St. Agnan’s lance laid down a pattern of fire that caught the two Cicadas from behind and hurt them badly. Scarlet laser fire ripped through the aft armor of both ’Mechs, stabbing straight through. In the case of Berard’s target, the shots burst out through the cockpit. Both Cicadas crumpled to the ground, where they lay smoking.
Justin’s Valkyrie cut to the right as the heavy laser on the Rifleman’s left arm torched a black furrow through the meadow off to his left. It can’t continue to turn! he thought. The torso locks up after about forty degrees. If I can get into its rear arc, the weapons can’t track me!
Justin started running his Valkyrie to the right, grinning as his battle display showed him the lumbering Rifleman’s attempt to follow his movement. In the effort, the big ’Mech’s waist locked, so that it had to make an almost comical shuffle-step to continue turning.
Perfect, Justin told himself. Just a bit faster, and I’ll be in the clear. He grinned even wider and dropped his missile targeting crosshairs onto the Rifleman’s silhouette. He kept it there, despite the pounding, jarring strides that carried his ’Mech forward.
But wait. What is that pilot doing? Justin felt terror flash through his guts as the Rifleman stopped trying to track his Valkyrie. The larger machine stood rock-still for a moment, then twisted back in the other direction. As it did so, the Capellan ’Mech’s arms swung up toward the sky and back down to lock in the rear firing arc.
“No!” Justin twisted his Valkyrie violently to reorient it, and tried valiantly to fire the jump jets. These frantic efforts only managed to trip up the Valkyrie, and he had to fight hard to regain control of the falling ’Mech.
No! Not like this! Justin stabbed the Valkyrie’s medium laser out at the Rifleman, but the gesture was useless. The Rifleman, swinging its weapons into line with the Valkyrie, scythed laser fire through the ’Mech’s legs and ended Justin’s futile attempt at flight.
With the southern flank crushed, St. Omer, St. Agnan, and Montbard directed their lances at the Capellan center. The hellish crossfire sliced one Cicada to ribbons and drove the rest north. The northern wing withdrew quickly as the training battalion swept up toward it. After a savage exchange with St. Agnan’s lance, the Cicada pilots realized that the battle was lost and chose to save their ’Mechs.
De Mesnil’s gravelly voice crackled over the radio. “They’re backing away, Leftenant.”
Redburn looked at his magscan image and concurred with de Mesnil’s assessment of the battle. “Let them run, cadets. We couldn’t catch them if we wanted to.” He watched the enemy ’Mechs flee and shook his head as his computer reported their running speed at better than 120 kph. Damn, they’re fast, he thought, then shivered as his body burned the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream.
He flipped a switch on his console that instantly put his sergeant and corporals on a command frequency. “Report.”
“De Mesnil here. All pilots alive, but Bisot and Montvalle both have leg damage. St. John lost his medium laser.”
“St. Omer here, Leftenant. William Chartres is dead and his Stinger is gone. Minor damage otherwise. Everyone else stayed calm.”
Redburn nodded and looked out toward the smoking, riddled ruin of Chartres’s ’Mech. A damn shame. “Very well. St. Agnan?”
“Yes, sir.” St. Agnan’s voice came in sharp snippets of words. “I’m the only one who got tagged here, sir. Cockpit breached, and I think I have some busted ribs. Torroges lost an arm actuator, but it’s been bad for a while.”
“Archie, pop your canopy so Gil Erail can get in and see what you look like.” Redburn turned his attention to Montdidier’s lance. “Payen, report.”
It took Payen Montdidier a moment to collect himself. Even then, his voice almost broke. “Sonnac and Vichiers are dead, sir. Bures’s ’Mech has no legs, and Berard’s ’Mech is lost. He ejected, though, and got away fine.”
Montbard and de Payens both reported their lances were virtually intact, though de Payens said Craon wanted to know why such things never happened to anyone else running shepherd.
“Tell him it builds character,” Redburn laughed, and his staff joined him. “Major Allard, how about you?”
There was no answer until De Mesnil’s voice filled the silence. “I never saw him come back into the battle, Leftenant.”
