Tactics of Duty

by William H. Keith

  "Can you substantiate any of that? That he's acting on orders?"

  Alex shook his head. "No, sir. I can't. But I can give you ten thousand more eye-witness accounts of what Wilmarth's rule has been like for the past few years. Dad, we've got to help these people!"

  Grayson sighed, folding his arms across his chest. "I don't deny that. I do find myself, find the Legion, in a hellishly difficult spot, though." He cocked an eye at McCall. "Major, I dislike being manipulated. I dislike seeing the Legion manipulated. That, more than anything else, is what turned me against Folker in the first place. It was clear to me he wanted to use us for his own power politics, or those of his superior. But you were worse than he was."

  "Sir!"

  "Dad!"

  "The two of you made promises to these people that were in direct opposition to the orders I received from Tharkad. I find myself forced to choose between breaking those promises, and ordering this unit to go rogue and attack our employer's forces."

  "Dad, we never meant—"

  "I know, I know." Grayson was suddenly very tired. He brought both hands to his face, rubbing his eyes. "I would very much like to know what we're supposed to do now."

  McCall scowled. "Sir, it seems t' me tha' there is no argument here. I made the promises to the rebels. You can disavow my actions an' court-martial me for exceedin' my authority. Perhaps you'd aye best do just tha' when this is over, no matter what else happens. But you can nae attack these people. They are fightin' for their own, for their homes, their families, their security, an' their freedom. T' back the likes a' Folker an' Wilmarth against them, well, sir, as much as it pains me t' say it, you'd have to fight me as well, because I would be oot there wi' 'em."

  "That goes for me too, Dad," Alex said. His face was hard, and worried. "Throwing in with Wilmarth is just plain wrong."

  "Alex, Davis, both of you know that it's impossible to run a mercenary regiment on good feelings, pretty words, or chivalric sentiment. This is a business, and not a crusade."

  Grayson paused a moment, watching the dismay on their faces. "But ..." He stopped again, then shrugged. "There are also some things that have to be done, because not doing them would be to deny yourself and who you are. There will be no court-martial, Major. From what you've described, I would have made the same decision if it had been me here and not you. I would have made the same decision if Folker had ordered me to fire even if I hadn't suspected that you two were still out there, somewhere, working with the resistance. But—just for the future, mind you—you will both remember that intelligence operations are not conducted for the purpose of choosing sides or for volunteering our time and resources!"

  "Aye, sir."

  "Yes, sir."

  "In particular, I dislike contingency contracts. I doubt that we're going to recover a tenth of what we expend on this pp ... and by the time we're done, no one in the Federated Commonwealth will ever hire us again." He thought for a moment of Francis Collins, the Gray Death's Disbursing Officer, and Dobbs, the Supply Officer. "Collins and Dobbs are going to have my hide on this one!"

  A chime sounded. "Come," Grayson called.

  Captain Allison Lang entered the conference room. Major Frye's executive officer and number two in his Command Lance, she was a trim, attractive, and highly competent woman who also served as Third Battalion's intelligence officer.

  "Yes, Captain?"

  "Sorry for the interruption, Colonel," she said. "But radar has just picked up high-altitude ionization trails in the stratosphere, coming down beyond the curve of the planet to the northwest."

  "Descending?"

  "Yes, sir. Ops thinks they're DropShips, inbound."

  "You have a hard trajectory on them yet?"

  "They went down well beyond the horizon, Colonel, so we couldn't get a precise fix. Best guess, though, is the Stirling area."

  "Just about one thousand kilometers to the northwest, Colonel, gi' or take a few," McCall said. "An' there's a spaceport there almost as big as New Edinburgh's."

  "Folker told me Wilmarth was bringing in another unit," Grayson said. "The Third Davion Guards."

  "Aye, an' they've already got 'Mechs deployed here. Those two Victors y' saw in tha' video segment were Third Guard. Some of th' locals went down and got tha' information for us."

  "Damn!"

  "How'd they get all the way to Caledonia without our seeing them?" Alex wanted to know.

  "Tha' would nae be a problem, lad," McCall said. "They could hae come through a' the nadir jump point. We would nae hae seen 'em a' all."

