It took him two minutes to find Clarence stuffed in the trunk of his own rented limo with a bloody toy rabbit posed on his chest. They'd broken a few parts to make him fit, but he was still alive. Barely. Tommy rode to the hospital with him, bloody toy rabbit in his lap, holding the unconscious man's hand as the ambulance argued its way through tourist-choked traffic.
36
Kirin Valley DropPort
Irian, former Prefecture VII
2 July 3136
Trelane Brody focused on not screaming. Experimentation had proven it didn't help.
Nobody had said two days in a crated 'Mech would be comfortable. In fact all of the Senate Alliance MechWarriors had been through weeks of simulations— and special low-waste diets—to prepare for this mission. There had been no illusions going in.
Still, he couldn't shake the conviction that something had gone terribly wrong with his chronometer or the mission or both. Surely he'd been in the box looking at his ghostly reflection in the canopy for weeks, not the fifty-two hours his chronometer insisted on.
Perhaps he'd been accidentally shipped to the backside of the Raven Alliance. Or sent to recycling without inspection—his only warning of danger being dropped, crate and all, into the smelter.
His schedule said he should be sleeping now. Activation was in six hours.
He closed his eyes. His eyeballs scraped back and forth against the insides of their lids as he searched the darkness. That was not working. He had sleeping pills, but the time to take those had been yesterday. With only six hours to go. he didn't dare now.
He ran his forty-third diagnostic and logged his forty- third all green.
Nothing to do now but wait.
* * *
Civilian Tower Operations Control Agent Jessica Cambridge looked across the field at the row of Savannah Supercargo Interstellar DropShips and shook her head. It had taken guts to start up a shipping co-op in these days—even before The Republic had done whatever the hell it was that it was doing, things had not been good for the little guy.
Over the last six months, SSI DropShips had been in and out of Irian Kirin DropPort. Specializing in heavy equipment transport, they'd picked up the marginal accounts. IndustrialMods being traded in or scrapped; bulk loads of salvage materials for recycling/remanufacturing; surplus loads for major carriers who'd overbid their ability to make a goal. They weren't getting rich—in fact they were likely to be operating in the red for another year at least—but she respected their spunk.
It was a damn shame the home office data core collapse had stranded their entire fleet on Irian without manifest. The contracts were being researched and regenerated in hard copy by hand, but it was taking weeks. Meanwhile half a dozen ancient freighters—mortgaged to the last rivet and crewed by guys and gals who'd invested their last stone in making the company go—were sitting empty in front of warehouse row. Nobody said anything, but the way they were working on the ships and the loading equipment and hauling sleds, everyone knew they were getting them ready for sale.
Sometimes the little guy didn't get a break.
"Boss?"
Cambridge winced. Bailey was a good scanner tech, but he tended to jump at every little thing. Any variation in routine was a crisis by his standards. But he was good and, at these salaries, good techs were hard to find. She made the effort to smile and keep the annoyance out of her voice.
"What ya got. Bailey?"
The tech scooted his chair back, letting her see his screen.
Cambridge hit the emergency button.
"Go," said a voice as the hot channel to Irian Planetary Defense came live.
"Cambridge, Civ Ops," she self-identified. "We've just had twelve incoming DropShips go dark and break standard approach pattern."
"Which vector?"
"Both—make it fourteen, IPD—it's a coordinated maneuver from what we can track." She glanced at the other three screens for confirmation. Same numbers. Defense had to have these same pictures. "They're coming in ballistic, transponders off. We aren't set up to track cold ships. We're losing them."
"Understood, Civ Ops." The voice sounded damn calm to her ears. "Initiate standard shutdown and get your people to shelters."
Cambridge made a circle in the air above her head with one finger, then drew it across her throat. All around her techs went down their emergency call lists. She didn't listen too closely, knowing they'd be breaking regs by calling their families—warning them to get to safety—before telling the ships on the landing field they weren't going anywhere.
