BattleTech : Mechwarrior - Dark Age 02 - A Call to Arms (2003)

by Loren L. Coleman

  Its companion 'Mech, having cut in jumpjets to sail over the Tribune, altered trajectory and landed between two APCs, one of which it overturned with a vicious point-blank PPC blast and the second with a well-placed kick.

  The militia infantry was doing its part, providing a scattering of small, hard-to-hit targets. Raul saw two Hauberk squads sacrifice themselves in an assault against the Steel Wolves' ConstructionMech so that a Cavalier Specialist troop could seize and take control of the Mod.

  "Two!" Colonel Blaire called out over the officers' channel. Two 'Mechs in as many minutes.

  And then in the next moment, the militia lost their final WorkMech Mod to the Swordsworn front.

  Still, "About even," he judged.

  Raul nodded. "Now let's see if we can't finally tip things our way for once." He tied in a frequency routinely used by Customs Security. "Palos, is everything set?"

  CSO Palos Montgomery jumped right in. "All set, Captain."

  "Do it," Raul said.

  A longer order wasn't needed. Alarms wailed for attention, and Raul managed only half a turn before Star Colonel Torrent finally caught up to him with full weapons blazing. A series of lasers, one large, blood red lance and four smaller, scarlet arrows, splashed away armor from all along Raul's right side. Missiles exploded in a series of thunderclap detonations, walking up the Jupiter's tall form, blossoming fireballs at the knees, waist, chest, and then finally slamming two short-range missiles into the BattleMech's head.

  Ferroglass squealed, fractured, and then burst inward as flaws and stresses finally gave way to the concussive warhead. Shards sprayed and struck Raul along the side of his neck and chest. One hand slipped from the Jupiter's controls and the towering leviathan toppled off to its right side, surrendering itself to gravity and the tarmac's rough embrace.

  Raul had a split second to remember his promise to Jessica that he'd come through the battle safe and whole.

  Then he didn't even have that as the cockpit slammed forward and darkness swam over him.

  27 - Serving Achernar

  River's End/San Marino Spaceport

  Achernar

  18 March 3133

  The wire-frame damage schematic of Erik's Hatchetman showed critical armor loss down the entire left side. Back on his feet now, he blasted several hundred rounds of eighty-mil into a nearby Steel Wolf Condor and continued his backward retreat to the city's edge. He considered calling up the reserve force he had left guarding the HPG station, but then decided to hold them back as his final ace.

  "Here they come again!" his remaining Mod pilot warned.

  Running in pack formation, the five armored hovercraft bent around to continue their saber- dance tactics. Led by one of the deadly SM1 Destroyers, flanked by two Condors and another pair of JES tactical carriers, they would slice in at an angle, burn off a salvo of autocannon, lasers and missiles, and then turn out again to slip away before any concerted effort could be made against them.

  Not this time.

  "Grady, get in their way." Erik ordered the MinerMech forward. "Stall them."

  Then he cut in his jumpjets, venting plasma down into the Hatchetman's Luxor reaction chambers and burning skyward on glowing jets. The Hatchetman arced up in a short hop, falling just short of the SM1 while the gray and black Miner rolled forward on the far side to try and force a stand.

  Just a little too late, Erik was forced to turn against one of the trailing Condors rather than taking a swing at the lead vehicle. His titanium hatchet cut down, smashing into the front of the hovercraft and forcing a stall.

  With the glider's momentum arrested, Erik trained in an autocannon and ripped several long stripes of hot metal into the Condor's ruined front. He saw blood spatter over the interior cockpit ferroglass as his cannon tore holes through the forward shield and riddled the crewmen inside.

  He would not be allowed to enjoy his brief victory, however.

  The SM1, showing a veteran's touch on the controls, swung around the backside of Grady's MinerMech. Running forward on momentum alone, the Destroyer banked and cut its drive fan, rotating in a free-powered turn and using its assault-class weapon to show Erik exactly what an autocannon could do. A firestorm of flame and lethal metal burst from the twelve-centimeter bore, blasting into the Miner's lower back and erupting out the front in a gut-coring strike that left the Miner dead on its feet.

  With a kind of slow grace, the six-meter tall machine drifted to one side, then toppled over to lay still.

  Permanently.

