Fire at Will

by Blaine Lee Pardoe

  He shut off the unit and paced around the former governor’s posh office. Pulling the Lyran Royals Regiments, units he was counting on as a reserve, and sending them to Skye was going to stall General Nordhoff. He had been slugging his way into the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth for a while now. The Silver Hawk Irregulars had been toying with his forces. Bernard had been aggressive in pursuit, but it was as if the Irregulars knew his plans. They always seemed to be one step ahead of him.

  Damn!

  Duke Vedet crossed his arms in defiance as he stared out the window at the fall afternoon. The time had come to leave Millungera. If Melissa wanted to try to keep him off guard, that was her prerogative. He could do the same by simply winning the war and completely crushing the Free Worlds League. A few more successful strikes and her little efforts would be all but forgotten. This war was not about Skye . . .

  ... it was about him proving to the Lyran people that he was worthy of their support.

  10

  Training Field Hessel

  LCAF Staging Base Boelcke

  Cavanaugh II

  Bolan Military Province, Lyran Commonwealth

  10 September 3137

  Roderick leaned into the turn as his Rifleman IIC banked hard in a running arc. Physics reached out to the BattleMech, fighting what he was trying to do. The machine’s balance system, merged with feedback provided by his neurohelmet, fought the imperative to let the ’Mech topple. The Clan-manufactured technology of his Rifleman IIC held true even as he pushed it beyond the design specifications.

  Midstride, he swung his right-arm autocannon into play. The gun purred just outside his cockpit as it disgorged its rounds. Even in simulation, these rounds laid a hard impact of kinetic energy on their target. He fired right into Dewery’s Firestarter’s tender right-flank armor. The rounds erupted with white puffs of marking powder. His own battle computer registered the hits, as did Drewery’s. Indeed, the Firestarter suddenly slowed under the simulated damage.

  Frost swung around, satisfied that he had injured Drewery enough to keep him away for a while. He ran around the base of a massive hill and fired a cutting swath of laser fire at a fast-moving Zibler strike tank. The lasers were powered down, but it was hard to tell just by looking at them. The bursts of emerald energy seemed just as menacing as if they were at full power. One shot missed the offset turret, but the other beam found its mark, registering as a solid hit. The Zibler fired back. Its dummy autocannon rounds hit Roderick’s Rifleman in the right leg, leaving a stream of white marks from the foot actuator up to the thigh.

  His battle computer registered real damage, and even shook the Rifleman IIC as the shells landed, to mimic real hits. His secondary display flickered for a moment, indicating the simulated damage. It wasn’t too bad. He angled down the hill and spotted a Po tank, one of his team in the sim, firing a blast at the Firestarter he had winged earlier. The damaged ’Mech weathered the attack and returned fire, sending the Po scampering for some distance between them.

  We are at least holding our position. The circle of hills was the objective. His force, roughly a company in strength, was supposed to hold it. Trace Decker and Jamie Kroff, with a somewhat heavier assault team, were trying to take the position.

  Roderick had been running simulated battles for weeks now, honing the skills of his new unit and learning their strengths and weaknesses. Because he had known Trace for so long, he could anticipate his tactics. Trace had patience—a trait Roderick admired and admitted that sometimes he lacked. Leutnant Kroff, however, did not hold back. Even her BattleMech, a modified Violator, was geared for close-in fighting. The massive claw hand and mounted anti-’Mech drilling bore were made for ripping apart enemy ’Mechs and vehicles. It typified her personal style—in your face. There was a bet in the company that the name she had given her ’Mech was obscene, and the odds were two to one favoring it.

  So far his officers were proving themselves true to form. Decker was holding back, providing long-distance covering fire to allow Kroff to move up and do her dirty work. She had pounced on Leutnant Lasalle’s Shadowhawk and taken it out of the fight. Even in a simulated combat, close combat assaults were dangerous for the MechWarriors. Lasalle was fine, but she complained that Kroff had been too aggressive.