“De Mesnil, organize this rabble. De Payens, Montbard, form up your lances on me.” Hoping the fear in his stomach would find nothing to feed it, Redburn trotted his Spider up over the hill. No, God! Not the major! The smoke rising from the burning trees sent a tremor of dread through him. Why does it have to look like a funeral pyre?
Justin Allard’s shattered ’Mech lay on its back. Heavy laser fire had hacked off its legs and reduced them to an armored puddle. The missile autoloader clicked as it attempted to feed a long-since exhausted supply of missiles into the fire-blackened ruins of the launch tubes. The right arm laser had melted clean away, and autocannon shells had ripped off the ’Mech’s left arm at the shoulder.
Andrew Redburn and Robert Craon both scrambled over the ’Mech’s torso, heedless of hot armor and the sparking wires of exposed mechanisms. They clambered toward the ’Mech’s shattered face, then stopped short, suddenly afraid of what might be behind the jagged holes blasted through the canopy.
Redburn knew it was going to be bad. In anger and frustration, he kicked away some of the spider-webbed glass. Carefully listening for any clue to what the darkened cockpit concealed, he lowered himself into the Valkyrie. When Craon hesitated, he motioned impatiently for the cadet to follow him. The cadet bleated a strangled cry as he bent down before the ’Mech’s command chair.
Redburn looked up from where he pressed two fingers to Justin’s bloody throat. “He’s alive, Craon, and he’ll stay that way if we get some evac help in here fast.”
All color had drained from the cadet’s face, and he refused to meet Redburn’s gaze. “Do you think we ought to, sir?”
Redburn’s head snapped around as though he’d been punched. “Are you suggesting that ‘a good Capellan is a dead one?’”
Craon’s jaw dropped open, and horror showed in his wide blue eyes, “Oh God, no, sir.”
Redburn’s brows furrowed together with fury. “Then what the hell are you talking about? Of course we save him.”
“But, sir,” Craon pleaded, pointing down at the Major. “His arm…”
Redburn leaned forward and looked beyond the tangle of wires and console components that hid the left side of Justin Allard from his view. He swallowed hard and rolled back on his haunches in a crunch of broken glass and debris. “Blake’s Blood,” he whispered, not even realizing that he spoke. Craon was probably right. It would have been better for Allard if he’d died.
Staring down, Craon nodded like a robot. “His arm, from the elbow down, sir. It’s gone, it’s just gone…”
Chapter 3
PACIFICA (CHARA III)
ISLE OF SKYE
LYRAN COMMONWEALTH
15 JANUARY 3027
“I don’t like it, Captain.” Eddie Baker’s quiet voice crackled past the storm-generated static in bits and pieces. Captain Daniel Allard of the Kell Hounds mercenary unit turned his Valkyrie’s head far enough to watch Baker’s ungainly Jenner waddle out of the river. “The storm’s catching up with us fast. I don’t fancy being out here in this walking lightning rod.”
Lieutenant Austin Brand, his humanoid Commando following Baker’s Jenner out of the river, laughed. “If you had a ’Mech with arms, Baker, you could swat those lightning bolts out of the air like the rest of us.”
Baker, an ex-tech who had been given the captured ’Mech as a reward for years of service, grunted in disagreement. “Just more actuators to go out.”
“Can the chatter, children,” Dan said, smiling. Ease up on them. Their squabbles are just battle nerves, and you know it. This scout lance works together better than almost any other one you can name. “Let’s at least pretend to have some semblance of military or
der here, shall we?”
“Roger, Dan.”
Daniel Allard turned his Valkyrie’s head around to face forward, and headed off toward the Wasp waiting at the crest of the hill. “How does the storm look from up there, Meg?” he asked the Wasp pilot.
Sergeant Margaret Lang paused a moment before answering. “Doesn’t look that bad, Captain, but the flyboys are moving their fighters inside. Must look nasty on the satellite pictures.”
Dan sighed. “All right. Let’s move it and get under cover. Old Stormy is living up to her name. Brand, you and I are already late for the staff meeting. This patrol is over.”
“I wish the same could be said of this tour,” Baker told him.
Daniel Allard laughed. Baker’s right. This is a miserable world for pulling garrison duty. “Eddie, I’m sure if I express your dissatisfaction to Colonel Kell, he’ll pull some strings and get us posted elsewhere.”
