Breaking from cover, Alex ran to the edge of the cliff, ignoring the bullets that sang off his armor or cracked and whistled from the rocks around him. Looking over the canyon rim, he could see McCall's arms and the top of his helmet three meters below, as the man clung to a shredding that of partly uprooted vegetation.
"Hang on, Major!" Alex stepped off the edge of the cliff, firing his jump jets as he dropped.
"Alex! Wha' the blazes are y' doin' oot here? I told you t' stay put!"
"Saving your life, Major." Reaching out, Alex slipped one hand beneath each of McCall's arms and clamped down hard. "Don't wiggle, now. I wouldn't want to drop you!"
He used his tongue controls to increase thrust. His jump jets were already straining to support the mass of two sets of armor, and now he was trying to find the power to lift the two of them together up the crumbling face of the cliff. For a moment, Alex wondered if they were going to make it. Still supporting McCall, he managed to squirm out of the sling to his grenade launcher and to unsnap the harness pouch containing the rest of the microgrenade ammunition. When he dropped his laser as well, he and McCall began slowly moving upward.
As they rose out of the canyon, Alex could see the entire face of the forest ahead lit by flickering muzzle flashes. He and McCall were squarely between two large bodies of infantry engaged in an all-out gun battle, the Bloodspiller militiamen rushing onto the bridge and Reivers hidden in the woods.
Bullets screamed off Alex's armor. His jump jets shrieked as he struggled to keep the two of them aloft. Fortunately, they didn't have far to go. The ungainly duo cleared the top of the cliff with a meter to spare and crashed forward into the underbrush. Gunfire barked and crackled around them as Alex untangled himself from McCall and stood up. A moment later, troops were all around them, extending helping hands, pulling them along to cover. The vet soldier freed in the Citadel was there, and so was Allyn Mclntyre.
"Thought I told you folks t' stay back where we left you," McCall said. Over the tactical channel, his voice sounded tight with pain.
"Well, excuse me," Allyn said, grinning at him. "I didn't realize you were our commanding officer!"
"He gets a bit touchy when people don't do what he tells them," Alex explained. Missiles were arcing toward them from the Citadel. "Damn! Let's get out of range!"
"I'll go along with that," the vet growled as they started to drag McCall toward the shelter of the trees. "We're kinda exposed out here on this cliff!"
In fact, though, the battle was already over; half a dozen of Wilmarth's troops had been cut down on the bridge by the gunfire from the forest, and the rest were fleeing back to the safety of the Citadel's walls. The remaining Victor, after peering over the side of the bridge in an almost laughably human manner to check on its fallen companion, had withdrawn as well, pausing only to hose the woods one last time with laser and autocannon fire.
They carried McCall further back into the woods, coming at last to a clearing well out of the range of the laser turrets atop the Citadel towers.
"You destroyed that giant Mech!" Allyn said, her face flushed with excitement. "I've never seen anything like that! I never knew it could even be done!"
"Probably can't, lass," McCall replied as they lowered him gently to the ground. "It'd take more than a wee fall like tha' to ruin a Victor. Mind, the MechWarrior pilotin' the thing's probably smeared all over the inside of the cockpit like strawberry jam, but they'll hae a recovery team down there by mornin' to drag the thing free."
" 'Mechs are too valuable to just leave lying around," Alex added, checking McCall's shoulder. It didn't look like the laser had penetrated, but the ferrofibrous armor shell protecting the shoulder had been partly melted by the beam and was twisted like soft putty.
He needed a delicate touch for this, more delicate than was possible for the Nighthawk suit. He hit his helmet release and cracked it open, tasting the cool night air for the first time in hours. Then he unlocked his gauntlets and discarded them, before he started opening up McCall's Night-hawk suit.
"But he wrecked its leg!" Allyn protested.
"Not likely!" McCall said through tightly clenched teeth, sounding like he was talking now to keep his mind off the pain. God but that shoulder must hurt! "If they hae a spare knee actuator an' a myomer bundle patch kit, they'll hae tha' little nick mended in no time. If we were aye lucky, th' Gauss rifle an' lasers were smashed up enough not to work anymore, an' they dinnae hae the spares. But I'm thinking tha' those two Victors were well cared for, better than anything I saw in Wilmarth's stable. They'll probably hae all the parts they need."
