The sword and the dagger

by Ardath Mayhar

  There would be other Liao strongpoints, of course. Thelan and Maris were a pair of large tropical islands (or small island continents, depending on one's point of view) lying south of the Highland Peninsula, and both had several large cities. At the antipodes was Talliferro, a small continent that had a large mining settlement and commercial spaceport. All of these would have to be secured sooner or later, but with planetary invasions, first came first. The heaviest concentration of Liao firepower would be on the Highland Peninsula, and it was there that the crucial battle would take place.

  Meanwhile, Ardan, Felsner, and Hamman were received with cool courtesy at the Hasek-Davion headquarters in an imposing mansion on a wooded hill above the spaceport. They passed through an ascending hierarchy of receptionists, functionaries, under-chiefs, chiefs, and executive chiefs of staff until at last they were ushered into the Green Room, where Michael Hasek-Davion burrowed his way through a sheaf of hardcopy printouts and official-looking documents. Ardan found himself wondering if they had been heaped there merely to impress them with the Duke's importance to this sector, as there could be no other reason for that inefficient paper mountain.

  The Duke peered over his papers, frowning. "My people tell me your need for an audience was urgent," he said, without preamble. "What is it? I'm a busy man."

  "Your Grace." Felsner gave the proper bow of one schooled by long experience at court. "It is indeed surprising to see someone of your rank place himself in the midst of such...confusion. I know well the amenities of New Syrtis. This outpost has few. Your Grace presents a refreshing departure from standard procedure."

  Ardan grinned inside but kept his face a carefully neutral mask. He'd never known that Ran had such talents with the sweet oil of flattery.

  The Duke's frown transformed into a smile, and he nodded graciously. "My duty calls me to many uncomfortable spots, it's true. But, when one's duty is the good of his people..." He spread his hands helplessly. "Well, what can I do for you, gentlemen?" Listening to him, Ardan realized that the Duke's own courtiers must be such sycophants that he no longer could distinguish the fake from the true.

  "A formality only, Your Grace. We are bound to report to you, as the nearest representative of the Prince of the House of Davion and as the sector military commander, a change of plan in the counterinvasion of Stein's Folly. We..."

  "What-what-what?" Hasek-Davion's sputter might have been the clicking of an empty autocannon. "Change? Change? What change?"

  "We have reason to believe that our original plan, which called for a direct assault on Steindown, may be a trap. Our new plan calls for a landing along the Coast Road and at the fringe of the Ordolo Basin north of the Highland Peninsula. That will place us in the best possible position to.

  "Gentlemen." The Duke's momentary affability had vanished. His eyes were cold. "I do not believe that my brother-in-law makes a habit of having his plans questioned—changed!—by his subordinates! I happen to know how much thought went into these plans. I know. I was there! Every factor was considered—the terrain, the probable strength and disposition of the Liao forces, psychological factors, everything! What makes you three think you can rewrite all that planning"—his fingers snapped like a pistol shot—"just like that?"

  "Your Grace," Felsner said calmly. "I regret that we have displeased you, but I must inform you that we have already made the decision—and implemented it My orders from the Prince are quite specific in this. I am to keep Your Grace apprised of developments, to seek your council...but the interpretation and implementation of Prince Davion's plans are left to my discretion."

  "Interpretation, yes. You puppy, this isn't interpretation. It's wholesale murder!"

  "Your Grace?"

  "You said that the Ordolo Swamp is your intended drop zone?"

  "At the fringe of the swamp, yes, Your Grace. There are grasslands there, and..."

  "That whole area is a quagmire, fool! Your ‘Mechs will set down and keep going down—lost in the ooze, without a trace! A regiment could be swallowed up in there, just stepping out onto what they thought was solid ground! Or don't you realize just how heavy a BattleMech is?"

  "Your Grace, I assure you..."