  A pair of JES carriers rained several score missiles over the retreating SM1, but it sailed out from under most of the damage and then powered after its three remaining lancemates.

  "We can't compete," Erik spoke aloud, but mostly to himself. Not spread out in a skirmish line, waiting to be picked off by the deadly Destroyer. "Fall back," he ordered. "Regroup, regroup!"

  No sooner was the order given than a new crisis erupted over the communication net. "Station guard, station guard. We are under attack."

  Erik stabbed at the comm panel, toggling for his reserve frequency. "Who is attacking?" he shouted. Who was left, not already involved at the spaceport battlefield?

  "Sir . . . sir. Mix of infantry emplacements in the facing buildings. More on the roof. Armored tanks-militia vehicles, lord-have seized the intersection. Legionnaire! BattleMech on the grounds!"

  Reading his HUD, Erik counted only one Legionnaire, and that one at the far side of the fighting from his position. "Where did it go? What happened to the Legionnaire we chased out of the city?"

  Caught up against the pressing Steel Wolves, he had made the dangerous assumption that it had finally fallen in battle.

  His Behemoth driver-now the ranking second-officer on the field-answered. "Blasted the hell out of our Praetorian and escaped back into the city, Lord Sandoval. While you recovered."

  Erik had seen the battle-damaged Praetorian still moving in the backfield, but there had been no transmissions and he had written that off to Eus not really knowing what to say in the midst of such a heavy-scale fight. Thirty seconds. Maybe sixty. That was as long as Erik had been distracted, picking himself up after the fall.

  Fortunes changed that quickly in battle.

  Ortega. It could only be Ortega.

  He spent several more critical moments trying to disengage, moving back for the city's edge. A pair of Steel Wolf Destroyers cruised in, forcing him back, and then a lone Condor delayed him in a sacrificial run that eventually traded itself for one of the Swordsworn Marksmen.

  Finally, turning for the city's edge and throttling up to the Hatchetman's full running speed, Erik gazed over some of the large industrial centers nearby at the top crescent of the HPG compound's titanic dish. If he moved quickly, sent his faster hovercraft ahead and left the Behemoth on guard at their backs . .

  A solid plan-it might have worked.

  It all fell apart as the first eruption of fire and smoke rose up into the sky, climbing the HPG superstructure.

  "Stone's blood!" someone swore. "Was that . . ."

  . . . the spoilsport charges Erik's people had rigged to the HPG equipment.

  Another series of explosions blossomed on the antenna's upper structure, and lazy swirls of dark gray smoke rose from all around the neighborhood. As easily as that, the entire Swordsworn position had been rendered moot. Erik throttled down to a slow walk, shaking his head at the militia's stupidity. They hadn't left things well enough alone, and now what had they wrought? He sat back hard against his command couch and read his future in the black, thickening air.

  A future that would no longer include Achernar.

  River's End/San Marino Spaceport

  Achernar

  Lost!

  Star Colonel Torrent stared over the battle scene at the pall of angry smoke hanging over the southeast industrial sector of River's End. Through the haze a lick of tall flames could be seen, running up a red-orange flag of defeat next to the charred and scarred HPG dish. Everything t
he Steel Wolves had fought for, all that he personally had challenged to accomplish, ended in just a few short seconds of treachery.

  No victory. No honor.

  He rounded his Tundra Wolf against the rising Jupiter, white-knuckle hands gripping the control sticks. The Jupiter regained a shaky footing and teetered in place. "Your doing! Like a jackal vomiting over what it cannot eat, you would deny the prize to the victor."

  "It was never about a prize," Ortega said, his voice shaky but growing in strength. "This was about Achernar. If you didn't see it that way, it's no fault of mine."

  With each use of debased language, Torrent's rage doubled. He felt a flush of crimson warmth on his face, the tremble of anger in his muscles. "So you expect us to simply leave?"

  "There's nothing for you here anymore, Star Colonel."

  Torrent smiled, thin and cruel. If the militia Mech Warrior had seen it, the star colonel felt certain he would have cowered away. Deactivating his targeting system to prevent any warning, Torrent pulled dark crosshairs across the Jupiter, aiming by dead reckoning

  "There is still you," he said, then toggled on full targeting and pulled into his triggers.

