Fire at Will

by Blaine Lee Pardoe

  He paused. “I’m not going to blow sunshine up your kilts. I don’t know where we will be posted. I do know that Lyran high command is not in favor of our existence, which makes this unit all the more appealing to me, and I’m sure to some of you. I know that Lady Steiner has plans to use us. She has personally assured me we will see action. The question is, are you interested in getting into the war?”

  Roderick studied their faces and eyes as they stood at attention. He’d chosen them carefully, but he still had to find out if they had the right stuff. “Anyone who wants to leave now, step forward.”

  He waited. No one moved.

  “Very well. I want these barracks so clean that I can eat off the floor in two hours. We will muster here for inspection, and then you will report to the ’Mech bay and simulator facility for drilling.”

  He paused for a moment. “Welcome back to the army,” he said with a grin. “Dismissed!”

  Trillian lifted her gaze from the noteputer screen and looked at Klaus Wehner in the dim evening light. She was tired, weary and wondering how the first wave of the assault was going. Without a fully functioning HPG network, she had to rely on courier ships to bring her news. “How did it go, Klaus?”

  He took off his hat and dropped into a chair. “Good. Getting them here was easier than I expected because of the number of JumpShips shuffling troops to the front lines. I must admit, though, I’m concerned about this unit of his. He’s got some top-notch talent in there, good command staff—but some of these troopers are, well, a challenge.”

  “Roderick is a good leader. If anyone can turn them into a unit, he can. When we were kids he organized even our water-balloon fights as if they were full-scale invasions. Check his military record and you’ll see that he’s something of a tactical genius. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Klaus nodded. “I know he’s a Steiner at heart,” he said, and Trillian felt a minor stab of conscience. She had shared that information with Klaus—the only person she had ever told. “But some of the personnel he’s chosen . . . I mean, well, three of them had to be released from military prisons. One nearly killed her commanding officer with her bare hands.”

  Trillian smiled. “Like you said, Klaus, he’s a Steiner. He doesn’t like it, he hides it, but he is a Steiner. And, at the right time, that is bound to shine through.”

  8

  Outside the City of Lancaster

  Millungera

  Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey

  30 August 3137

  Vedet Brewster looked at his secondary display with a certain amount of disbelief. The Millungera Militia, which Lyran intelligence had painted as being recently reinforced, was on the run. There were four roads that snaked across the countryside, and the militia was using three of them in an attempt to reach the city. He could make out their motion at the extreme range of his vision through the cockpit of his Atlas. Occasional dust kicked up from their flight marked their route. Duke Vedet noticed the bare branches of the trees; already autumn was settling in on the northern continent of Millungera. With winter would come a new government as well . . . if this worked as planned.

  They have good reason to run—we outnumber them more than two to one. Duke Vedet smiled to himself in the comfort of his cockpit. In a few minutes, the militia would encounter the troops he had pushed ahead. Then he would crush the Millungera force once and for all. He had to—if they reached the confines of Lancaster, they could close the odds dramatically. City fighting, from everything he had read and studied, was the worst. They would force me to level the city block by block to get rid of them. Fortunately, he was prepared to do just that.

  The three Cardinal VTOLs loaded with field artillery and armored support infantry dropped down in advance of the militia. The massive turbofans churned up higher plumes of dirt than even the fleeing infantry. Trees were stripped of their bright orange and yellow leaves, leaving only naked branches poking skyward. The VTOLs had positioned themselves on the last two bridges before Lancaster.

  The battle erupted quickly. The VTOLs, while mostly used for transport, were also armed. They banked off from the bridges and moved to the flanks to provide cover to the infantry. Their fans stripped more trees naked of their leaves.

  “Guard One to Command and Dagger companies. They are boxed in at the bridges. Charge them. Destroy them.” He felt an almost physical pleasure in those words. He throttled up the fusion reactor, which throbbed under his cockpit as the 100-ton BattleMech moved as quick as it could jog toward the fight. Dagger Company had been hounding the Millungera Militia. Now, cut loose, they rushed forward. Explosions bracketed both roads.