  "You're doing nothing of the sort! Do you realize that your failure on Stein's Folly will reflect back on me, the supreme commander of this sector? I cannot approve such hairbrained idiocy." Michael seemed to struggle with himself. His face-softened, but his eyes remained cold and hard. "Gentlemen. Such a change—and now, of all times!—is an open invitation to disaster. You are all military men! You must understand this! Think of the confusion! .Think of the chaos if even one of your regiments flounders in the quicksand and mud of the Ordolo Swamps! That whole area is a death trap. Believe me, we considered all these things in the first stages of our own planning!

  "It's true that I cannot command you on this. Why the Prince gave direct command to someone other than the supreme military commander of this sector is not for me to say...but I strongly—strongly!—recommend that you adhere to the original plan! Prince Davion's plan had such brilliance! A lightning approach! A dashing strike from the sky at the Liao strongholds! A savage thrust to secure the planet's capital and principal port, followed by a wide-ranging sweep to secure the entire planet, leaving no pockets of resistance. No floundering in the swamps, no half-measures. That, gentlemen, is the mark of strategic military brilliance!"

  "Your Grace..." Felsner paused. "Your Grace, certainly, we must consider what you have said most carefully.

  The Duke stood behind his desk, leaning on it heavily, his cold eyes level with Felsner's own. "Good. And consider this carefully, too. You have proven yourself a worthy, able officer. An error of this magnitude would most certainly have unfortunate repercussions on a most promising career. You would be...finished...done for. I...I speak as a friend, sir, and as an advisor."

  Ran bowed again. "Your Grace is kind. We understand your position and appreciate your frankness. Believe me, Your Grace, we will carefully reconsider our position before commiting ourselves irrevocably."

  "See that you do, sir. Good day."

  Ardan was momentarily startled by Ran's sudden change of tactics. He had sounded so sincere that it wasn't until they were walking from the chamber and Ardan caught a wink from the Strike Force Commander that he realized that Felsner's last words had been an act.

  "You old smoothie," he murmured, pitching his voice low so that only Ran could hear.

  For answer, Felsner rolled his eyes toward the ornate and gold-trimmed ceiling. It was a relief to get into the fresh night air of Dragon's Field once more.

  10

  No soldier looks forward to a strike against a major city, because street-to-street combat can turn a skillfully defended urban area into a death trap. Nevertheless, when word trickled down the Davion line of command that the strike force would not be dropped into Steindown and the spaceport as originally planned, the troopers and Mech-Warriors greeted the news with complaints and grumbling instead of relief.

  Soldiers are a superstitious lot, and have been ever since the first savage threw the first rock. They have an automatic tendency to suspect that the enigmatic and godlike decisions coming down from the remote High Command might somehow alter fate, putting a man here, directly in the path of an incoming round, instead of there, where he could have survived. After all, it was not usually the higher-ups who had to put their butts on the line. Even the veteran NCOs, who might have breathed a small sigh of relief that they would not be dropping directly into a hot strongpoint, could only shake their heads and curse the blind fumblings of Higher Authority. Why couldn't those brass-heavy paper pushers leave well enough alone, without stirring everything and everybody up?

  But the changes were made. Admiral Bertholi reported that new navigational fixes had been recorded for three distinct peaks in the ridge around Jordan's Pass, and the drop zones could now be positively identified and homed on. Unit commanders down to individual lance commanders and platoon leaders repo
rted that troop assignments had been re-set, new 'Mech assembly points positioned and confirmed, and primary targets reassigned. Contingency planning and logistical support evaluations were continuing, but these chores could be carried out aboard the DropShips. Within twenty hours of the visit by Ardan, Lees Hamman, and Ran Felsner to Duke Michael's field headquarters, the first DropShips carrying Felsner's 5th Crucis Lancers had already boosted from Dragon's Field and were hours outbound on their way to the system's nadir jump point.

  Ran himself had remained behind to parry any possible official or bureaucratic delays Hasek-Davion might create because he was displeased. The Capellan March Militia were still ostensibly under the Duke's command even though they had been temporarily reassigned to Lees Hamman by Prince Davion himself. Though powerless to stop the invasion, the Duke of New Syrtis could find myriad ways to hamper the assembly and loading of his own troops. An order to loyal unit commanders simply to slow down the boarding process or to lose the clearance orders for a vital shipment of munitions could delay the unit's departure for days, even weeks.