"Then, that was for nothing?" Allyn asked, something close to despair on her face.
"Oh, I had a reason, all right."
"If he hadn't knocked out one Victor and discouraged the other," Alex explained, breaking open the armor's chestplate and exposing McCall's upper torso, "those two 'Mechs would be scouring these woods right now, looking for us. As it is, I guess the Major here convinced them that discretion is the better part of valor after all."
"Aye," McCall said. "I've been thinking. It would be nice, though, if we could get some idea a' who those bluidy Victors belong to!"
"I was wondering about that," a new voice said.
"General McBee!" Alex said.
"You didn't expect me to stay back at the farm and miss all the excitement, did you? How is he?"
"I've been burned worse," McCall said.
"The beam melted part of his armor," Alex told him, studying the wound. The skin was blistered over most of McCall's shoulder, with one area badly charred. The stink of burnt meat made him gag. For just a moment, Alex remembered another Davis, charred to death in his burning 'Mech ...
Then the memory was pushed aside by more urgent needs. A first aid medipatch slapped onto the base of McCall's neck between the burn and his head gave a low hum as it began interrupting the pain messages flowing to McCall's brain. The Caledonian relaxed almost immediately, his eyes glazing slightly.
"What hit him was a jet of molten metal, not the beam itself," he told the others, pulling a tube of burn cream from his suit's first aid kit and squeezing the contents into the charred area. "Second and third degree burns, but nothing so serious a medkit won't fix him up."
"I'll see what we have in supply," McBee said. "I'll also send a team down to check out that 'Mech you damaged. We don't have much in the way of explosives, so we probably can't smash it bad enough to finish it off, but we might find out something useful, like where the damned things came from!"
"That ... would help ... a lot, General," McCall said, the words slurred by the anesthetic effect of the medipatch. "Thanks...."
A dull pop sounded in the distance, and the area was raggedly illuminated by a drifting star shell high above the fortress.
"We'd better find out just exactly who our enemies are back there," Alex said thoughtfully, "or we're going to be fighting them totally in the dark."
"Alex?"
"I'm right here, Major."
"Jus' thought ... somethin'. Important."
"What's that?"
"The ... date, lad."
"What about it?"
"It's the Day ... of Heroes "
Alex's eyes widened as McCall slipped away into anesthesia. He'd not thought about the date at all, but McCall was right. This was the Day of Heroes, the day the Gray Death Legion set aside every year to honor the memory of those Legionnaires who'd given their lives, their friends and comrades fallen in combat.
18
Third Davion Guard Headquarters
Maria's Elegy, Hesperus II
Tamarind March
Federated Commonwealth
1045 hours, 2 April 3057
"We lost two Mechs," the holographic image of Kellen Folker said, a flicker of scanning static running down its length. "One of Wilmarth's UrbanMechs and one of our Victors."
"One of the Victors!" General Karst exploded. "How could they—"
Marshal Felix Zellner impat
iently waved the man to silence. The HPG transmission was one-way and could not be interrupted.
"The UrbanMech's probably headed for scrap recycling," Folker continued. "Wilmarth doesn't have much in the way of spares, though the Urbie wouldn't be hard to get running again if he had the right parts and a halfway decent technical crew. I think we can get the Victor operational again, but Charley tells me it'll need two new legs, a new Gauss rifle, and a replacement articulating mainbrace for the torso endo-skeletal supports." Folker cocked a wry grin at the camera. "You can put all of that on your list of stuff to bring with you.
"The attack was carried out by at least fifteen commandos, heavily armed and wearing advanced combat armor, and operating in close conjunction with the local rebels. We don't yet have a confirmed ID on them. Apparently, they carried off all their dead and wounded after the fight, and Wilmarth hasn't been able to recover any bodies. But I'm as certain as I can be without formal confirmation that they belonged to the Gray Death Legion. As I told you in my last report, Carlyle's third-in-command is here, as well as his son. I've seen them both, talked to them, even. And McCall, especially, has a rep for this kind of action. I hate to admit it, but he's good.