“No, Dan, that’s all right. I could actually come to like Pacifica.”
Dan’s laughter filled his own neurohelmet. “You’d be the only person in the Successor States to develop that sort of affection for this world.”
Chara III, a large, moonless planet in Steiner space, had proved to be one of the most contradictory places in the Inner Sphere. On one hand, the fertile soil readily accepted hybrid plants and produced fruit abundantly. The world had enough water to make it a natural paradise and to warrant garrisoning a full battalion outside the major agricultural center at Starpad. Having arrived on a placid day, the first explorer of its surface had been inspired to name the planet Pacifica.
Yet anyone who spent any time here began to wonder about the peacefulness implied in the world’s name. Being a large body and lacking a moon, Pacifica rotated every fourteen TST hours. TST, or Terran Synchronized Time, related the time on any world to a traditional, twenty-four-hour clock set to the rising and setting of the local sun or suns. The twenty-four-hour clock divided the local day into twenty-four equal periods, with 1200 hours corresponding to local noon. A TST “hour” was, therefore, variable. Depending on a world’s actual rotation, a TST hour might be much shorter than a standard, or “metric,” hour. Pacifica’s fast spin gave it a thirty-five-minute hour as well as an unpredictable weather situation. Sudden, unexpected rain or thunderstorms were common. As many of the colonists put it, “If you don’t like the weather here, just wait a minute and it’ll change.”
Dan worked his Valkyrie up the muddy hillside, following the tracks made by Lang’s Wasp. When the Kell Hounds headquarters came into view, he smiled. Almost home.
Far ahead of him, Lang’s Wasp ducked into the huge blockhouse in between the Shilone and Slayer fighters being pushed into the building. Meanwhile, the dark clouds ringing the horizon had slowly begun to drift in toward the base. To the south, beyond the blockhouse, the two barracks, and the command center, searing white lightning slashed down from distant black clouds. It took a long time for the echoes of thunder to reach the Valkyrie’s audio sensors, but Dan could see the storm boiling in swiftly. Bad omen, a storm like this. Justin always used to cite one old Capellan superstition that these storms were demons riding the clouds looking for souls to eat. Dan involuntarily crossed himself.
Turning around, he watched Baker’s Jenner crest the hill. It looked ungainly without arms to balance it, and the nickname “Ugly Duckling” seemed more appropriate than ever. At thirty-five tons, the Jenner was the heaviest ’Mech in Allard’s scout lance and carried the most firepower. The four launch tubes for its short-range missiles, or SRMs, ran in a line between its shoulders. Its four medium lasers fired from stubby “wings” set just above the hip joints. The way the Jenner’s torso jutted forward might have been a laughable sight if its powerful weaponry had not so often turned the tide of a battle. The addition of jump jets meant that the ungainly-looking craft was actually capable of some agile moves in battle.
Compared to the Jenner, or most other ’Mechs, for that matter, the Commando following it up the hill was pure elegance. Humanoid in configuration, it carried no weapons in its open hands. Because of the camouflage patterns Brand had carefully painted on the ’Mech, the six SRM launch-tube openings in the Commando’s chest and the four on the ’Mech’s right wrist were barely visible. A thickness on the ’Mech’s left wrist betrayed the medium laser’s location, but most ’Mech pilots regarded the Commando as nothing more than a scout, despite its weaponry. Having seen Brand pilot his ’Mech in battle, however, Dan counted the Commando as more than capable in combat.
Its long legs eating up the distance in an awkward jog, the Jenner lumbered ahead of the other two ’Mechs. It reached the blockhouse just as the circle of storm clouds strangled the last of the sunlight and a light drizzle began to fall. Dan switched on his windscreen wipers. “You did well in the scouting run, Lieutenant. Scared the hell out of Baker when your SRM locked on to his left hip.”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” Brand’s self-satisfaction came across the radio, then trailed off as he became more serious. “Lang’s got to be more careful in that Wasp. With those SRMs, she’s got more firepower than in her Locust, but both machines still rely on a medium laser for their main power. She’s acting as though that monster makes her invulnerable.”
Dan found himself nodding in agreement. “I’ll have a talk with her. We could mention it to Colonel Kell, but I don’t think the problem is at that point yet. Do you?”