  Felsner's solution was equally simple, though risky. He made sure that Michael would not interfere with the new plan for the counterinvasion by solemnly informing the Duke that after all and after careful consideration, the Davion commanders had decided to stick with the old plan.

  Ardan considered this strategy dangerous as well as dishonest, knowing that Hasek-Davion would be furious and humiliated when he finally learned that they had lied to him. Having an influential and powerful nobleman like the Duke of New Syrtis for an enemy was not going to be amusing. It was these wheels within wheels within wheels, rather than the prospect of battle, that was keeping Ardan awake at night.

  But he was too busy to worry for long. Once his own unit was scheduled for loading, he found himself in a running, three-sided battle with the Dragon's Field Technical Officer and the Chief of Procurement.

  A JM6 JagerMech in Company C, 1st Batallion of the 17th Avalon Hussars, died right on the landing field in the shadow of the Union DropShip it was preparing to board. An old, old fault in a leg servounit finally shorted an actuator circuit board too often patched instead of replaced.

  The leg locked, freezing the 'Mech in place and blocking access to the DropShip's number one hold.

  Though replacing a circuit board is not particularly difficult, the repair meant removing the JagerMech's leg at the knee, a procedure that required a field repair gantry or a full maintenance facility, at least. The 17th's field gantries were already broken down and stored, and Procurement refused to provide a new circuit board unless the crippled 'Mech could be brought to the maintenance center some two hundred meters across the field. A request for a deployed field gantry was refused: why should that gear be broken out when maintenance blocks were open just across the field?

  Unfortunately, the base Field Technical Services Division could spare no transports for the three hours' work needed to lower the 'Mech onto a flatbed crawler and carry it across to Maintenance. Proper authorization to redetail a transport and crew had to come from the base commandant, and he was at an official briefing with His Grace the Duke and would not be available until that evening—or possibly tomorrow. So sorry, they said, but we are really very busy and could you call back later? Or you might check with the Logistical Staff at Pallos, eighty klicks from here. They might have a transport, and if you could get authorization...

  Meanwhile, the other three 'Mechs of the JagerMech's lance were scheduled to board through the blocked hatch, and the entire loading schedule was falling behind. After two hours of fruitless tail-chasing, Ardan arrived at the only possible solution. He had the two heaviest of the waiting 'Mechs drag the crippled, sixty-five-ton JM6 across the field to the maintenance center and leave it there, laid carefully and squarely across the accessway leading to the building's underground VIP garage.

  If the major in charge of the Technical Services Division wanted to get home for supper that evening, the 'Mech would have to be repaired that afternoon, transport or no transport.

  It was, and loading proceeded almost on schedule.

  As boost time approached, the scene became even more chaotic and hectic. The port facilities of Dragon's Field were a hive of activity focused on the squat shapes of the DropShips—Unions and Overlords, mostly—resting in their blast pits surrounded by the lacelike traceries of loading gantries and crane supports. Somehow, hundreds of tons of food, water, munitions, and spare parts had to be directed from storehouses around the planet to the proper ship at the proper time.

  The physics of mass and mass distribution were unforgiving of the schedules and problems of ship supply officers. If each ton of supplies was not positioned precisely, the ship would not respond as expected when the captain later tried to cut in a control jet to vector clear of incoming missiles or to maneuver through a turbulent atmosphere. Worse, if those tons of supplies were not stored in the proper order, ground troops queuing up to draw ammo might be told that their supplies lay somewhere on the far side of 400 tons of dried meat and a case of JagerMech leg actuator circuits.

  Finally, after three days of grueling work, the last 'Mech was somehow winched into its transport niche and locked down, the last liter of reaction mass had been pumped into tanks and the hollow, partitioned spaces between bulkheads and decks, and the last squad of infantry had filed aboard and found the narrow, padded ledges that would be their homes for the next several days. Lees had departed the day before with the Capellan March Militia. With the threat of official delay from the Duke's office removed, Ran boosted to rejoin his unit hours later.