"The situation here, in my opinion, is becoming serious. They succeeded in releasing over eighty of Wilmarth's prisoners—a few tax evaders, and the rest agitators and troublemakers scooped up at various antigovernment demonstrations. Rebel morale will have been boosted considerably by this raid on Wilmarth's headquarters. And if you were hoping to involve the Gray Death against the local rebels, I'd say you're too late. They've already entered the fight, but against us. They're going to be a serious obstacle to Field Marshal Gareth's plans.
"Marshal, I urgently request full military assistance to break the back of this rebellion once and for all. Wilmarth can't do it, and the 'Mechs in my command aren't going to be enough to deal with this situation, especially since one of my Victors is going to be out of operation until you get here anyway.
"This is Folker, signing off."
With a final flicker of static, the holographic projection wavered, then winked out. Zellner remained in his chair, contemplating the empty projection plate for a moment. On the other side of the desk, General Vinton Karst stirred uncomfortably in his chair, as though unwilling to be the one to break the momentary silence.
"We will leave for Caledonia at once, General," Zellner said at last. "Have your unit ready to board the DropShips within forty-eight hours."
"We can be ready in twenty-four, Marshal," Karst said. "My people have been on full alert since last week. But, with respect, sir, I still wonder if you know what you're doing."
Zellner considered Karst narrowly for a moment, wondering if he'd made a mistake in promoting this particular man. He was far more able than his predecessor, more intelligent, more the career soldier than the politician, and less self-centered and self-serving than Thurman Vaughn had been. In short, he was an excellent officer, but the qualities that made him excellent also made him difficult to control. The man had a brain, and that made him potentially dangerous.
His predecessor, the late, lamented General Vaughn, had died a few weeks before. Few knew that Vaughn's death had not been an accident... that his private aircraft had crashed and exploded during takeoff from the capital's airport because he'd become undependable at a rime when Gareth and Zellner and the other conspirators of Operation Excalibur needed dependable men.
"The Jacobite rebellion on Caledon," Zellner said quietly, "offers the Federated Commonwealth, offers us, a unique opportunity."
"So I've heard you say, sir. But I fail to see how engaging my unit on a jerkwater world like Caledonia is going to help Excalibur. In any case, the rebellion there offers no direct threat to us. They have no 'Mechs of their own, no equipment, no DropShips."
"The rebels themselves offer no serious military threat, but there are other rebels in the district that do."
"The Skye separatists."
"And others. But the separatists are the most serious danger, not only to the Federated Commonwealth but to what we're trying to do here."
"You know, Marshal, it strikes me that in some ways the separatists are on our side. Don't misunderstand me on this, but they seek autonomy for the Skye March, as we do. They're seeking a secure niche for themselves as the Federated Commonwealth's authority crumbles, as we do. And they seek order and safety for this part of the Inner Sphere. I wonder if we shouldn't consider working with them, instead of against them."
"We have no 'side,' General, save our own. The problem with the separatists is that their activities undercut ours and focus the government's attention on this district when it would be better for us if they were occupied elsewhere." He folded his arms, leaning back in his chair. Webs within webs; wheels within wheels within yet more wheels.
As a supposedly loyal officer of the Armed Forces of the Federated Commonwealth, it was Zellner's responsibility to ruthlessly suppress independence-minded agitations by Skye separatists or anyone else who challenged the Federated Commonwealth's authority. Fulfilling that responsibility was the best way he knew to convince his superiors back on Tharkad that he was a loyal AFFC officer.