  Nothing new there. He grinned to himself. At the moment, Roderick was counting on her aggressive nature.

  “Sir, we have incoming bogies crossing the inner marker. Savage One is in the lead,” came the voice of one of the infantry squads on his command channel. Savage One—that was Kroff. He checked his chronometer; she was a little later than expected, but other than that she had matched his predictions.

  “All units,” he said in a clear voice as he started up the hill. A burst from the Zibler chased him but fell short. “I’m taking the high ground. Slow down Leutnant Kroff as she approaches, then scatter.” He kept his ’Mech trotting up the slope but twisted at the waist. The ’Mech’s center of gravity shifted, but he leaned uphill to compensate. Not even waiting for the tone, he fired down a burst at the Zibler. This time, the autocannon rounds finished off the hovertank. It powered down immediately as the battle computers logged the damage.

  When he reached the crest of the hill, he spotted Kroff’s force coming up the opposite side, straight at him. Locking his lasers on target, he unleashed a stream of green laser light down at her. Both weapons found their mark, and he could feel the cockpit heat rise as the systems attempted to simulate the heat of running and battle. Roderick shrugged it off. Hitting Kroff was the plan. It would piss her off.

  One of her vehicles on her flank, a Ranger, went down. A Dasher II on the other flank turned to engage his infantry at the base of the hill. This was boiling down to her and him. Good.

  The Rifleman IIC’s load-lights flickered green, indicating another autocannon barrage was ready. He leaned out over the crest of the grassy hill and fired as Kroff let loose with her short-range missiles. She was prepared too, apparently. The impact of the missiles caused him to miss with the left arm shot, but the right arm found its mark, hitting her leg with white smoke-powder bursts. Her Violator didn’t slow. It came straight at him.

  “You’re going down, sir,” she said as he backed up. “I lost the last three exercises to you. Not this time.” To emphasize her point she throttled power to her Violator’s drill. It whirred menacingly at him as she took a step forward.

  Roderick signaled his own unit. “Fire for effect on target Alpha One.”

  She closed the gap at the top of the flattened hill to almost within striking distance when suddenly puffs of white went off everywhere around the two of them. Artillery. His artillery. His battle computer recorded damage as he backed the Rifleman away from her. Kroff lunged her Violator forward as she realized that the barrage was coming down on both of them. Their battle computers logged the damage as the top of the hill was enveloped in white.

  He heard her ’Mech but couldn’t see it. His sensors told him the story. Things had gone just as planned. “Cease fire,” he ordered. It took two minutes for the marking powder to clear enough for him to see the Violator lying flat on its front torso in front of him. It had shut down as she leapt at him.

  “Are you okay, Leutnant?”

  “You stinking bastard,” she replied. “You dropped artillery on both of us.”

  Roderick felt pretty proud, made even happier by the fact that he was making her mad by winning the simulation. “I knew I was piloting a heavier ’Mech and that you were coming in fast, taking damage all along the way. I assumed Trace would hold back a little and give you cover. When the artillery came down, I knew you’d drop and I’d still be functioning.” He glanced at his secondary display and saw that his Rifleman IIC was in pretty bad shape after the assault, but still able to engage in limited battle.

  “Damn it,” she spat. “No one would bring down an artillery barrage on themselves.”

  “Apparently they would. And watch the language,” he replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “
That’s your lesson. Don’t underestimate the enemy. Also, you and Trace have become predictable in your fighting styles. It allowed me to adapt and lay a trap designed to beat the both of you.”

  She struggled, rocking the Violator until she could turn over and stand upright. White powder covered the BattleMech. “Let me guess, we go to the debriefing room. . . .”

  Roderick grinned. “I didn’t beat you, Leutnant. You beat yourself. Learn the lesson and walk away.” Kroff was an angry woman, angry and bitter. He didn’t know why and didn’t want to know. Her record showed that her gunnery skills were among the best in the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces. But if she didn’t learn to think things through more clearly, she ran the risk of being just another casualty of war.