  Ardan was left to send the final messages required by protocol and formal etiquette—one to Michael Hasek-Davion stating that the original battle plan had, after all and after much careful consideration, been changed; and another that went by diplomatic paths to Hanse Davion himself, explaining the change and describing the friction generated between the strike force command staff and the Duke of New Syrtis. Ardan had composed this last with some measure of relief. Let Hanse deal with his brother-in-law, he thought. From now on, I'll just have to worry about Liao BattleMechs!

  Messages transmitted, Ardan stepped aboard the Union Class DropShip Exeter and stared for a last time across the nearly deserted plain that was Dragon's Field's largest port facility. Most of the ships had already boosted, and the only humans visible were isolated groups clustered here and there trying to assess the blast damage caused by the departing DropShips. Trash and debris—paper by the ton, discarded equipment cases and cargo crates, the scattered refuse of ten thousand men, the skeletal frameworks of partly dismantled cranes and gantries—littered the field, creating a haunting image of loneliness and desolation.

  Dragon's Field was the inner world of an M0 dwarf. The laws of Kearny-Fuchida drive dictated that the star's two jump points would be seven-tenths of an astronomical unit out, the zenith point above the star's north pole, the nadir point above its south pole. At a constant 1 G boost, with time out for a mid-course flip, the trip from world to jump point would take thirty hours.

  With an effort, Ardan shook the lingering depression from his thoughts, turned, and boarded the Exeter. Twenty minutes later, the DropShip rose into the sky atop a flaring pillar of fusion-heated plasma.

  11

  The Exeter's pilot made his final approach to the gathered fleet with care. The station plasma streams that balanced the JumpShips against the incessant tug of the red star 105 million kilometers below would kill if they swept across the unshielded hull of a DropShip at close range, and the Exeter's own bursts of high-speed plasma from her maneuvering thrusters would shred the delicate black fabric of a jump sail if her course came too close to one. The DropShip's target was the elongated form of the StarLord Class starship Sword of Davion, needle-sleek when seen from afar, a bewildering complexity of angles, bulges, turrets, antennae, guy struts, and braces when seen up close. Brackets aft of the JumpShip's cargo holds provided mounts for five Union Class DropSh
ips. A sixth bracket ring and open grapples invited the Exeter into a berth alongside the others. There was a tense moment of delicate maneuver, the firing and capture of a magnetic cable across the tens of meters that separated DropShip from starship. The electrical charge accumulated in the Exeter's hull by her own plasma streams was drained away into the JumpShip's after transformers, and then the Exeter was drawn slowly into the reach of the Sword of Davion's grapples.

  There was no need to offload cargo or personnel. Each captured DropShip became crew quarters and cargo module for that part of the starship's payload. Individuals could visit other DropShips or travel to the recreation lounge forward in the starship's nose by passing through hatches and passageways that traversed the ship's length of several hundred meters. Most of the passengers preferred to wait with friends and familiar faces, gaming on the cramped deck spaces between bunks stacked six-high, clustering together in informal bull sessions where experienced veterans described Life As It Was to green recruits, or lying alone in their bunks, reading or worrying.

  Conditions were claustrophically crowded and miserably low-G. The starship's stationkeeping thrusters mimicked a fractional G of gravity—far too little to keep the stomachs of spacesickness-prone troops settled. Each section maintained hourly rotating watches called, variously, cleaning details, cookie catchers, or Vomit Brigades. The details were necessary; perpetrators of these low-G nightmare incidents could rarely reach a heaving bag in time, and were invariably in no shape to clean up after themselves.

  Ardan, as regimental commander, had the luxury of a tiny cubicle all to himself, complete with bunk, table, chair, desk, closet, and washroom facilities, which—when the facilities were all folded away into deck or bulkhead or overhead—was small enough that he could pace its length in three steps. Low G did not have the same effect on him as jump, and so he spent his time fretting instead of feeling sick.