  "More likely they used a pirate point," Grayson said. "The impression I had from Wilmarth was that they wouldn't be here for several days yet. But if they were loaded and ready to go at Hesperus, and if their navigational data were sharp enough to let them arrive at a pirate point within a day's flight or so of Caledon ..."

  "Those ion trails," Lang said, "are consistent with a pirate-point approach. They re-entered over Caledonia's night side and closer to the equatorial plane than a flight coming down the hypotenuse from the zenith or nadir system points."

  "Any chance we can get these people on our side?" Alex asked.

  "We'll give it a try," Grayson said. "But don't hold your breath. If Third Guard 'Mechs are already here and working for the government, it's because some sort of deal has already been struck." He cracked a wry smile. "Just because we're willing to go chasing off on some damn fool crusade for justice, it doesn't mean everybody else on the planet is going to do the same!"

  "Well, it looks like the vacation is over, Colonel," Allison Lang said. "The local militia isn't good for much more than target practice, but the Third Davion is a top-notch outfit."

  "Yes, it is. Captain, I want a complete report on the Third Guard. Command staff. Assessments. Whatever you can find in Third Batt's data base."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Immediately."

  "Ten minutes, sir."

  "Good enough." As Lang left the conference room, Grayson reached over to the table-top console and keyed in a request. The wall screen switched on, showing a computer-enhanced view of the Citadel seen from the air.

  "Well, gentlemen," he said. "We will assume that the Third Guard is landing at Stirling and that we're going to be its target. First things first, however. This position has to be neutralized. Our communications people have confirmed that it's the source of the jamming we've been struggling with, and it's the key to controlling everything between the Alba Mountains and the Firth of Moray. Furthermore, I will not move north against the Third Guard with a strongpoint like this in my rear. Gentlemen? Do either of you have any idea as to how we can take this place down, with minimum losses to ourselves?"

  They began discussing the tactical possibilities.

  24

  The Citadel

  Caledonia, Skye March

  Federated Commonwealth

  0200 hours, 14 April 3057

  The capture of the Citadel in the dark hours of the following morning was almost anticlimactic. Grayson led one company, twelve 'Mechs, up the mountain road, dispersing them through the woods before they reached the canyon. Jamming was still heavy—and getting stronger as they neared its source—but the MechWarriors had rehearsed their moves many times already, using holographic simulations aboard the Endeavor.

  The Citadel was laid out in such a way that 'Mechs trying to use jump jets to clear the walls would be excellent targets for the batteries of turret-mounted lasers in the towers above wall and barbican and keep. Grayson had elected to use a different strategy, however. From the cover of the woods, the Fire Lance of Third Batt's Second Company—an Apollo and two Catapults, with a JagerMech providing support— opened up with everything they had, sending a cloud of missiles streaking through the night sky of Caledonia. From inside the black walls of the Citadel, explosions flashed and thundered. One tower took a direct hit that detonated ammo stores, the pyrotechnics lighting the face of the mountain and leaving the tower a jaggedly truncated stump.
r />   And as the bombardment continued, Grayson marched his Victor to the near side of the bridge, raised his Gauss rifle, and sent round after hypersonic round slamming through the massive gate. The rounds possessed no explosive, no warheads, but kinetic energy alone battered the massive gates back on warped tracks, set solid duralloy steel to glowing white hot, and brought down an avalanche of crumbling stone from the surrounding walls. The laser batteries atop the barbican had been knocked out by Alex and Davis during their raid two weeks before and had not been repaired. The closer Grayson's Victor came to the gate, still hammering away at it with round after round, the less the defensive batteries atop the keep could bear. As the Victor smashed aside the remnant of those gates, Second Company's Medium Lance charged, rushing the bridge, crowding past Grayson's 'Mech and through the open barbican, and bursting into the courtyard beyond.

