The sword and the dagger

by Ardath Mayhar

  The plan change had been his idea to begin with. He had set in motion the chain of thoughts and words and events that had transformed Prince Davion's plan of a lightning swoop into the Folly's capital into a war of maneuver and countermaneuver, of slash and grinding attrition in the mountains and swamps beyond. Suppose he were wrong? Suppose Michael Hasek-Davion were right, and the 'Mechs of the 17th became mired in unexpectedly soft ground around the Ordolo DZ? Suppose...Suppose...

  Outside the bulkheads of his ship, the last of the strike force's fleet elements assembled and came to full charge. As each ship recorded maximum hypercharge in its banked and shielded accumulators, the crew began the delicate and time-consuming work of furling the jump sail and preparing for the hyperspace transition. This was the busiest time of all for the starship crews, but it was time that hung heaviest on the troops and warriors aboard the DropShips. They could only continue their routine of eating (those who still could), gambling, sleeping, work details, and worry.

  And then the time for suppositions was over. The last of the fleet's jump sails was collapsed and furled, tightly rolled into the narrow mast that jutted from each ship's stern like a monstrous sting. Aboard the flagship Avalon, Ran Felsner gave his assent, and Admiral Bertholi gave his command.

  In a moment, space opened around the fleet and the ships vanished into it. The next moment, the same fold of space opened twelve light years away, and the Davion strike force rematerialized. The star below them was a Class K6, larger, brighter, and more orange than the sun of Dragon's Field, and just under 1 AU distant. Radar swept the area in all directions, pinpointing a bright, hard return from a large object some 80,000 kilometers away.

  That would be the jump station, and the presumed hiding place of any Liao fighters on hand to deal with intrusions such as this one. Davion AeroSpace Fighters were deployed. The JumpShips themselves fired up their stationkeepers but did not unfurl their sails. Those huge, fabric disks were easy targets. Though the ships could not jump again until they had recharged their accumulators, no captain dared open his sails until the threat of enemy fighters was past.

  Aboard the ship, the troops still waited. There was little gaming now and no bull sessions. Eyes searched the gray-painted bulkheads endlessly, as though they might see past them and into the surrounding vacuum. They could hear nothing, of course, and so were dependent on word passed down to them from the control room. Each man wondered if the ship's captain would actually let them know if they were about to be hit—and what possible good it would do to know.

  Ardan was on the Exeter's bridge, which was linked to the bridge of the Sword of Davion by an open vidlink. The Exeter's captain, Harvey Danelle, was shaking his head as he examined the banks of monitors, then turned from the screen to face Ardan. "I think that scares me more than an assault wave of enemy ships incoming at 5 Gs."

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?"

  "That's right, sir. No-damn-thing. Our fighters turned up a blank at the jump station. There's nothing there...and nobody." He checked his monitor screens again. "The patrols are returning. It looks as though Liao has left the jump point to us."

  Ardan worried at this piece of information for a time. It was possible that the entire Liao space strike force was concentrated at the opposite jump point—but foolishly unlikely. Radar and IR sweeps of the entire system had so far produced equally negative results. So, it looked as though Maximilian Liao's defense of Stein's Folly would be concentrated near the planet itself.

  The word finally came from the Avalon. Throughout the fleet, DropShip brackets opened, and grapples dropped silently clear. The DropShips began drifting away from their JumpShips like seeds scattered from slender pods. Once clear of the JumpShips, and refueled now from the stores of reaction mass aboard each larger vessel, the Drop-Ships calculated vectors and accelerations and began the long boost toward the Folly. Behind them, metal foil parasols two kilometers wide began unfurling against the stars, as the strike force fleet began the process of recharging for the next jump.

  From jump point to star was .9 AU. From star to planet was .37 AUs. Simple geometery gave a distance between jump point and world of a hair under 1 AU, or over 67 hours of travel at a constant 1 G.

  Ardan had been over the figures in his head many times already.

  Each person in the fleet, Ardan included, now bore the expectant and frustrated attitude of one waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. Standard doctrine called for a defending force to meet an invading fleet as far off from the planet as possible, to inflict as much damage on the incoming fleet before the DropShips had a chance to release their precious 'Mechs or to land and disembark them.

