Tactics of Duty

by William H. Keith

  * * *

  "This is McCall! Th' Colonel's down!"

  The words, broadcast over the Legion's general tactical frequency, were the first Alex had heard from the 'Mechs he'd left behind south of Cemetery Ridge hours ago, and they burned their way into his brain.

  He'd maneuvered his Archer into the Davion supply dump while other Legion 'Mechs and dozens of troopers, both Legion commandos and rebels, raced past. Stacks of plastic ammo crates and power cells rose about him, a small, hightech bonanza—if the Legion could hang onto it. His Archer's LRM racks were empty now, and he was hoping to find some missiles stored there, plus enough Legion troops to serve as a working party. McCall's announcement that his father was down struck like lightning, however. Turning swiftly to face south, Alex scanned the top of Cemetery Ridge, immediately picking out the line of Gray Death 'Mechs now reaching the crest. McCall's Highlander was airborne, vanishing behind the ridge just as Alex spotted it.

  Smashing aside a piled-high mountain of ammo crates, Alex goaded his Archer into a flat-out run, racing across Meadow Grove toward Cemetery Ridge.

  * * *

  At the peak of his leap, Davis McCall triggered one more cough from his left-side jump jet, shifting his trajectory a good ten degrees to the right. The course change was enough to confuse the Zeus, which was trying to pivot in order to be facing the Highlander when it landed. Coming down behind the Zeus, McCall also pivoted to face the other 'Mech as he hit the ground, his Gauss rifle already up and aimed squarely at the enemy machine's right-rear quarter.

  With a sound like a giant thunderclap, the hypersonic projectile streaked into the center of the Zeus's back, where the protective armor was less than a third the thickness of the slabs of armor plate covering its chest.

  The Zeus was driven forward a step by the incredible force of the impact, kinetic energy fusing an eight-square-meter patch of armor into a white-hot, molten mass. The projectile plunged through the 'Mech's thin back carapace like a laser beam through butter. Ricocheting off the much thicker armor encasing the power plant, the Gauss slug severed power cables, shredded the endoskeletal framework, and set off the store of long-range missiles stashed in the Zeus's right torso. As secondary explosions erupted from the 'Mech's torso, the right arm tore free, armor plates popped off, access panels blew open, and flame engulfed the machine's lower torso. An instant later, the head split apart as the cockpit canopy hinged open and the 'Mech's pilot inside rocketed clear On his ejection seat.

  Cursing bitterly in the fear and urgency of the moment, McCall turned to see to the fallen Grayson Carlyle.

  * * *

  Alex pushed his lumbering 'Mech to full speed, cursing the fact that Archers had no jump jets. While the other 'Mechs of Striker continued moving in a long line toward the southeast, driving the shattered remnants of the Third Davion Guard before them, he was moving directly south, climbing the gentle slope of the elevation code-named Cemetery Ridge.

  His father was over there, somewhere ... and in trouble. ...

  29

  Meadow Grove

  Caledonia, Skye March

  Federated Commonwealth

  2056 hours, 16 April 3057

  When the Gray Death force came storming through the Third Guard base camp, Marshal Felix Zellner had been faced with one of the thornier problems of BattleMech tactics: how does a MechWarrior hide something as huge as an Atlas! Nearly fifteen meters tall, massing one hundred tons, the Atlas was among the very largest of all 'Mechs in the field, a powerhouse monster that could stand up to incredible punishment without folding. Zellner's Atlas was a recent acquisition, too, one of the new AS7-K models sporting a Dragon's Fire Gauss rifle, four lasers of various caliber, and twenty tubes for the Shigunga long-range missile.

  He'd eventually found an answer to his dilemma near the center of the temporary 'Mech maintenance area, but it wouldn't work for very long. The gantry structure had collapsed in a spaghetti tangle of girders, struts, and twisted steel, together with the wreckage of several smashed and burned BattleMechs destroyed by the Gray Death forces as they'd first emerged from the forest to the west. Moments after the gantry had collapsed and enemy 'Mechs had begun pouring across the area, Zellner had moved behind the wreckage of the maintenance facility and dropped his Atlas prone, using its great hands to pull several tons of broken, heat-warped steel part way across its torso and legs.