  The Atlas seemed to strain at the speed he demanded. He could feel the heat sinks kicking in, attempting to keep the heat of “the pride of Defiance Industries” manageable. Vedet now understood why military men enjoyed this life so much. It was invigorating. He made decisions every day as the head of Defiance Industries. Here, though, on the front, his decisions made the difference between life and death.

  He locked his PPC on a small Locust and fired. The brilliant white-blue beam of charged particles pierced the air and hit the leg of the militia ’Mech. It bent backward against the actuator, ripping and finally giving way. A salvo of missiles, probably from someone in Dagger Company, hit the ’Mech as did a small laser, its emerald beam slicing at the damaged leg. The Locust pilot fought hard to stay upright, but gravity cruelly embraced the BattleMech. It dropped, billowing up dust. Its seared-off foot and leg remained standing upright over it, like an odd grave marker.

  A militia SM1, a deadly tank buster, banked off the road to put up a fight and blasted one of his Hesperus Guards. Four comrades of the target responded at once. The SM1 was not built to weather such an assault. The front glacial plate of armor disappeared in fire and laser bursts. Globs of melted armor splattered. The vehicle dropped to the ground and began to shake and rattle as secondary explosions began to go off inside. The sides of the SM1 blew out, followed by churning black smoke. One hatch flopped open, but there was no sign of fleeing crew.

  A militia Balac VTOL attempted to provide cover against the waves of advancing BattleMechs, but it had more targets than it could handle and was banking wildly, both firing and attempting to evade missiles in the air. Duke Vedet saw the militia ground units attempt to fan out, to get off the road, but his forces overwhelmed them. He fired at the Balac, hitting it with a burst of short-range missiles. The VTOL swung wide and dropped behind a small hill. The duke saw a ball of orange fire rising into the air, and a moment later the concussion from the blast rattled his Atlas.

  I killed him.

  Vedet slowed his Atlas and watched as his vehicles and BattleMechs charged the line. Artillery rained in on the congested roadway, blasting the ferrocrete like black clods of shrapnel. Millungera Militia infantry, in Gnome power armor, attempted to flee to the countryside. He numbly watched as one of his own Rangers rushed right through their formation. One dead man was splayed out on the front armor of the Ranger. A dull wet smear of his blood marked where the body slid away as the Ranger spun for another blast through the squad.

  He trembled as he thought about the Balac he had shot. There had been no hope of survival for the pilot. He thought again, I took his life. Vedet Brewster had done many things in his life, but killing had not been one of them. Certainly, his decisions had cost the lives of a few workers here and there, but attacking another vehicle with the intent to permanently disable—he had done this thing. He felt warm; his skin tingled, as if ants crawled on him. He licked his lips and tasted the salt of his own sweat.

  A voice called to him, jerking him into a moment of clarity. “Tiger One to Guard One,” said Hauptmann Klein. “Sir, we are slaughtering them. I suggest we stand down. They’ll surrender.”

  He heard the words but said nothing. No. These men and women were the enemy. History recorded just how many times the Free Worlds League had initiated war against the Lyran people. Per the reports of Lyran intelligence, the Duchy
of Tamarind-Abbey had armed these militia units and prepared them to fight—and their most likely target was the Lyran Commonwealth. While the troops he had faced seemed unlikely to succeed in a pitched battle against the superior soldiers the Commonwealth brought to bear, he believed the intelligence reports. Everyone knew that intelligence reports and reality often differed greatly.

  If he let these troops live, he would be inviting them to fight again. What if they used a cease-fire as an opportunity to escape—or worse yet, to take the life of one of his own men? No. They had to be defeated.

  “Guard One,” Klein pressed. A distant explosion added to the chaos and carnage erupting on the roads and at the bridges. “Do you copy? I suggest we give them a chance to surrender.”

