Tactics of Duty

by William H. Keith

  "Laddy," he said cheerfully, drawing a .50 caliber Starfire, the handgun he favored as a sidearm. "After comin' all this way, I'll nae be turned away from m' ain home by rabble! Step aside, noo!"

  It might have been the small hand cannon McCall was holding, or it could have been something in the heavily accented voice. The young trooper started to speak, then shrugged and waved them through. "If that's the way you want it, fella. It's your funeral!"

  The soldier, Alex noted, was wearing the black and yellow livery of Caledonia's Home Guard, a militia regiment under the direct command of the planet's governor. As the two of them stepped through sliding doors and into the cool afternoon air outside, Alex commented about it to McCall. "That soldier back there."

  "Aye. They call them 'Blackjackets' here. Officious little so-and-so ..."

  "He didn't sound like you. No Scots burr."

  "Aye, y' noticed that, did ye? Not all Caledonians have the same rich command of th' language as th' auld families. Still, true enough, he sounded like an ootlander t' me. Imported, most likely."

  "Imported? By who?"

  "His majesty the governor, of course. The poor wee man has trouble findin' support among th' natives, noo, so he has t' send oot for hired help. Ah. Watch y'self noo, Alex. This could get interestin'."

  The spaceport rose from a flat plain on the outskirts of New Edinburgh, in a depressed-looking district of run-down housing, ramshackle warehouses and bulk storage centers, and manufactory facilities. Alex could see the silver-white ribbons of elevated highways rising above the slums and cheap, fabriplas constructs in the distance, but there were few groundcars in evidence. A subway station faced the entrance to the spaceport across a rubbish-littered park; a mob was issuing from the station doors and into the park's central plaza, some armed with clubs or improvised weapons, most unarmed. Numerous signs were visible above the angry, shouting heads. Alex saw several with the word MURDERERS! scrawled in red paint to mimic blood.

  "This way, lad," McCall said, nudging him with an elbow. His hands were full, one holding the pistol, the other his shipcase, but he managed to steer Alex nonetheless, leading him away from the street fronting the park and down a side alley running along the spaceport's perimeter fence. The crowd, growing second by second, continued to spill into the park, overflowing the plaza and occupying most of the bare ground that had once been grass beyond.

  One of the mob's leaders had sprung onto an improvised podium—the pedestal of a bronze statue rising from the plaza center. She was a young woman, Alex noted, with long brown hair held back from her face by a red headband. She wore plaid trews and a T-shirt with the clenched-fist emblem of the Steiners.

  "Citizens!" she called out, her voice amplified by some unseen sound system. "Caledonians! Our rights and our liberties hae been first trampled an' then taken away, until we are little better than slaves to Wilmarth an' his cronies!"

  Alex would have liked to hear more, but their path suddenly jinked left behind a warehouse, muffling the woman's voice to unintelligible booms and thumps from the amplifier bass circuits. The thunderous roar of approval as the crowd cheered something she'd said, however, still followed them clearly.

  "I would like t' hear wha' the lass has to say m'self," McCall told Alex as they hurried along the alley, "but I think it might be best if we not associate wi' the likes a' them the moment we set foot on th' planet."

  "I'm sure you're right." They took several more turns in rapid succession, weaving a confusing trail through a labyrinth of storage buildings. "Uh, you do know where we're going, Major, don't you?"

  "Lad, this place has seen no growth or new construction in years. I played in these alleyways as a bairn full fifty years ago, noo."

  "Really? My father said you were from a rich family here. And you were playing in alleys?"

  "Aye, that I was. I was a bit of a rebel, even then. Came doon here every chance I could t' watch th' DropShips come an' go. There was somethin' romantic aboot those great, round ships climbin' to th' stars on their pillars of white flame, back then. Here we are. Watch your head." He dragged back a loose section of chain-link fence, opening a narrow way through. Alex squeezed through into yet another alley, whose far end opened onto a dirty, trash-littered street.

  He could hear the troops coming long before he saw them.

  McCall had holstered the pistol and set down his bag. "Let's wait a bit, Alex," he said. "Look friendly and peaceful. A harmless tourist."