She squinted up at the innocent sky, then across the expanse of ferrocrete to the stranded SSI freighters, their bay doors open and ramps extended, ready and forlornly waiting in hopes those lost manifests were found. All of their trucks and loading sleds were laid out in neat rows, already looking like a used-vehicle sales lot. They were sitting ducks.
No matter how bad it got, somebody always had it worse.
* * *
Brigadier General Blatz was simply amazed.
He had known the former planetary militia and IrTech security were not all idiots. They had only acted like idiots when he had tried to mold them into a single force—under the former Dragon's Fury Brotherhood regiment—to defend Irian. He had expected them to be professional, or at least competent, and hoped all would manage to pull together when their home world was attacked.
What he had not expected was the way they had all pulled together so well in the four hours since the Alliance DropShips had landed.
They were not always using the plans he and Sanders and Greene had devised—more often he had devised and browbeaten the others into accepting—but in every case the field commander's changes were for the better. At every point from the heart of the Kirin Valley to the Bruin outback, Irian forces were turning back the invaders.
Even as he watched the battle for Irian unfold— issuing orders to reroute materiel or align unengaged assets—Blatz had to credit the Wolf Hunters for part of this. They had been hired on to defend the core of Irian's shipping infrastructure, however once on site they had determined only a fraction of their forces were required for that duty. The remainder of the mercenary group had become a de facto cadre unit.
Traveling in squads or lances or Stars or apparently random groups of six or eight or eleven, the Wolf Hunters had visited every defensive site on the planet more than once. In every case they had demonstrated techniques and tactics—often suited to the specific terrain or tactical situation—for the area commands to consider.
On the heels of that thought, he split a support battalion, sending each component company to bolster a different hot spot. He would not have been sure enough of their abilities to risk that tactic a month ago.
The tours were not completely altruistic, of course. He knew that a MechWarrior Greene considered the finest IrTech employed had abandoned his job to join the Wolf Hunters. He himself had lost his best artillery commander and an infantry gunsho he was ashamed to say he didn't remember.
Also, once they'd seen what Irian had to offer, the Wolf Hunters had activated the "in kind" clause of their contract and taken much of their payment in the form of tech and military materiel. Primarily advanced 1MB electronics.
The situation boards confirmed every beachhead was either being turned back or contained. It wasn't going to be a one-day victory—perhaps not even a one-week victory—but it would be a victory.
The only major target the Alliance forces were leaving alone was the commercial DropPort at Kirin. Perhaps they'd had intel the Wolf Hunters were based there and chosen to bypass it as too well defended. A logical assumption given the state of the Irian Planetary Defense just weeks ago.
Alpha Kerensky—there was a rank that brooked no confusion—had released the IPD troops attached to the DropPort and many of her own 'Mechs to support the defense of the Irian BattleMechs Plant and Hathorpolis. She'd said she could hold the DropPort with the few she'd retained, but that anything below would be cut down.
> Blatz wasn't sure what that last phrase meant, but from the looks of things, simply locking the gate and posting a "do not enter" sign would have been sufficient to protect the civilian port.
* * *
Trelane ran his three-seventy-five series extra light fusion drive up to full cycle—more power than he needed—and straightened his leg actuators. The paired twenty-tube missile launchers on his shoulders drove up—shattering the wooden planks above to flinders. The arms, heavy with their large and medium ER lasers, swung wide, hurling the fragments of crate away in a shower of boards and splinters.
He laughed, nearly delirious to see something in his cockpit viewscreen besides his own reflection. The three- sixty and scanners came online, confirming he was right where he should be.
Trelane was aware of warehouse workers scurrying for cover as the massive box labeled seventy-five tons of scrapped farm machinery gave birth to a Mad Cat, but they weren't really his concern.
Angling his lasers up, he sighted on the giant overhead magnetic crane and pressed the trigger. Unarmored, the soft metal of the only thing in sight that could hurt him ran like wax before a blowtorch under the four beams.