  “No,” Duke Vedet said softly, then shook his head. Beads of sweat dappled the visor of his neurohelmet. “Negative, Tiger One.”

  “Sir!” Another explosion, this concussion so strong that it shook his Atlas. Something small had been knocked loose and was bouncing around in the cockpit. Probably a BattleMech being blown up. “Sir, this isn’t war, this is murder.”

  Duke Vedet looked at the knoll where the Balac had dropped from sight. A stream of gray smoke still rose from where the militia VTOL had died. “Wipe them out. It is the only way they will know we are serious.”

  The duke waited a day before visiting the site of the final stand of the Millungera Militia, and he was shocked by what he saw. Even he could not call it a battlefield. Everywhere he turned he saw a debris field of burned and blackened hardware. Chunks of twisted and torn BattleMech armor lay scattered across the field. Vehicle carcasses lined the two roads that led into Lancaster. Some were still smoking, thin gray wisps marking their destruction.

  But it was the bodies that sickened him; his stomach pitched as he realized what he was seeing and smelling. Bloated from the heat of the morning sun, the upper portions were sickly pale while other parts, where blood had settled, were deep purple. Most of the victims were torn apart. Pools of blood were now simply dull brown smears and puddles on the grass and ground. The smell of decay mixed with burning ’Mech and vehicle parts was thick enough to taste.

  Duke Vedet fought the urge to throw up. I can’t vomit in front of my men . . . what would they think of me? His skin simultaneously burned with fever and rippled with chills as he breathed shallowly through his mouth. His salvage crews were crawling over a fallen Raptor II, apparently attempting to remove hardware from the fallen BattleMech. The Raptor II was a relatively new ’Mech; its presence here was one of the few pieces of evidence that Lyran intelligence might have been right about the Millungera Militia refitting for offensive operations. Looking at the mangled remains of the Raptor, Vedet found it hard to think of it as a threat.

  He took long careful steps. He wanted to make sure he didn’t trip on debris or, worse, step on a dead body. The destruction of the militia had not been a battle, he thought again. Hauptmann Klein had been right— it was murder. With the bridges blocked by his infantry, the river had channeled the militia to its death. Some had turned to fight, some had tried to get away—but it was all futile.

  The duke strode to the top of a grassy hill and looked back along where he had walked. Guilt came over him in a wave. I could have stopped this. He focused on the Raptor II salvage efforts. No. He couldn’t think about it like that. Fighting and killing were part of war. His family had created the machines of war for generations; some members of the Brewster family had even fought. Questioning what he had done was paramount to questioning the work his dynasty was built on.

  I did what was necessary. If we hadn’t killed them, they would have continued to threaten us. He would cling to that thought. It was a thin veneer for the reality of what he was looking at, but he would take the scant comfort it offered. They were the enemy, after all. They deserved what had happened to them.

  Something made him think of Trillian Steiner, and he thought, She would never be able to face what I have—battle and death. She must know that. That is why she stayed behind the front lines. The isolation of the Steiners from real life was their ultimate weakness.

  Turning slowly away from the field of destruction, the duke looked over at the isolated wreckage of the Baltac VTOL he had shot down. If he had not known what it was before the crash, he would not have been able to identify it. The autumn grass near it was charred and the tree it had crashed next to was blackened from the flames. His jaw set as he looked at it. They were the enemy, they deserved this.

  One of his seemingly endless army of aides approached; he thought his name was Leutnant Schnell. Duke Vedet spun to face the young officer, relieved at the diversion. “Sir, the media is here.”

  “Our media?” He realized it was a redundant question as soon as he asked it. It’s all our media now.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Brewster nodded. “Let’s not let them get too much footage of the battlefield. We don’t want to sour people back home on the war because of what we are being forced to do.” He strode down the knoll in a direction to put the grassy hill between him and the destruction, and met the interviewer and her holovideo crew at the bottom of the knoll. The duke felt vaguely uneasy as each step brought him closer to the VTOL he had shot down. He could feel its presence, like a ghost, behind him.