  He looked out of his cockpit and caught a glimmer on a nearby hilltop. Trill. She was watching . . . again. Frost was tempted to wave the arm of his old Rifleman IIC at her, just to let her know that he knew she was there. I’ve got work to do. Time to see if anyone learned anything out here today. “Sword One to all units,” he said on the open channel. “We will meet in the debriefing room in one hour.”

  Trillian lowered her binoculars and looked at Klaus Wehner, who stood next to her. “That was an impressive ending,” she commented. She could see from Klaus’ squinted eyes that he was not just studying the battle, but wishing he was in it. It has to be hard forhim. He’s trained for war, but he’s on the sidelines with me.

  “Roderick has done an impressive job of turning this band of misfits into a fighting force. Individually, they’re good. He’s actually getting them to work together, which is what might keep them alive . . . if they ever see action.” Wehner did not lift his gaze from Frost’s unit.

  “I know that some of the upper command staff think this unit will only be used for garrison duty,” she replied. “They’re wrong. Roderick reports directly to me and you will have to trust me that when the time is right, they will be deployed on the front lines. It’s a matter of waiting for the right opportunity.”

  “Perhaps we should consider sending them in to assist in the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth,” Klaus said. “It feels like things are bogging down there. General Nordhoff is competent, but he continues to face more resistance than we expected.”

  “The Silver Hawk Irregulars?”

  A nod. “Hauptmann Frost was right in his analysis. I took his observations to the intelligence staff, and they had already arrived at the same conclusion. Anson Marik is using the Irregulars as a morale-building force. They are helping him hold together his kingdom. Even on occupied worlds where we have moved in garrison troops, there are rumors and stories of the Silver Hawks on-world, hiding, striking. Most of the resistance movements that have surfaced have adopted the Silver Hawks as their unit, allowing people to believe that the Marik-Stewart government hasn’t abandoned them.”

  “Roderick nailed it, then. We’re fighting an idea, here.”

  “And an idea is a hard thing to kill.”

  Trillian paused for a moment. “The thing that bothers me is that Anson seems to have elements of the Irregulars poised on every world we strike, even if they only fight and flee. They seem to know what worlds we are going to hit and seem very prepared to meet us.”

  Klaus crossed his arms in thought. “Lyran Intelligence Corps believes that the amount of preparedness the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth has demonstrated, especially in comparison to the Duchy, indicates an inside source.”

  “SAFE?”

  “The latest thinking is that they are somehow getting advance knowledge of our plans.”

  Trillian said nothing for a moment, instead letting her eyes follow Roderick’s force as it departed. SAFE, within the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces? To get a full copy of the invasion plans, a spy would have to be highly placed. SAFE had always been a threat, but a comparatively minor one. If Anson had managed to place or subvert someone on the inside, the security compromise would have far-reaching implications.

  For years SAFE had been fragmented, with each of the Free Worlds kingdoms maintaining its own unit. The Free Worlds had lacked a cohesive intelligence-gathering network since the Jihad, when the League had been ripped apart from within and without. There had been talk that SAFE was once again sharing intelligence, but that appeared to not be the case. Anson has hung the Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey out to dry. Typical Free Worlder thinking. If they ever stop trying to screw over each other, we will be in deep trouble.

  “What do our counterintelligence people say?”

  Klaus’ eyebrows rose, indicating to Trillian that he did not agree with what he was going to say. “They have shared their plans with me. They want to root out this spy and remove him immediately. As part of that effort, they recommend a series of minor changes in target worlds and LZs. They will filter these changes through different channels. Then—if they are acted on—they will be better able to determine who saw them and passed on the word.”

  “Does Duke Vedet know about this?”

  “No, milady, I don’t believe so.”

  She could see that he was puzzled by the question. Good. She liked catching him off guard. Klaus was a brilliant officer and it pleased her to be able to surprise him occasionally. “Don’t let him know. Send on the orders for him to make changes to target worlds, but don’t pass on our suspicions.”