Trelane paused long enough to let the last of the molten debris fall before stepping out. He was tempted to simply walk though a wall, but he didn't know how it was reinforced and he didn't want to risk damage before he'd had a chance to engage the enemy.
Again his paired large and medium lasers lashed out and the soft steel hangar-sized double doors fell away from their frames. A hole blasted in the wall of the recycling warehouse across the service road told him France was already on the move. Premature as always.
Most of the BattleMechs in the task force company were lights—Falcon Hawks and Panthers passing for scrapped IndustrialMods through their packing crates— but his Mad Cat and France's Shockwave were on hand to provide serious firepower should the need arise.
Which it might. Even five hours into the planetwide diversionary assaults, some diehards might have stayed on post at the one quiet spot on Irian. It was their tough luck they'd chosen to avoid combat by hiding out at ground zero for the real raid.
The short-term heavy-equipment warehouses held crated BattleMechs—legitimate ones, without MechWar- riors in their cockpits—bound for the Oriente Protectorate, the Marik-Stewart Commonality, and The Republic. BattleMechs the Senate Alliance needed in order to defend—and expand—its borders.
There was more beyond 'Mechs, of course. Tanks, weapons systems, ordnance, and materiel crated, labeled, and ready to go. The location of every vital crate was cataloged for quick loading on the six Alliance heavy freighters open and waiting on the ferrocrete.
Turning south, he picked up speed, moving to cover the loading operation against the Irians' belated response.
* * *
As quickly as Anastasia thought the move, her Savage
Wolf pivoted right, its missile launchers depressing slightly, its left rear-hinged knee flexing to alter angle. Good tone. She pressed the secondary stud and the world beyond her canopy disappeared in blue smoke as a double flight of Streak missiles launched aft.
Twelve solid hits on the Alliance Shockwave that had thought it was sneaking up on her. The 50-ton machine dipped as a leg buckled, but didn't quite fail. Two of the missiles hit close to the cockpit tucked under the mass of its autocannon. Though they hadn't penetrated it was clear from the 'Mech's staggering recovery that the pilot was hurt. Its weapons were still viable, but at the moment tracking nothing as he struggled to keep upright.
Not ignoring the stricken 'Mech, but keeping her back to it. Anastasia stepped forward, rounding the block building at the edge of the DropPort's sea of concrete, and lined her paired ER PPCs on the nearest wave of hover transports skimming toward the warehouses.
Her azure bolts of death were nearly invisible in the noon glare, but two of the heavy-equipment carriers tumbled. One was a smoking ruin before it veered, the other a cartwheeling wreck disintegrating into shrapnel as it tumbled. The others scattered, abandoning their objective to avoid the unexpected defender. Defenders. An Ice Ferret and a Nova—both bristling with medium lasers—stepped clear of cover and began tearing into the lance of light 'Mechs defending the transports.
A heavy 'Mech icon appeared on Anastasia's heads- up display, distorted by intervening buildings and the heavy metal they stored, but clear enough. She grinned at the targeting computer's ID of a Mad Cat.
"Feeling fratricidal?" she asked the air in her cockpit.
Turning from the rout of transports, she went hunting the 'Mech the Clans called the Timber Wolf.
* * *
Trelane's targeting computer refused to identify.
Something new, a heavy coming his way.
He cut left down a narrow alley between metal-heavy buildings, staying dead center as his Mad Cat pushed sixty kph to keep his missile racks from hitting the fire escapes. No point in getting involved in a one-on-one slugfest with another heavy until he knew the op sit.
France didn't answer, which left him in command of the 'Mechs and answering to the mission leader and or DropShip captains. Only the DropShip captains were focused on getting their panicked cargo handlers in line and left 'Mech deployment to his discretion. Infantry reported multiple contacts pinning them down. On the company channel he got confirmation of one unknown heavy and four other 'Mechs breaking up the run on the warehouses. Light and medium Clan omnis in gunmetal gray with red paw prints.
His database gave him Wolf Hunters, mercenaries, present location unknown. "Need to update that."