  They stood at the mouth of the alley as the armored column swept past, twelve open-topped hovercraft racing one after the other down the street on shrill, shrieking ducted fans. The wind howling from beneath their skirts set litter and trash in the street whirling, and pelted both men with showers of fine, air-blasted grit and cinders. The soldiers riding those troop carriers were black-armored, their faces invisible behind polarized helmet blast shields, but Alex could sense their incurious glances as they passed. Beside him, McCall grinned foolishly and waved.

  As the last troop carrier in line howled past, Alex was about to move into the street, but McCall touched his shoulder. "Wait, lad." Then Alex, too, heard what McCall had heard, a familiar and unmistakable hiss-wheeze-thump of machinery in motion.

  BattleMechs.

  The lead 'Mech was a Wasp, painted head to foot in the Home Guard's black and yellow colors. Despite the paint, the machine, Alex could plainly see, was not in particularly good shape. Large streaks of rust or corrosion had been merely painted over, and they showed through the paint now like patches of decay. Missing access panels revealed clusters of brightly colored wire or bundles of myomer, weak chinks in the 'Mech's armor.

  Still, even as a MechWarrior—especially as a Mech-Warrior—Alex had rarely been in a position to confront a potentially hostile 'Mech from this vantage point, unarmed and in the open as the machine towered above him. The Wasp was a twenty-tonner, standing eight meters tall—just over four times Alex's height. Though the machine was basically humanoid in design, the legs were longer than the rather squat torso; Alex would have had to stretch to reach up and touch its knee. The head, ridiculously tiny, haloed by its array of four Duotech comm antennas, mimicked human expression as it swung to scan the two humans standing at the side of the road. As the slit of its viewpoint swung to face them, Alex could see the neurohelmeted head of the pilot squeezed into the 'Mech's tiny cockpit. So cramped was the pilot's space in a Wasp that only his head and shoulders extended up out of the 'Mech's torso; the impression was more that of a man wearing a very large suit of armor than piloting a combat machine.

  With a ponderous clanking and the squeak-chirp of metal chafing metal, the Wasp strode past, following the hovercraft troop carriers. During the trip from Glengarry, McCall had used the DropShip's comm equipment to play a recording of the news broadcast he'd downloaded from the net. Alex wondered if this was the same Wasp that had stomped on that lone protester in Malcom Plaza.

  "Looks like they're headed for that park," Alex said.

  "Aye, lad. Y' dinnae often see BattleMechs used for crowd control."

  "Looked like a whole infantry battalion as well. Things must be pretty bad."

  "Aye, lad. An' gettin' worse. We go this way."

  Once they were clear of the area near the spaceport, New Edinburgh became less threatening, and less claustrophobic. The citizens in the streets seemed much the same as those of any other world Alex had visited. Perhaps a quarter of the men wore kilts displaying a variety of colorful tartans, while many of the women wore trews, loose-fitting slacks in patterns of plaid. There were no soldiers in evidence.

  Malcom Plaza was a much larger and better-kept park than the one near the spaceport, and it seemed peaceful enough at the moment. Nevertheless, Alex noticed several telltale signs of battle, the pockmark craters of bullet holes on a ferrocrete wall, and a thin brownish stain on the street not yet entirely washed or worn away. Beyond the plaza was the terminal for a monorail system, part of the same network as the subway near the spacepo
rt. Still lugging their baggage, Alex and McCall paid their fares, climbed aboard a waiting maglev transport, and within minutes were silently streaking through the heart of the city, past the encircling belts of manufactories and light industrial plants, and into the rolling green countryside beyond.

  "Pretty country," Alex said, leaning back in the maglev car's seat and staring at the scenery drifting past.

  "Aye, tha' it is."

  "Are you happy to be back?"

  "I might be," McCall admitted. "I would be in different circumstances, certainly. If we dinnae ha' that t' contend wi'." He pointed out the window. Turning, Alex saw the Citadel for the first time.

  It was a structure much like the Castle back on Glengarry, with architecture fairly typical of the early centuries of the Star League. It was hard to see details at this distance, but it hugged the top of a cliff overlooking the chrome and glass towers of New Edinburgh like some immense, carnivorous black cat crouching above its prey. Most of it looked like it had been carved and polished from a titanic block of obsidian, for it drank the light of Caledonia's yellow-orange sun without giving up a single reflection. Towers stretched skyward from the perimeter wall; once they had housed powerful sensor suites, planetary-defense beam projectors, and anti-DropShip weapons. Now, they most likely housed human sentries and observers, for on Caledonia, as on so many other worlds throughout the Inner Sphere, the relentless loss of all technologies over the past centuries of unrelenting warfare had inevitably forced a greater and greater reliance on human sensors rather than on electronics.