  The first attack wave came forty-two hours into the passage, long after the DropShips had flipped end for end and begun their deceleration. Davion Corsair and Stuka fighters launched from their DropShips and accelerated at high-G toward the assault formations that were spreading across the fleet's screens.

  Hours passed, an impossible agony of time in which to remain charged with the expectation of immediate fury and death. Beyond the drive flares of the DropShips, ComInt scans registered distant targets and stabbing lances of energy. Screens on the Exeter's bridge told a story of exultant life and fiery death in tiny clots of moving, colored lights.

  The Exeter's captain grunted. Ardan looked up from the plot screen at him. "You're not happy, Harve."

  "You're right. It's too easy."

  "We've lost three."

  "Damn it, Ardan, their whole air-space reserves should've been there...should've been waiting for us at the jump point! I think we're being suckered in."

  Ardan nodded. It would make sense if the Liao ground commander were preparing a surprise—such as luring the Davion invaders into dropping on Steindown and boxing them in from the hills. The problem was, what if there were other, less obvious traps in the offing?

  Ardan watched another amber light—a Liao Thrush— flash white and die, and dreaded failure.

  Deceleration complete, the fleet entered low orbit over Stein's Folly. In the entire passage, only three enemy fighters had broken through the Davion Stukas and Corsairs and made high-speed runs through the DropShip fleet. One DropShip, the aging Union Class Alphecca, suffered minor damage to her fire control systems, but with no casualties among the MechWarriors of A Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Crucis Lancers, sweating out the attack aboard her.

  Davion forces commanded the space approaches by the time the DropShips entered orbit. Battlegroups of Stukas refueled aboard their base DropShips, rearmed with bombs and air-to-ground missiles, then plunged into the goldtipped clouds of the Folly's atmosphere. Reports continued to be relayed from the Stuka flights to the fleet: enemy 'Mechs observed in Stein's Folly and at the Highland port; Liao heavy 'Mechs observed and bombed on the coast road west of Travis; no fighters observed on any of the spaceport fields; ground anti-air defensive fire seemed light...

  The Exeter's captain appeared on the steel latticework deck of the 'Mech bay, where Ardan was making a final systems check of the towering, eighty-ton Victor in its outboard launch niche. The 'Mech itself was almost lost in the forest of tubing, cables, wire, and ablative plate that cocooned the machine.

  "I came down to wish you luck, Ardan" Danelle said.

  "Thank you, Harve. Any change?"

  The older man shook his head. "Maybe...just maybe, we've got them cold."

  "Uh-unh. Not Maximilian Liao. He's got something up his sleeve." Ardan smiled, a tug against one corner of his mouth. "A dagger, perhaps."

  The Exeter's captain looked at him closely. "Are you all right?"

  "Oh, sure. Nervous. Scared to death...How should I feel?"

  "Before being booted into space in one of those junk piles? Nervous and scared widess, I should think."

  "Harve...what if I've guessed wrong?"

  "Then you live with it...or die with it, whatever comes. Your course is set now. Fretting won't change it...except maybe to wo
rk the odds against you when you need to be at your best."

  Ardan looked up at the Victor. A grey-coveralled technician waved to him from the cockpit, signalling that the instrumentation checked out and the 'Mech was ready for launch.

  "Twenty minutes to drop," the Captain said. "You'd better snug in."

  "Right And...thanks. Thanks for everything."

  "All part of your better Davion Travel Service," Danelle said, but he wasn't smiling.

  Harvey Danelle stared up at Ardan as he climbed a slender ladder to the Victor's hatch and squeezed himself in. Young Sortek's moodiness concerned him. He'd seen too many 'MechWarriors overcome by depression or black or thoughtful moods—and more often than not, those were the ones who failed to return. Silendy, he said a kind of prayer for Ardan's safety.

  The landing plan called for an atmospheric drop rather than a drop from space. With the Drop Zone so perilously close to sea, jungle, and rugged mountain, absolute precision was necessary. One by one, the main drives of each DropShip flared, killing velocity, dropping the ships into the upper fringes of the Folly's atmosphere.