  He'd played dead, another vacant 'Mech destroyed by the collapse of the gantry structure.

  He'd remained there, unmoving, as a Gray Death Catapult had stalked past like some huge and improbable flightless bird. He'd waited until the entire Gray Death line had moved on toward the southeast. Then, with a heave of one arm, he'd brushed the tangled steel from his 'Mech's body like straw, then rose—a fully armed and operational Atlas squarely in the rear of the enemy force.

  Had he stood in place and faced the oncoming line, the Gray Death 'Mechs would have banded together to bring him down. The Atlas might have taken out three, perhaps even four of the smaller 'Mechs, but in the end the hundred-ton behemoth would have been torn to pieces. With his simple little ruse, he'd managed to turn the tables on what the Gray Death flanking force had just done to him—place a powerful force at the enemy's rear, and completely by surprise.

  Standing next to the fallen gantry, he scanned the backs of the Gray Death 'Mechs, then pivoted slightly to bring the Gauss rifle mounted on his right torso to bear on the rear armor of a JagerMech. The thunderclap of his shot echoed across the maintenance yard, the force of the blow picking up the 'Mech and slamming it forward, the thin lightweight armor over the Jager's rear torso shredding like cardboard. Internal explosions followed an instant later as stored autocanno rounds began popping off like firecrackers. Much of the destructive force was vented through the 'Mech's CASE storage cells, but the internal structure was still gutted by the savage, multiple blasts. Zellner triggered his right-arm laser, the beam carving through the JagerMech's damaged left leg like a sword slash. The Gray Death 'Mech collapsed in a burning heap of wreckage. The pilot did not eject.

  Pivoting, Zellner brought a second Gray Death 'Mech into his sights, this time a Vindicator ...

  * * *

  Alex heard the scream over the commline as Brian Fox's JagerMech exploded. Still moving south, he swung his torso left, picking up the looming shape of the Atlas just barely visible near the gantry as it targeted its next victim from behind.

  "Strikers!" he shouted over the tactical channel, at the same moment slewing the Archer to a stop, raising the 'Mech's arms simultaneously to deliver a deadly left-right blow from both his arm-mounted lasers. "All Strikers, this is Carlyle! Atlas on your six!"

  On your six was a venerable combat term, one derived from an ancient and forgotten mode of telling time that placed the "six" squarely on a pilot's tail. But though analog timekeeping might be long forgotten, the warning phrase was not. At his shout, most of the Second and Third Company 'Mechs stopped and turned.

  Alex's lasers struck the Atlas in its side and right arm, the beams flaring in dazzling bursts of reflected light and vaporizing armor. The Atlas seemed to hesitate, then turned ponderously to face him. The expression on the round head with its two triangular cockpit windows and the jagged line of ratchet teeth and exhaust vents underneath was the gut-punched shock of a grinning skull.

  Now, Alex thought, he was really in for it. The Atlas outmassed him by only thirty tons, roughly a third, but his Archer, its missiles expended, mounted just four lasers, two facing the rear, one in each arm. A medium laser delivered perhaps a third of the destructive energy carried by a single Gauss round. With both combatants constantly shifting, dodging, and moving, there would be no way for Alex to pile up successive hits on the same spot, save by sheer luck.

  And that massive slab armor on the Atlas's breastplate alone was a third thicker than the thickest armor carried by an Archer. One-on-one, he didn't stand a chance.

  The Atlas fired its Gauss rifle. There was no time to duck
, no time to react at all. Alex was hit, the slug slamming through his Archer's left shoulder, the force spinning him to the side and nearly knocking him down.

  He fired his own lasers again, the beams splashing harmlessly off the armored mountain in front of him. He tried to shift left, but the enemy's right-arm laser sliced into the Archer's side, and an instant later, a cloud of LRMs streaking from the Atlas's chest detonated in a chattering cloud of death and destruction all around him. One missile exploded against the Archer's cockpit armor, and the concussion set Alex's head ringing.

