to her using Hiritsu infantry signals. Two companies of BattleMechs. A DropShip. And the abort/fall back signal. Raven put it together quickly enough. The only Drop-Ships nearby were the SMM DropShips at the Kaifeng aerodrome. A trap. Another blasted trap! Aris was warning House Hiritsu out of the city!

  Then her sensors screamed a warning as an enemy Vulcan walked into the intersection, and Aris dove through a nearby window to escape the flames.

  The Vulcan pilot’s reactions were slightly faster than the Hermes II’s had been. Immediately the flamer swung up to wash its flames over Raven’s ’Mech. It triggered its large pulse laser almost simultaneously with Raven firing off her extended-range large and medium pulse lasers. Sapphire darts chewed into the Huron Warrior’s left torso, melting valuable protective armor. The flamer did little except drive her heat up, but levels in the yellow band of the heat monitor were no cause for alarm. Not yet. Her return fire savaged the Vulcan’s left leg and lower left torso, but both ’Mechs were far from hurting.

  Then Raven Clearwater brought her Gauss rifle into play.

  The large-bore rifle spat out one of its nickel-ferrous slugs, catching the Vulcan in its right arm and tearing it clean off at the shoulder. Her large laser stabbed deep into its left leg again, this time melting the last of its armor and cutting into the endo-steel frame. She weathered the light return fire, absorbing the damage against her right leg.

  The combination of both the Huron Warrior’s large weapons and a possibly ruined actuator in the left leg threw the Vulcan off-balance. It stumbled, almost falling, but managed to right itself. Then the second Gauss slug punched into its left leg right where it joined the torso, and the hapless ’Mech lost its second limb. There was no saving it this time. The Vulcan stumbled forward, listed to the left, and fell into the very building where Aris had taken cover. The wall gave way under forty tons of BattleMech, and the Vulcan went down amid a cloud of crushed plaster and brick.

  “Nooooo!” Raven yelled in frustration, not realizing she’d left her commline open to voice-activation. Her three lancemates were on the air fast enough, asking what was wrong and promising they were closing fast on her position. Raven clenched her jaw against any other outbursts. Weapons poised to fire on the Vulcan again, she hesitated as she searched the rubble for any sign of Aris Sung. Even when the Vulcan began shifting about, trying to bring its laser to bear on her Warrior, Raven waited.

  The first weapons to reach her did not come from the building, though. Her sensors alerted her to a third enemy ’Mech, and then a fourth. Checking her head’s-up display and primary monitor, she found both of the new machines further south along the street she where she stood. A Vindicator and a Hunchback, according to the tags her computer painted up on the tactical display. The Vindicator fired from extreme range, its PPC lancing into the Warrior’s center torso and robbing her of half the armor there. Then the Vulcan was able to free at least one of its weapons, and its medium pulse laser stabbed into her right arm.

  Raven fired in automatic response, her heat levels spiking high into the yellow band as she triggered all three of her weapons. The Gauss slug was only a fraction of a second behind her large and medium lasers, and all three found the Vulcan where it nested in the cavity it had carved into the building. The enemy ’Mech thrashed about, trying to escape certain death and causing more destruction. One more Gauss slug breached its center torso and tore through its fusion engine, effectively gutting the 40-ton ’Mech. It was small consolation to Raven that the engine did not explode and level the rest of the building.

  As a second PPC beam missed high, a green circle tagged Apollo One appeared on her HUD, to the rear. Brion Lee, one of her lancemates. She had the enemy ’Mechs evenly matched now. She wanted to tear into them, but a desire for vengeance gave way to a higher calling. Arts had warned her away from the city. Warned her of the trap, possibly at the cost of his own life. She could not disregard that warning. With one final look at the ruined building, half of which now lay in rubble, she turned back to the north and took advantage of the Warrior’s speed.

  “This is Lance Leader Clearwater to command,” she said, after dialing in the battalion’s general frequency. “We have hostiles in hiding at the northeast edge of the city. They were waiting for us. Repeat, they knew we were coming.”

  “Confirm that, Raven Clearwater.”

  Even through the filtering, Raven could recognize Ty Wu Non’s voice and it lent her strength. The battalion commander had flown in to direct this operation personally, leaving Beijing with Company Leader James.

  “Confirmed, Battalion Commander. This is a trap and we are disengaging. I was warned off by Company Leader Aris Sung. He was in the city. He indicated to me that there was also a trap waiting at the aerodrome.”