Lightning-sparked static popped through the open radio connection. “No,” Brand said, after a pause. “Maybe she’s just got to get used to the Wasp’s higher profile.”
Glad you see that, Austin. Dan gracefully stepped his thirty-ton Valkyrie around two bulldozers set at the edge of the makeshift spaceport. Meg’s bound to be angry with you because she thinks you cost her the Locust.
Out beyond the bulldozers, the Lugh, an Overlord-class DropShip, squatted like a gigantic Faberge egg full of lostech wonders. Behind it, as though crouching away from the rising storm’s fury, a smaller DropShip, the Leopard-class Manannan MacLir, rested on the cracked ferrocrete surface. More than enough to lift the entire Kell Hounds off Pacifica, both red and black craft were buttoned up tight in anticipation of the coming storm.
Dan trailed his Valkyrie in after Brand’s Commando and marched it over to the ’Mech cocoon alongside Meg Lang’s Wasp. He disconnected his neurohelmet, popped the canopy on his Valkyrie, and slid down the rope ladder just in time to hear the tail end of the tongue-lashing Meg was handing out to one of the techs.
“—I don’t give a damn if you think it’s impossible, Jackson. I know you can make that ’Mech more maneuverable! My Locust could run rings around this pile of junk!” Meg narrowed her brown eyes and brushed some strands of raven hair away from her face. “Fix it!”
Jackson, a mousy man with thick glasses, slammed his clipboard down on the ground. The papers on it exploded into a blizzard of multicolored forms, but that didn’t deflect the tech one bit. “This isn’t a Locust, Sergeant! I can’t make it do what a Locust can do. Period!” He looked over toward Allard, blushed, then dropped to his knees to gather up his clipboard and papers. “Sorry, Captain, for that display.”
Dan Allard, towering above both Lang and Jackson, shook his head. He raked thick fingers through his light-brown hair and plucked a sodden red sweatband from his brow. “No problem, Jackson,” he said. As another tech stooped to help Jackson with his papers, Dan turned to Margaret Lang and steered her away from the tech. “A word with you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw Brand waiting for him at the mouth of the tunnel to the command center. He waved his subordinate on ahead, then turned to Margaret Lang. “Sergeant, something’s eating at you, and it has nothing to do with that Wasp’s performance.” As he walked over to lean against the leg of a Thunderbolt, he waved her to a seat on the heavy ’Mech’s foot.
“Yes, sir.” Lang looked down at her boots and scratched at the sensor-pad stuck to her right thigh. “I
t’s—Lieutenant Brand, sir. I don’t know how to react around him.”
Dan frowned. I was afraid of this. But dammit, they work so well together. “Meg, I know Austin feels personally responsible for the fact that your Locust was destroyed. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but while you were in the hospital recovering from that broken leg, he pulled extra shifts and even went out with O’Cieran’s jump troops to track down the bandits who planted that vibrabomb mine that killed your ’Mech.”
Meg looked up into Dan’s blue eyes and suppressed a laugh. “He was out with the jump infantry?”
Dan nodded solemnly. “As absurd as it may seem. On top of that, when he learned that the bandits had gotten a Kurita Wasp from Combine agents provocateur, he talked Cat Wilson into trotting out his Marauder to get that ’Mech in a dawn raid on Cat’s day off.”
Meg’s jaw dropped open. “Cat got up before noon on a day he didn’t have to?”
“Yeah.” Dan squatted and pulled the helmet pad off his shoulders. “Brand’s really trying to make it up to you, Meg. Don’t you think it’s time to forgive him?”
Clearly puzzled, Meg frowned. “Forgive him? I think we’re not talking about quite the same thing, sir.”
Now Dan was confused, too. Sitting beside her, he leaned forward companionably, elbows on his knees. The things they never bothered to teach me at the New Avalon Military Academy… “Well, what are you talking about, then?”
Color rose to Meg’s cheeks, and a smile stole across her lips. “At least part of his off-time was spent with me in the infirmary,” she began. “Brand apologized over and over and promised to make it all up to me. He said he knew how much the Locust had meant to me, and that he really wanted to make amends.”
Warrior: En Garde (The Warrior Trilogy, Book One): BattleTech Legends, #57 Page 4