  Sealed into his cockpit, listening to the babble of voices coming across his comchannels, Ardan could feel the gradually increasing thrum of air against outer hull, the occasional lurch and bump of high-altitude turbulence, or the jar of a maneuvering thruster burn. He fought down his seething emotions, and attended to the nearly automatic tasks of preparing for drop. He had already stripped off all clothing except for his boots and shorts—his Victor's cockpit was going to be a sauna in very short order—and donned a light cooling vest, taking care with the connections between the shoulder pumps and the coolant reserve in the small of his back. A Kelvin Triple-0 Lancer 3 mm laser pistol went into a holster, and he tightened the web belt it hung from around his waist. The new combat knife was strapped by its scabbard to his calf just above his low-cut boot top. The canister of survival gear went into a flat pouch hanging from the belt.

  The Victor's neural helmet was already tuned to his brain patterns, of course. He brought the helmet down from its storage mount suspended above the back of his seat, eased it across his shoulders, and clamped it shut. Gradually, the Victor woke up. Feedback through the helmet gave Ardan a sense of the machine's balance and position through the nerves of his inner ear. He felt...power.

  Fear melted, and his uncertainty with it. Rumor had it that MechWarriors controlled their massive charges by thought alone, as if the 'Mech became their body through some sorcery in the neuralink. Human technology had never been capable of that, of course, though there were speculations that such control might one day be possible. Donning a BattleMech neural helmet was far less taking on a new body than it was taking on a new outlook on the world. A man's viewpoint changed somewhat, from eight meters up, with eighty tons of juggernaut combat machine responding to the touch of his fingers.

  His eyes flicked to the chronometer set above his faceplate. Four minutes to drop. The ride became rougher, more violent He could feel sudden shifts of up and down through his neuralink as Captain Danelle maneuvered his ship.

  "There they are!" The voice was Danelle's, sharp through his helmet commlink. "Bogies, dozens of them, coming up out of the clouds!"

  Ardan could not see them and had to rely on the running commentary from the Exeter's bridge. Sweat beaded across his forehead and upper lip, and it wasn't even hot yet.

  "We've spotted 112 of the bastards so far," Danelle continued. "They must have been bunkered underground, masked or camouflaged from our scouts. They rose from a dozen points all across North Continent...strange, though. I think they vectored wrong. They're rising to meet us, but they're having to burn a lot of mass to shift from their original course." There was a pause. "Combat Intelligence believes they were vectored on a course to intercept us if we were on an approach path toward Steindown. We're well north of that course, and they're having to scramble to adjust"

  That was the trap, Ardan thought, exultant They were waiting for us at Steindown! I was right!

  "Our fighter cover is engaging them. Ha! Got that one! Oops...that one broke through, but the old Deneb burned him down. Look at him burn! Here come our reserves..."

  There was a long pause, then Ardan heard, "We're coming up on the drop site. Nav fix is positive. DZ in sight! Twelve seconds, people." Another pause, an eternity. Every MechWarrior reserved a special dread for death striking in the last seconds before a drop, while men and machines were still cradled helplessly aboard their DropShips. Then Danelle yelled, "Good luck! Give 'em hell!"

  12

  The world exploded in Ardan's ears, as the Exeter launched him from its 'Mech bay. In a blast of metal chaff and fragments of ablative plating, the Victor began its plunge planetward.

  Ardan fired a burst from his thrusters, stopping a vicious tumble before it could properly begin and orienting himself into a spread-eagle, face-down position. He was now a ten-meter tall, eighty-ton skydiver, accelerating to terminal velocity. After instructing his computer to disregard the metallic debris all around him, he clicked on his proximity radar and got his bearings.

  The fighter battle that Danelle had been describing still raged among the clouds quite far off. Ardan was alone, except for the radar images of the other 'Mechs in his unit being fired out of the hurtling DropShip as it receded toward the southeast. The ship's course helped to orient him. There was the Highland Peninsula, bloated, huge, and ragged under scattered clouds, stretching down to a cobalt, island-dotted sea. Streaks of fire marked other DropShips on their run low over the Peninsula. Those would be Lees and the Capellan March Militia, making their diversion—and the Liao ships rising from Steindown to meet them. Clouds obscured the isthmus as well as the vast expanse of the Ordolo Basin, which was almost under Ardan's feet now. Mountains extended toward him from the east. As nearly as he could tell, he was dead on course.