  A signal flare burned through the night. With a roar, the two Catapults of the Fire Lance soared up out of the woods on white-hot thrusters, crossing the canyon and coming to roost like enormous and highly improbable birds atop the Citadel walls. Laser fire lanced down from the keep, but the rain of missiles and the fire from the courtyard had knocked that line of Wilmarth's defenses down to almost nothing. Now, with a direct line of sight on the surviving batteries, round after round, salvo after salvo, streaked through the air and slammed home in savage, blinding detonations that hurled thunder echoing down off the mountainside.

  The final assault, however, came from twenty Nighthawk-armored commandos who earlier in the night had positioned themselves among the rocks and cliffs behind and above the keep. With the Citadel's defenses focused entirely on the frontal attack by the Legion's 'Mechs, the commandos used their jump jets to descend out of the night, land atop the keep's roof, and blast their way through locked and guarded doorways. With McCall's arm keeping him out of the action, Alex headed up the commandos. Using his knowledge of the stronghold—both what he had gathered on his own and what had been passed on by Reivers rebels—he lead his team down through the heart of the keep and seized the main command center.

  After that, the battle became an interlocking series of minor skirmishes, as hold-outs were discovered and snipers flushed. Another thirty prisoners were released from Wilmarth's dungeon—several who'd stayed behind during the prison break engineered by Alex and McCall, and the men and women scooped up by the Bloodspillers during the riot the previous day, before the Gray Death 'Mechs had deployed and spoiled their fun.

  There was no sign of Wilmarth, of Folker, or of their staffs. The Citadel's defense had been entrusted to some two hundred Bloodspiller infantrymen, under the command of a captain, now dead. Those who surrendered knew nothing about the Governor's future plans, nor had they been told anything about the DropShip landings at Stirling. Their leaders had fled hours before the Gray Death's assault, leaving the troops to defend the fortress on their own without even a single BattleMech to back them up.

  Lieutenant Rodney Leitner, however, proved to be a platinum mine of information.

  Leitner was the pilot of the Wasp Grayson had taken out in front of the spaceport terminal. Pulled unconscious from the close confines of his cockpit, he'd been taken first to the Endeavor's sickbay for treatment, and then, once the Citadel was taken, to the far better medical facilities there. He was not badly injured, it turned out, and though at first he had refused to talk, Captain Lang's quiet promise to have him turned over to the people of Caledonia for trial as a war criminal broke the last of his resistance. Lang further ensured Leitner's cooperation by showing his prisoner three-D vids of some of the horrors discovered inside the Citadel, suggesting that these might be used as evidence at his trial.

  A citizen of Gladius originally, the lieutenant had served with the Third Davion Guards for five years, having spent most of that time on Hesperus II. He'd been one of twenty-five Guardsmen who'd volunteered for special duty—and the extra pay that had come with the assignment.

  That posting, he'd told Gray's intelligence staff, had been viewed as easy duty, with the Guardsmen and the pilots and techs for two Victors serving as advisors to the scumbag troops of a backwater militia. While on Caledonia, he said, they'd taken their orders from Major Folker. But on Hesperus, their commanding officer, the man who'd given them their assignment and their briefings, was Marshal Felix Zellner. Normally, Leitner explained, he piloted a Jager-Mech, but his 'Mech hadn't been brought along on this operation, and for the most part he'd served as an advisor to Wilmarth's 'Mech techs. Usually, either the regular militia pilot or Folker himself operated Wilmarth's Wasp, but the Bloodspiller had been killed in the courtyard the night of the raid, and Folker had been otherwise employed during the fight at the spaceport, so he'd filled in. He hadn't liked the orders to fire on an unarmed crowd, Leitner said, but disobeying orders would have meant death ... or worse. Wilmarth had personally and slowly executed two of the volunteers the previous week for what he'd perceived as their inadequacies in the defense of the Citadel against Caledonian rebels.

  The chilling part of the story, at least from Grayson's perspective, was the fact that there was really nothing special about Leitner. The man seemed perfectly commonplace; he had a wife and two children back on Hesperus II, a good combat record, and marks on his proficiency reports ranging from fair to good, with one gig for having gone AWOL two years before. That someone so ordinary should be able to close his eyes to the extraordinary horrors perpetrated in the Citadel by Wilmarth and his torturers ...