  "Quite a fortress," Alex said. "How do you get up there, anyway?"

  "Oh, there's a road, of sorts. Winds up through those hills below the main cliff."

  "Looks like it would be hard to attack."

  "Aye. Its designers had tha' in mind, no doubt. There's only one way in on the ground, and tha' across a stone bridge over a sheer drop of thirty meters or so. The outer walls are ferrocrete and twenty meters tall. Not tall enough, perhaps, to stop a 'Mech wi' jump jets, but there's aye precious few places ootside to boost from that are close enough for a 'Mech to make a controlled jump. The foundation of the thing is native bedrock, melted out a' the heart of that mountain. Mount Alba, we call it."

  "Alba. White?" The mountain was a dusky purple-gray even in full sunlight, and seemed darker beneath the black embrace of the Star League fortress.

  "Eh? Och, aye, you're thinkin' of th' Latin word albus. Nae, 'Alba' is an auld Gaelic word for 'Scotland.' Could hae' been from th' Latin originally, I suppose, but that was a long, long time ago."

  The maglev monorail swept through a shadow-dark patch of forest that blotted out the view of the Citadel. When it emerged into full light once more, they were already slowing for the town of Dundee.

  A rural town of low, crystal domes and organic buildings that looked more like they'd been grown than built, Dundee lay nestled along a bay on the Firth of Lorn, sheltered from Caledon's occasional coriolis storms by the gray-brown loom of the rugged Isle of Mull. The hills encircling the city to the north and west rose swiftly to saw-toothed peaks that were snowcapped throughout the world's entire year, and sunlight off the Nevian Glacier struck white fire from those slopes on any clear and sunny day.

  The McCall estates were in the hills to the northeast, overlooking both the town and the bay. A twenty-minute ride in a rented groundcar brought them to the ornate front gates.

  "Good lord, Major," Alex said as they pulled up, seeing nothing visible beyond the gate except woods and steeply sloping hills. "You gave up living here to become a mercenary?"

  "There were extenuatin' circumstances, Alex." McCall flashed a wry grin. "Besides, I always was a rebel."

  The elderly gatekeeper who came out to meet them wore civilian clothing, but the sash running from left shoulder to right hip gave him a distinctly military air despite his obvious years; the sash was woven in the rather severe red and black tartan of Clan McCall. Seeing the face of the man at the groundcar's control stick, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. "Young Davis!" he exclaimed. "You're back!"

  "Aye, Myles, I am. Are they expectin' me on th' hill, d'ye think? I dinnae call ahead when we grounded."

  "Not for a couple of weeks, a' least, sair. Ah know they got your transmission before y' left Glengarry, though. They was talkit aboot it an' little else for a week."

  "What do you think? A friendly reception? Or like last time?"

  "Friendly enough, I imagine, sair, though you're no doubt aware tha' there was some wee disagreement about your maimer's calling you a' first."

  "I can imagine. Any word about Angus?"

  "Nothin', sair, except tha' a trial's yet t' be held. There's aye new trouble i' the city, though, an' Wilmarth's dungeons must be fair t' overflowin' by noo."

  "I can imagine. We came through a wee bit a' disturbance on th' way here."

  The gatekeeper looked from McCall's face to Alex, then back again. "An' this is your aide, you said? Young Alex Carlyle?"

  "That he is, Myles."

  "Weel, you two can go on through, then. I'll call ahead an' let them ken you're comin' up."

  "A servant?" Alex asked as the gates swung open and McCall guided the groundcar through.

  "A retainer, an' aye more than that. Myles has been wi' the family for as long as I can remember. He's always been a good friend t' me." He grinned. "He helped me get oot on m'own when I needed some fresh air, back when I was a bairn."

  "Just how many retainers does your family have?"

  "And how should I know that, lad? It's been a few years since I last was here."