  “Duke Brewster,” the reporter began.

  “Duke Vedet,” he corrected quickly, with a hint of his best boardroom smile. “I have not forgotten my Skye roots.”

  The reporter smiled at the correction. “Judy Steffer, Lyran Broadcasting. I have a few questions for you, Duke. It is obvious that your Hesperus Guards have delivered a stunning blow to the troops of the Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey here on Millungera. What is your perspective on the fight?”

  He waited for a moment before speaking, aware that the holocamera frame would pair him with the rolling smoke from the downed VTOL behind him. For a fleeting moment he wished he had chosen a different location for the interview, then set his features in a determined expression for the reporter and her viewers. “Ms. Steffer, the Lyran Commonwealth was forced to bring this fight to the Duchy and to the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth, to protect our people and our borders. I am honored to be here on the front lines, helping lend a hand to our brave men and women in the service. What we did here on Millungera was something that had to be done.” He was acting— anyone who had ever seen one of his press conferences would know that. The vast majority of the Lyran people, however, would not. The duke intended to play to their sense of patriotism, and to highlight his sensitivity and strength.

  “I understand that operations on Alorton and Saltillo were highly successful as well,” the reporter followed up. “The Second Lyran Regulars allegedly took Saltillo in only three days of fighting. Would you say that resistance to our actions has been weaker than expected?”

  He replied immediately, but wondered how she had heard news of those attacks. Vedet himself had received word only the day before, along with reports from the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth, which were far less positive. If she knew about Alorton and Saltillo, she would know about the Commonwealth as well. Vedet chose to seize the initiative. “I would never characterize war as easy or resistance as weak. Take what has been happening in the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth as an example. While we were able to drive the Silver Hawk Irregulars off Gallatin, they gave us a good fight. Now I understand that they have appeared on Uhura as well. We are sending some of our best forces to deal with these elite troops.”

  He was telling a partial truth: the Silver Hawk Irregulars’ attack had caught Bernard off guard on Gallatin and had surprised everyone, including the LIC’s elite Loki branch, by showing up on Uhura. And this information was already out of date, brought by a contracted courier JumpShip. What disturbed Vedet was that the Hawks were setting back the Lyran timetable for seizing these worlds. They hit hard and fast and evaded direct battles that they might lose. General Nordhoff currently was on Uhura with the Third Lyran Regulars and their losses were a
lready way over what had been projected. By addressing this problem proactively, he hoped to disarm more embarrassing questions from the reporter.

  “Word is that you personally led the attack here, Duke Vedet,” she commented.

  He responded with useful but fake humility. Waving his hand in the air as if to brush away her words, he said quite seriously, “Ms. Steffer, it is true that I was in this fight. I believe in leading from the front.” Take that, Trillian Steiner. “But the real leaders who created this victory were the men and women of the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces.”

  She flashed him a smile, and he wondered if she was flirting with him. “This is Judy Steffer for the LBC.” She signaled her camera crew, and they lowered their cameras. “Thank you very much, Duke. I appreciate your comments.”

  “I thank you.” He said it as if he meant it. He folded his arms and watched the camera crew trudge back up over the grassy knoll toward the destroyed Militia forces. He motioned for Leutnant Schnell to approach. The young officer bowed his head slightly and clicked his heels together.

  “That news crew that just left, will they be using our JumpShips to transmit their footage?”

  Schnell nodded. “I believe so, sir. The media covering us has had to rely on our ships to broadcast their reports.”

  “I want you to have one of my media people review the footage,” he said, glancing up the hill to make sure the news crew was out of earshot.

  “Sir?”

  “I have a number of my media people on staff. Make sure they see the footage and edit it accordingly. The people back home don’t have to see how badly we crushed this militia force. They just need to know that we won the fight and they are safe. You have to trust me, my staff knows what to do.”