  River's End/San Marino

  Achernar

  In between his shaky dialog with Star Colonel Torrent, Raul muted his voice-activated mic and coughed, clearing his lungs of acrid smoke. The taste of burnt plastic coated his mouth and his tongue felt thick and swollen from dehydration. A stabbing pain had lanced into his right shoulder with every movement until he managed to pull from it a long ferroglass shard, dagger-shaped and bloody. The wound bled slowly, trickling red paths down his bare arm.

  Another minute, Raul asked silently. Keep him talking.

  Four hundred meters off of the Tundra Wolf's left side, one of the lowered DropShip landing pads flashed warning lights as massive machinery warmed to life and raised the platform. For the service-tunnel workers to choose that moment for a test, or to pop their heads outside for a look, would be too much of a coincidence for Torrent. It might warn him that something else was afoot.

  Not to worry. The Star Colonel had eyes only for the Jupiter.

  Raul couldn't say for certain what had warned him of the impending attack. A shift in the Tundra Wolf's stance, or the malice that bred in Torrent's voice the longer they talked. At the last moment he ducked Jove to the right, protecting the shattered side of his cockpit's transparent shield, and leaned forward into the brunt of the assault.

  Missiles chewed away at his legs, cracking apart welded seams and clawing through for myomer muscles and control circuitry.

  The Tundra Wolf's large laser cut at one arm, splashing armor into a dark, molten mist, and a trio of smaller lasers stabbed into his chest and left shoulder.

  Only Jove's impressive armor had kept Raul alive for so long, allowing him to wade through some of the heaviest fighting of the day, protecting him while he learned both the subtle and not-so- subtle nuances of fighting such a massive war avatar. It protected him again now, although the wire- frame darkened to black in several areas, warning Raul of thinning reserves.

  Kicking the Jupiter into an unsteady walk, Raul shied away from the raising platform and drew Torrent after him. His PPCs answered the star colonel's missiles. Where Torrent relied on lasers, Raul chopped back with his two fifty-mil autocannon.

  His heat scale rose steadily as the fusion reactor pumped out joules of energy to drive the BattleMech and power all weapons. As it edged into the red band, a fresh scent of ozone and scorched insulation wafted through the cockpit and Raul breathed with difficulty. Sweat poured off his brow, beaded and ran on his bared legs and arms. On his right, the runnels of sweat mixed with blood, thinned it, and spread the stain further down his arm.

  Alternating his PPCs now, Raul blasted more armor away from Torrent's chest. Deep inside one rent sparked the golden fury of a BattleMech's fusion fire. Dark, dry smoke roiled out of the wound.

  Torrent ignored it, shaving more plating from Jove's already-weak legs and lower torso.

  On the MechWarrior's HUD, his computer painted several new icons. Over the Tundra Wolf's shoulder, Raul saw machines rise above the surface of the landing field: WorkMechs, a half-dozen of them, loaders, mostly, and one ConstructionMech. They displayed no targeting emissions or other evidence of military modifications. These were regular machines, gathered up by Customs Officer Palos Montgomery and urged into battle for Achernar.

  "Target practice," Torrent said. "You think I do not see them, Ortega? They will be little else but a nuisance against my Steel Wolves."

  A new flight of tactical missiles slammed a heavy fist into Raul's gyro housing, cracking through armor and supports to throw a terrible, grinding into the stabilizer gearing. The Jupiter shuddered, swayed. Blinking through the burning haze of sweat-stung eyes, Raul ducked forward and shifted the BattleMech's feet into a wider stance. If he went over now, it was finished. There would be no getting back up, and Torrent's Tundra Wolf would tear through the IndustrialMechs without mercy.

  This time he kept to his feet.

  "You will never have your chance-at-them," Raul said, gritting his teeth against the heat waves and punctuating each of the last three words with weapons fire. PPC. Autocannon. PPC. One of the Tundra Wolf's arms fell to the ground, severed by a particle beam mid-humerus.

  Left arm. Torrent's quad of medium-grade lasers.

  Throttling into a forward walk, Raul now marched straight into the teeth of the Steel Wolf commander. "You arethrough on Achernar." Another particle cannon. This one carved a huge swath of blackened destruction across the other BattleMech's hip.

  Raul gasped for breath in the scorching air.