  The house lay deep in the woods, a series of beams and saucer shapes thrusting from the sheer-sided cliff and extending out into the air above a step-like cascade of small waterfalls in the rocky stream below.

  "Alex!" A tall, attractive woman in her mid-forties was descending a curved sweep of steps as the car pulled to a stop beneath an overhanging awning. "They said you were on your way. It's good to see you again!"

  "Hello, Marta."

  "Come on in! The others are waiting for you inside."

  "Well, might as weel go an' face th' music, then. Ah, Marta? This is Alex Carlyle, my aide an' protegé Alex? Allow me to present the loveliest a' th' McCall lovelies, Marta. She was daft enough t' marry m' brother Robert some years back, but tha' was aye after I was long gone, so she bears me no ill will. At least ... as far as I ken?"

  "Idiot," she said, smiling. "And the daftest of the lot of us besides. Come on. There's no ill will here now. Not with what's happened to Angus."

  "The others" were two men, younger than Davis but displaying a distinct similarity in the angles of jaw and brow, in the sharp thrust of nose, in the cold blue-gray of eyes. Davis introduced them as his younger brothers, Robert and Ben. Besides Marta, three other women were there, Julia and Kristal—the wives of Ben and Angus—and an elderly woman whom Davis introduced as "Maimer."

  "An' your regiment, Davis," the old woman said as McCall completed the introduction. "Will it be a' comin' soon, then?"

  "No, Maimer," Davis said. "It's me an' the lad here."

  Her face hardened. "Is tha' a', then? An' how is it you propose t' take on Wilmarth an' his whole army of off-world foreigners, eh? Wi' your ain two hands?"

  "We know our message to you was cut off," Ben McCall said, with only a trace of the lilting Scots burr. "But we thought you'd have sense enough to bring your unit, Davis. Those people up in the Citadel are playing for keeps!"

  "Aye, Ben," McCall said reasonably. "An' so am I. We dinnae need the Gray Death t' roust such a beggar as Nelson Wilmarth, even if bringin' them here were possible."

  "Yes," Robert said with just a trace of smugness. "Your people are mercenaries, aren't they? We'd need to come up with quite a bit of money to hire them, I suppose. We do have some resources, you may remember. How much would you ask, Davis? How much to help your own family?"

  Davis scowled. "Robert, the Gray Death is nae mine to give. But do ye tru
ly believe y' need to purchase my services?"

  "Please, boys," Marta said, pleading in her voice. "Let's not fight, not now! Robert, Davis came here to help. It's not like he has a BattleMech regiment of his own to order around like his own personal army!"

  "Aye," Ben said. "It's Wilmarth who has that, and we have precious little of our own to face him with." He shook his head hopelessly. He looked at McCall and at Alex, a rueful expression on his face. "I don't imagine either of you two was even able to bring a BattleMech wi' you?"

  "We need an army, Ben," Robert said. "And I don't know where we're supposed to find one!"

  "Weel," McCall said slowly, "it seems t' me you hae the beginnin's of one, right here in New Edinburgh. We saw a group as we came in—"

  "What?" Robert said. "That rabble? Hardly an army. Street demonstrators an' gutter sweepings, th' lot of 'em."

  "You'd be surprised just what you can do with 'gutter sweepings,' " McCall said. "But our first job will be easier than tha'."

  "What?" Kristal asked. She was a severe-looking woman with a hard set to her jaw. "What is it you plan to do, Davis?"

  "Why, lass," McCall said cheerfully. "I think that first thing tomorrow, Alex here and I are going to pay a courtesy call on our friend Wilmarth!"

  "What? We're going to the Citadel?" Alex asked.

  "Aye, unless you think we'd be better off inviting him here. Somehow, though, I don't think he'd come."

  "Are you as daft as that, then?" Robert asked. "Folks around here don't go to that place, not voluntarily. And those that do go, well, they don't usually come back again."

  Kristal gave a stifled sob, then rose and rushed out of the room. "Damn you, Robert," Julia said as she hurried after the other woman.

  "I heard you and Ben went there, after Angus was taken," McCall said in the awkward silence that followed.

  "Aye," Ben said. "We did, but they wouldn't let us through the front gate. Told us that Angus would be held for trial, that he would be an example for all of Caledonia, and that there was nothing we could do about it."

  "Who'd you talk to. A guard?"