  Ty Wu Non was silent for a brief moment. When he returned, his voice was as composed as ever. He confirmed Raven’s retreat, and then calmly ordered the withdrawal of Hiritsu forces closing on the aerodrome and ’Mech yards. The situation had to be eating at him, Raven knew, but no commander leads troops into a known trap unless he is very desperate. His immediate orders given, Ty Wu Non’s attention returned to Raven Clearwater. “Aris Sung is still alive?” he asked.

  Raven selected one of her auxiliary monitors to a rear view. The Vindicator was almost up to the fallen Vulcan. “I hope so, Command,” she said, forcing a practiced calm into her voice. “I hope so.”

  Third Interlude

  “There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”

  —Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain, Terra, circa 1984

  Pr’ret Forest

  Sarmaxa

  Sarna March, Federated Commonwealth

  2 August 3057

  What had burned down this area of the Pr’ret Forest Aris couldn’t say. Lightning maybe, or a carelessly tended campfire. The decimation was new enough that the ground still had a scorched look to it, and terrain maps loaded into his Wraith’s computer did not show the destruction. It was, however, old enough that life was already returning in the form of sparse grass and very small saplings. The ruined area stretched several kilometers, through flatlands and over a few small hills—forming a natural arena in which the Sarmaxa Militia had decided to implement another rear defensive action.

  Aris’ Wraith rocked under the explosions of a half dozen missiles. He counted himself lucky as nearly another dozen of the solid-fuel projectiles chewed into the ground around him and a flurry of medium laser-fire passed by harmlessly. The Quickdraw and Crusader that had squared off against him both tried to backpedal out of optimum range while waiting for their weapons to cycle. Too late. Aris cut into the Quickdraw with his large pulse laser and both of his mediums, drawing molten lines across its barrel-like torso.

  Kicking his ’Mech up to its top speed of nearly one hundred twenty kilometers per hour, Aris raced in at an oblique angle. He had to stay under the effective firing range of the enemy’s long-range missile racks, but their close combat ability could also overwhelm him, which meant he had to keep on the move. He noted that, half a klick away, Ty Wu Non had not yet come to that realization as he took almost a full barrage from an older Archer variant and a standard Thunderbolt. His Charger’s armor absorbed the damage and remained on its feet, this time, but Aris doubted that Ty Wu Non could take that kind of punishment for very long.

  In fact, no one in the unit could, which had been Aris’ point from the start of this assault.

  The Liao-Marik Offensive against Victor Davion’s Sarna March was in its second month. Several star systems had already fallen, Warrior Houses such as Matsukai and Ijori spearheading a successful drive into the territory taken from the Capellan Confederation in the Fourth Succession War. Meanwhile, what should have been a main
thrust through Sarmaxa, Sarna, Sakhalin, and beyond was stalling. Stapleton’s Grenadiers and the Tooth of Ymir mercenary unit had failed to take Sarna, as Aris and several others among House Hiritsu, including House Master York, had predicted. And the bulk of House Hiritsu continued to sit on their stronghold world of Randar, held in reserve by Sun-Tzu and Ion Rush. Only one company under Ty Wu Non had been given permission to advance, and then only to the nearby world of Sarmaxa.

  Sarmaxa’s defenders consisted of six older BattleMechs piloted by the planet’s standing militia. Hardly a match for a Warrior House in a stand-up fight, and the defenders knew it. Those six ’Mechs had successfully frustrated Company Leader Non’s strategic planning and bogged down the entire assault by playing a hit-and-fade game that Aris had warned his commander about right from the start. The defenders would give up ground in return for pulling the faster Hiritsu ’Mechs out of formation, then turn and nip at the leaders. Li Quan Noh’s Snake and Lynn Trahn’s Huron Warrior were already sidelined, one with gyro damage and the other now missing a leg. In return, the defenders had lost their Ostroc. A great trade, for them.

  But Ty Wu Non would not listen. Determined to run the defenders to ground and put an end to the only form of resistance on Sarmaxa, he repeatedly ordered his company in pursuit of the Federated Commonwealth-trained warriors. Aris never questioned the order again. Ty Wu Non was his superior, and had rejected his advice. Now Aris and his company leader had caught up with four of the remaining five militia BattleMechs in this open area.

  Aris held no illusions as to who held the advantage.

  Taking the corner sharply, he once more threw off the tracking of the missiles that hounded him. Only three reached their mark, chipping away at his still-strong armor. He was not so fortunate with the enemy laser fire. As Aris fired off his own lasers, ruby and emerald darts scored against his left arm and leg. Nearly a full ton of armor was burned away, leaving his left arm especially vulnerable but still without a breach.