  In any case, Leitner had provided the Gray Death's intelligence staff with an invaluable and up-to-date picture of the Third Davion Guards. They were described as veteran troops in most force listings, but after hearing Captain Lang's report, Grayson thought it likely that they'd lost some of their edge after several years of garrison duty on Hesperus II. Their commanding officer was Marshal James Seymour, a political appointee, but by all accounts a talented if somewhat predictable officer capable of inspiring near-fanatical devotion in his people. The Guards would be tough opponents, garrison duty or not.

  By the time the sun was rising on the morning of the fourteenth, Grayson was inside the still smoke-stinking cavern of the Citadel's Command Center with his battle staff, going over every detail of local planetography to which they had access.

  There would be a battle with the Third Guards, he was certain of that. Though no hard data were in yet, the number of ion trails seen to the northwest suggested well over a battalion of 'Mechs inbound—possibly even the entire regiment—and it would not be long before they linked up with whatever was left of the Bloodspiller militia. As usual, the Legion would be badly outnumbered.

  The only way they could win was if Grayson could choose carefully the ground of the battle.

  * * *

  Alex led Caitlin by the hand up a narrow, rocky path through thickly wooded slopes on the south face of Mount Alba, just above the Citadel. There was almost no hope whatsoever of finding a quiet, private place for an intimate hour or two aboard a DropShip, and Alex had long since given up trying to find one. Nor did he care for the Citadel as a rendezvous for the two of them; the bodies hanging in the courtyard and strung from the rafters of Wilmarth's throne room had been taken down and buried early that morning by a delegation from New Edinburgh, but the stink of the place lingered still, and the blood-awful memory of what he'd seen there would remain long after the smell was gone.

  He'd found this place last night, when he'd led his team of commandos up through the woods and around behind the Citadel, to a point where they could fly down out of the trees, across the fortress's north wall, and onto the roof of the keep.

  The path opened onto a rocky ledge, its top sheared off by some ancient landslide, an eyrie providing a spectacular view to the south. Almost below their feet was the Citadel, still black and imposing, but bustling now with both Gray Death troops and with a working party of civilians sent up from the town to inspect the place, record Wilmarth's crimes, and clean it out. Beyond, the canyon that se
rved as moat for the Citadel opened up into a broad and wooded valley, while New Edinburgh and its suburbs lay in a majestic sprawl on the shores of the Firth of Moray. The spaceport was a vast, dark smudge on the horizon, with the three DropShips just barely visible in their grounding pits.

  They sat on a boulder back a little ways from the edge, admiring the view.

  "You have changed, Alex," Caitlin said, taking his hand. "What happened to you?"

  Alex tried to smile, but the effects of nearly thirty hours without sleep were beginning to catch up with him. It reminded him that his father had ordered him to get some sleep; technically, he was violating orders ... again.

  "I'm still not entirely sure, Cait," he said, stifling a yawn with the back of his fist. "I think, though, it has to do with commitment."

  "How?"

  "I guess I've always wondered if Davis Clay died for nothing, died because he was trying to help me, and only succeeded in getting himself killed. I've been, well, hypersensitive since then about how my orders, my decisions, the things I do or don't do, might lead to getting people I care about killed or hurt."

  "I think it's called accepting responsibility, Alex."

  "Yeah, well, I never really had a choice about whether I wanted to be saddled with that responsibility. I was always, you know, Grayson Carlyle's son, the next great Gray Death Mechwarrior."

  "You've told me. What's different now?"

  Reaching down, Alex picked up a rock on the ground next to the boulder they were sitting on. It was part crystal, the natural facets catching the orange sunlight and striking fire against his hand. "I think, Cait, what I needed to know was that what I did, me, Alex Carlyle, really could count for something, apart from what my title or rank or who my father was. I needed to know I wasn't just going through the motions, a robot following orders like that Leitner creep. I needed to know I was, well, this sounds corny, but I needed to know that I was on the side of good. Making a difference." He chucked the rock over the ledge, watching it sparkle as it plunged into emptiness. "Otherwise, everything I did ... everything people like Davis Clay died for, it was for nothing, see?"