  Tactical missiles and large lasers smashed at the Jupiter. A long branch of pressure-cracked ferroglass squealed across the front face shield. Raul leaned forward again, his face within a meter of the worried shield, forcing Jove onward. Torrent cut loose with LRMs but misjudged his angle for a point-blank assault. Most of the missiles stuttered into the ground at the Jupiter's feet, geysering up blackened ferrocrete and throwing a veil of smoke over the lower half of the assault 'Mech.

  Raul kicked his way through the broken ground, drew flashing crosshairs over the Tundra Wolf 's left shoulder. The heat-addled circuitry could do no better than a partial lock. He clenched back both primary triggers regardless.

  "No more," he whispered.

  One of his PPCs gashed wide the Tundra Wolf's chest. Flames licked out and up the broad torso, wreathed the cockpit shield in a halo of fire.

  Slapping at the shutdown override, Raul stomped to a halt bare meters from the staggered Tundra Wolf. No other part of the battle registered, HUD forgotten. Nothing mattered but the 'Mech and MechWarrior in front of him. Stretching his arms forward, Raul set the autocannon barrels up against the chest of the Tundra Wolf. "Stand down, Star Colonel." It was over, and Raul breathed a quick exhale of relief. There was no compromise left in his voice, only a promise. Torrent surely heard it.

  Heard it, but did not care.

  The Steel Wolf commander, reaching for the brass ring right up until the end, shifted the Tundra Wolf's left arm over, planted it into the Jupiter's gut, and destroyed his own arm by firing his tactical missile system with the launcher in actual contact against Raul's gyroscope housing.

  The force of nine simultaneous detonations squeezed in between two BattleMechs actually lifted the hundred-ton assault 'Mech off the ground. No balancing act would save Raul from gravity's clutches this time. Hauling back on both control sticks, fingers tight on his triggers, Raul surrendered to the fall while pumping two hot streams of high-velocity metal into the Tundra Wolf's chest.

  The fall likely saved Raul's life.

  With feedback damage already spiking through the Tundra Wolf's power systems, Raul's fifty- millimeter autocannons tore through the last of the physical shielding and blasted apart the fusion engine's safeguard systems as well. Dampening fields cut out completely, releasing the fires that burned so po
werfully at the heart of every BattleMech.

  The fusion reaction expanded, gobbled up myomer, armor, and titanium skeletal structure as fuel. A column of golden fire burned up and through the cockpit. Then the engine burst free completely in a violent explosion of golden fire, flattening a nearby LoaderMech, picking up a Scimitar and throwing it through the air like a child's plaything.

  The force grabbed at Raul's Jupiter, twisted it about on the ground, but otherwise washed over it in a wave of destructive fire that did little more than finish flash-burning the paint from Jove's front.

  Then silence descended.

  Silence, or Raul had gone deaf with the titanic thunderclap. Inventorying his limbs and checking his teeth with a rough-coated tongue, the MechWarrior rolled his 'Mech onto its side and then to its chest, propping himself up with one arm to better see the stunned field.

  And looked into the wide-bore port of an SM1's assault cannon.

  The battle did continue in several isolated patches. The Swordsworn still fought a holding action at the city's edge, protecting themselves from a small cordon of Steel Wolf treaded tanks and advancing infantry. Palos Montgomery and a trio of LoaderMechs shuffled into a loose circle around a Demon, hydraulic pincers grabbing and tearing. Diago was still alive and fighting as well, matching off in the distance with a Steel Wolf catapult.

  But near Raul and the metal carcass that had been the Steel Wolf commander's BattleMech, everyone waited to see what would happen now between the Jupiter and the Destroyer.

  "If you are going to shoot," Raul croaked, his voice breaking on almost every word, "do it now or quit wasting my time."

  Several painful heartbeats passed before an answer came. "I am Star Captain Nikola Demos. I claim you as bondsman."

  "No," Raul told her, shocked that she would even think of such a thing after losing her commander. "You've won nothing here."

  "The Steel Wolves . . . my . . .my Steel Wolves still control the spaceport."

  "Keep it," Raul told her. "Run the damn thing if you want. But there will be no occupation of River's End and there is no HPG station to fight over any longer." He coughed, trying to ease the burning itch at the back of his throat. "Pick up your dead and injured, and allow us to do the same, and tomorrow we can do this all over again or maybe-maybe-we can bargain for an honorable withdrawal."