  “May I ask why?”

  She grinned. “What if the traitor, this mysterious spy, is someone on his staff? Even better, what if it is him, playing some game we haven’t figured out yet? I’d rather not tip my hand until I have more facts. If we could pin this spy on him or his people, it would erode any political capital he’s gained leading this invasion. Play it right, and people will want him strung up as a traitor.”

  Klaus smiled slowly but broadly. “Excellent plan. If you would like, I can personally have myself inserted into the counterintelligence team looking for this agent. Doing so could give us that information long before anyone else who might tip off the guilty party—or the duke.”

  “Good idea,” she replied. “War is hard enough when the enemy doesn’t know what you are up to. If there is a spy, then SAFE has pulled off something they’ve been trying to do for centuries. If we can learn who that agent is, we can turn that to our advantage. Our counterintelligence operatives will want to move quickly and contain the damage. We might be able to use a spy like this to our advantage.” Properly controlled, an agent could feed the incorrect information at the right time to cause a total disaster.

  “Well played, milady,” Wehner replied.

  "Now all that’s left is to win this war, which means winning the peace."

  11

  Banja Luka Lowlands

  Bondurant, Marik-Stewart Commonwealth

  27 September 3137

  General Bernard Nordhoff’s Xanthos stalked past the cluster of conifers and he gazed out into the dense forests. A jagged piece of damaged armor on the rear right leg of his four-legged ’Mech caught on a tree and tore loose one of the branches, snapping back the entire tree with incredible force. As it was with every other living thing on Bondurant, Bernard didn’t care if the tree was damaged. He hated this world. It was bleeding him and his troops dry.

  Things had been going from bad to worse for the last three weeks. A shower would be nice. Hell, he just wished he could rub his eyes, but he couldn’t afford to take off his neurohelmet. Letting down his guard already had cost him far too much. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, and every muscle ached.

  Damn you, Anson Marik. Damn your Silver Hawk Irregulars!

  He knew that cursing his enemy didn’t help. But he was mad about their success, and mad about his own failures. It had been like fighting ghosts every time he had tried to engage the Irregulars since the start of this war. Twice before landing on Bondurant, they had hit him hard and managed to get away with minimal losses. Twice they had relinquished the planet, and then the local population had taken up the banner and raised hell for the garrison forces.

/>   He had sworn to turn things around on Bondurant, and at first he thought he had. He had landed in the middle of the rainy season, and had changed his landing zone at the last moment to negate any preparations the Irregulars might have planned. His aerospace elements had confirmed that the Irregulars had been indeed dug in around the original LZ. The LIC had been right; someone had inside information and was feeding it to the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth. This time he had foiled their plans. I can’t wait until Loki gets its hands on whoever is giving Anson his information. Loki, the LIC’s elite secret police and espionage branch, had subtle and deadly methods.

  Whoever was commanding the Silver Hawk Irregulars was good. They abandoned their positions as soon as they realized they had been exposed and moved more rapidly than anyone had anticipated—anyone except General Nordhoff.

  Bernard had gone after the Irregulars with a speed that had to have shocked them. The Irregulars broke off and appeared to be heading into the swamps of the Banja Luka Lowlands, driving toward the distant plains where his aerospace elements had detected their DropShips. His countermove had seemed perfect: he planned to use two highways through the forest to take both flanks, driving into the swamps to cut off the Irregulars before they could execute their standard modus operandi of striking and fleeing.

  True to form, the Silver Hawk Irregulars immediately changed their tactics. Rather than fleeing, they turned on his troops. The three companies of the local militia linked up with the Irregulars, giving them a more vicious bite. Naturally, the local troops knew the swamplands of Banja Luka better than his scouts ever could. Hastily laid vibramines shattered the legs of a half dozen of his BattleMechs. Ambushes and lightning-quick night assaults wore at everyone’s nerves. The moment that had offered the potential for a rout of the Irregulars had disappeared, and once again the Lyrans were mired in a bitter struggle.