But as one of the highest-ranking of the conspirators within Operation Excalibur, he had the double-edged responsibility of convincing Tharkad that he was still loyal to the Federated Commonwealth and of not alienating the population he hoped to govern soon. Many Skye separatists were members of the military, of course, but they came from worlds in the Skye March, worlds like Caledonia and Glengarry, like New Earth and Arcadia and Skye. Feeling was running high against the Federated Commonwealth on those worlds and dozens of others. If Zellner moved to crush the separatists in either his official role as a Marshal of the AFFC, or as a leader of Excalibur, he would be alienating the very people he would later need for support in the long, dark days to come. It looked to him and the other members of Excalibur that the days of the famous alliance between Steiner and Davion were numbered. Who knew what the future might bring? Civil war, death, destruction ... If he was to save anything, anything at all of these worlds, he would have to ally himself with the separatists.
But gently ... gently. He could not reveal his true loyalties to Tharkad too soon, or everything so painstakingly built up thus far would be lost. He studied Karst carefully. He was more than half certain that General Karst was himself a secret Skye separatist, an officer who'd either not declared himself during last year's rebellion, or whose political convictions had changed as a result of what had happened. The purges within every level of the AFFC had shaken many good men, Zellner reflected. That made them vulnerable, both to political disaffection and to recruitment by cabals like Excalibur.
He suspected that Karst hoped to recruit him for another officers' separatist coup attempt. Well, that wasn't a bad thing at all. Excalibur would need good, solid lines of communication to the separatist camp, whether they ultimately ended up joining them ... or exterminating them.
"In fact, General," he told Karst, "it is my hope to work with the separatists when the time is right. We do share many of the same goals. My only real argument with them is in their sense of timing. They launched their rebellion last year far too soon ... and they seriously miscalculated in trying to take on the Gray Death Legion with an insufficient appreciation of that regiment's abilities."
Karst looked surprised. "I thought you didn't care for mercenaries."
"I don't. Most of them are rabble, ill-trained, ill-disciplined, greedy, and loyal only to their own leaders, and to C-bills. Some few are well-trained and highly motivated, however, and that makes them dangerous. Still, once you understand how the mercenary mind works, you can use them ... let them do your dirty work for you so that you can emerge playing the part of the hero."
"And this is what you mean when you talk about using the Gray Death on Caledonia?"
"Exactly. Field Marshal Gareth hoped to cripple the Legion by removing its senior officers. While that option mi
ght still prove to be necessary, I think we can use the Gray Death to put down this populist uprising on Caledonia. A show of force, a powerful show of force on Caledonia, will convince the Skye separatists of the Federated Commonwealth's will to hold onto the region by any means necessary. But suppressing the Jacobites will not harm us with the separatists. The Jacobites are, after all, a fanatic and ill-disciplined mob." Zellner chuckled. "Even the most ardent of the separatists would have to admit that the Jacobites must be suppressed for the common good. You know, this may be a way of inducing the separatists to join us when the time comes!"
Karst—if he was a separatist sympathizer—refused to rise to the bait. "And the Jihadists?" he asked. "Destroying them could work against us, make us seem intolerant, even tyrannical. The Federated Commonwealth has the reputation for allowing religious diversity, you know."
"True ... when that diversity does not threaten the rights of other citizens." Zellner shrugged, a careless gesture. "The Jihadists are heretics. No one will care what we do to them."
Karst's eyebrows went up. "Heretics? That's a strange word to hear in this day and age!"
"They are heretics by the standards of the Unfinished Book that they claim as their origin."
The Unfinished Book Movement was the attempt by Father Jasper Ovidon to create a genuine, pan-human faith that would unite the splintered religions that divided a starscattered humanity. The "unfinished" aspect referred to their creed that revelation was a continuing and ongoing process, that no one faith could have the last and complete word, for there was always more to learn.
"The Jihadists claim," Zellner continued, "that all spiritual revelation is complete and that the end of civilization is at hand, which is completely counter to the Unfinished Book. The most extremist among them call for a complete end to all reliance on any machinery more complicated than a plow, an end to war machines and armaments, an end to space travel ... and you can imagine how well that would go over with the big corporations! They even argue among themselves over the proper interpretation of their own prophecies and writings. They're reviled by civilized and technic cultures everywhere in the Inner Sphere. Their destruction will be applauded by all supporters of law and order, as well as help to convince the separatists of the AFFC's resolve."
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