  He had ejected at 16,000 meters and been in freefall for seconds that dragged like hours. His altimeter flickered the dwindling meters as he kept his hands solidly planted on the controls that would trigger his rockets. His 'Mech had no parachute. Fire his jets too early, and he would run short of fuel for jumps in combat. Wait too long, and his comrades would scrape what was left of his Victor off the flank of those mountains. God, but they looked close!

  At 1,000 meters, he plunged into the clouds. Fog whipped past the Victor's forward screens, completely disorienting him. The plummeting 'Mech was bucking some now, too, as it encountered the turbulence of a growing storm within the cloud. I thought this was supposed to be the dry season, thought Ardan, and felt anew that twinge of fear. Suppose...?

  He burst through the belly of the upper cloud layer. Green patched with ragged white spread out in twilight beneath him. Eight hundred meters. He was level with the highest of the mountain peaks. He fired his jets, dialing up their thrust gradually. If thrust came too suddenly, the connectors to the 'Mech's backpack assembly could shred like paper. The effect on Ardan would be similar to a crashlanding into those mountains at terminal velocity. His descent slowed—to eighty meters per second...forty... ten...Treetops groped at his feet. His jets were firing steadily now, gulping fuel at a ravenous pace, but slowing his headlong plunge and lowering him toward the surface of a broad, flat field. A quick glance showed him the vapor plume of three other 'Mechs close by. Good. They'd not scattered much.

  At fifty meters, he examined his chosen landing spot again. It looked like an irregular field covered with bright green vegetation, bordered by a tangle of swamp growth. He wasn't certain, but this site might be farther north and west into the Ordolo Basin than he'd planned. His designated DZ was further east on a barren slope along the flank of the mountain ridge. Still, judging by the lay of the ridge, he wasn't more than a kilometer or two off. Ardan began his final landing sequence.

  Odd. From thirty meters, the ground looked peculiarly flat, with no depressions or irregularities at all. And the color...Panic struck him like a blow. He was committed now to a landing, b
ut he had a horrible premonition that the deceptively solid-looking surface below him was, in fact, the surface of a marsh or pond covered by weeds or algae scum. If he hit that at ten meters per second in his feet-first landing mode, the eighty-ton Victor would plunge straight to the bottom of the marsh, driving itself so deeply into the mud that he would never be able to free himself, and would never, ever be found.

  He twisted his attitude controls wildly forward, sensing the pitch of his 'Mech through his helmet. The 'Mech splayed out, arms out, belly down, once again in the sky-diver's position he'd assumed after first ejecting from the DropShip.

  The world stopped for that last, hurtling instant. If he'd guessed wrong, if that invitingly-solid swatch of land was, in fact, solid, his spread-eagled 'Mech would slam face on into the ground at ten meters per second. The Victor would be wrecked, and he would almost certainly be killed.

  The field swooshed up to meet him, and he fell into it with a roar like exploding artillery. The impact wracked Ardan against his shoulder restraints and left him gasping for breath in his helmet. His 'Mech had driven through the surface of the swamp and face-down into the mud, of course, but his spread-eagle position had kept him from driving too fast, too deep. BattleMechs do not float. Nevertheless, he was not swallowed by the ooze. Driven by the full power of his 'Mech's leg and arm actuators, he moved, first one arm, then one leg, the other arm, the other leg. He could see nothing but sticky blackness through the Victor's forward screens, now spread out disconcertingly under where he hung suspended from his pilot's seat, but instrument lights showed that his backpack was awash above the viscous mud.

  His headphones caught a burst of rapid speech, garbled but from a transmission close by. Good! His antennae was clear, too.

  "This is Gold Leader, down and in need of assistance." Speaking slowly and distinctly into the slender microphone suspended in front of his mouth as he scanned the assigned combat frequencies, Ardan forced the words into some semblance of control. God, there had to be someone down close by. He'd seen other Mechs near, just before he'd hit.