Trelane dodged left, moving to get behind the mystery heavy. A wider thoroughfare let him step up to eighty kph. His cockpit was still cool, the sunlight on his face actually warmer than the air around him. That would change very soon.
Five 'Mechs and undetermined infantry. If the Wolf Hunters followed Clan organization, this was a Nova— maybe five 'Mechs and a hundred twenty-five foot soldiers. Unless they had vehicles. Or Elementals. Could be anything.
But no matter how you divided it, they had the meres outnumbered and outgunned. And they were professional soldiers, not hired guns. This was going to be brief.
Slowing as he reached the end of the service road, he scanned wide. Metal echoes for the warehouses around him. But heat to his left, fading as it moved away. He had gotten behind the unknown heavy.
Weapons ready, he pivoted around the corner.
"Another Mad Cat?" he said aloud. How many of these variants are there?
His mind cataloged the differences that had confused the targeting computer—lower, more angular, leaner, legs higher and back—as he brought his right missile rack to bear.
Wound this one, bring it down. He'd take it home for the Alliance engineers to study.
* * *
Anastasia's computer hooted its incoming warning. She pivoted, presenting her Savage Wolfs narrowest aspect to the flight of missiles.
Twenty LRMs pounded into the ground in front of her. the wall beside her and her right arm.
Glancing through the canopy, she visually confirmed what her diagnostic computer told her: loss of armor, no structural damage.
Extending both arms forward, she unleashed her ER
PPCs. Without waiting to assess their effect, she charged, pushing her 'Mech to the top of its acceleration curve in a few steps.
The best way to get close enough to use her short- range Streaks was to get close enough to use her short- range Streaks fast.
Surprised by her tactic, the Timber Wolf pilot was a half second late in launching a flight of long-range missiles as she ran into their target area. The missiles passed over her head. The second salvo—or second half salvo, since the pilot was repeating the pattern of firing first one side and then the other—was right on target.
Anastasia rocked against her harness as missile impacts dotted the upper legs and torso of her heavy 'Mech. She shouted her defiance as some hit close to the canopy.
Bringing
her targeting computer online—one did not target missiles manually while running—she focused a double flight of missiles and both PPCs on the Timber Wolf.
Her cockpit was hot. Not burning, yet, but hot enough for her to appreciate her cooling vest. The neoleather and plastics had not had the years to soak up odors, so everything smelled brand-new as it cooked.
The Alliance 'Mech jockey stood his ground, ready to finish the fight quickly.
Anastasia grinned. It was exactly the wrong move to make against her.
Optimal range, good tone, and twelve Streak missiles were away.
Just as her missiles cleared their tubes, the Alliance pilot unleashed a full strike of his own. Anastasia's first instinct was to stomp her pedals, but this was not her Ryoken II—this Alpha didn't jump.
There was no dodging the lasers, of course. Three solid hits, two mediums and a large, with the second large a raking burn across her back. But a twist and lunge left most of the missiles behind, flying uselessly out over the DropPort.
Most.
An explosion staggered her 'Mech. Metal and salt—- blood—filled her mouth. On the diagnostic screen her right SRM launcher housing went black. Fore and aft, twelve tubes gone.
Completing the twist, Anastasia brought the Savage Wolfs six remaining rear tubes to bear. Targeting computer—
Reported white heat.
Anastasia threw the throttle open in a dead run.
Daylight streamed down from above, but the black shadow of her 'Mech stretched ahead as the Timber Wolfs fusion reactor flared in a final sunburst.
* * *
"Irian is a loss," he said into the darkness. Actually a commercial comm booth with all lights and displays extinguished.
"How so?" The voice on the handset was distorted. He'd long ago given up trying to deduce if the speaker was male or female.
"Our assault force was repulsed and our raid on their BattleMech stockpile failed," he reported. He suspected the other already knew the details. He was just following up with his tally of events. "Heavy loss of life; heavy loss all around."
Wolf Hunters Page 26