  A PPC bolt suddenly struck the Atlas from behind, sending it lurching forward a step, lightning sparking off its arms and sides. Several LRMs slammed into the Atlas a second later, and the Davion pilot tried to turn to face this new onslaught.

  In that instant Alex charged.

  A year before, at the Battle of Ryco Pass, he'd charged four pursuing enemy 'Mechs in his Archer, an act of desperation—or perhaps of sheer defiance—that he'd regretted ever since.

  This time, though, his charge was an act of strategy ... of tactics, for as the Atlas turned to face the other Gray Death 'Mechs, it exposed its back. Like all 'Mechs, it had much thinner armor there, less than a third of what it had up front. If he could score just three or so solid hits back there, Alex would be able to punch through that armored hide and reach the tender circuitry and wiring and ammo stores within.

  Firing as he ran, he missed the giant's back, the first slug scattering off the giant 'Mech's massive shoulder. His second shot struck home, gouging a crater but doing little real damage.

  The Atlas paused in mid-turn, hesitated, then swung back to face Alex, pulling the damaged section back around and out of sight. A Gauss round grazed the top of Alex's Archer, furrowing armor plate like a plow in soft earth, and carrying away the cowling for his left-side missile tubes.

  Like an avenging angel, Maria Delgado's Catapult touched ground on shrieking jump jets thirty meters away from the Atlas and squarely in its rear. A salvo of Arrow IV missiles burst from her tubes like pellets from a shotgun, slamming into the rear of the Atlas in a devastating burst of armor-shredding destruction. She followed that volley with a fusillade of laser fire, striking home again and again and again. Spinning to face her, the Atlas turned its torn and smoking back to Alex. From a range of fifty meters, he fired twice more. His left-arm laser, damaged by the earlier hit, failed with that shot, but the other weapon tunneled through twisted, smoking armor to plunge like a hot blade into the Atlas's vitals.

  Captain Ann Warfield's Guillotine arrived next, slashing at the Atlas from the side with heavy and medium laser fire. Sergeant Terry O'Reilly's Apollo added to the destruction with a rain of LRMs. Moments later, still another 'Mech arrived on the scene, this one from the crest of Cemetery Ridge. Becoming vaguely aware of the Griffin's shape in the gathering darkness, Alex realized with a start that Caitlin, from the main body left behind, had just joined Striker. He kept firing.

  The Atlas was surrounded now on three sides, the focus of fire from four different heavy 'Mechs and one medium. Each time it turned, it exposed the gaping wound in its back to fire from one or more of its tormentors. A Gauss rifle round caught O'Reilly's Apollo squarely in its center torso, but the missiles kept coming until the fire-support 'Mech's tubes were empty. One of the Atlas's arms, the right one, fell away in a shower of armor shards and fragments as an ammo explosion blasted out the rear CASE panels. A fire raged inside that laser-torn hull, and acrid smoke poured through the rents in its armor. A secondary explosion demolished the Gauss rifle, the fire spreading, tongues of flame licking across the huge machine's blackened surface.

  The heat inside that Atlas must be terrific, Alex thought. His own heat warnings were sounding, threatening power plant shutdown, but he slapped the overrides and moved in closer, firing his single remaining forward-facing laser as fast as he could cycle it.

  The explosion was blinding and deafening, an eruption of white flame that tore the Atlas's back and right side to shreds, the hot shrapnel pinging off Alex's armor like spent bullets. What was left of the 'Mech teetered there for a moment, the remnants of its torso wreathed in flame, the left arm still twitching with an eerie life of its own, the skull of the head still grinning at Alex like the Gray Death's own logo.

  Then the legs buckled, and the burning wreckage collapsed.

  And only then did Alex turn away, his Archer limping on up Cemetery Ridge and over the top as he went to find his father.

  * * *

  Grayson Carlyle was aware of Davis McCall pulling him from the burning wreckage of his Victor, but he felt very little of it. His brain quickly sinking into the soft and swaddling embrace of systemic shock, was simply refusing to feel any more pain as his burned and torn body was dragged through the narrow hatch and out onto the ground.

  He could feel the blood caked on his face and trickling from his ears; he could feel, in a detached and almost disinterested way, the burns on his left arm and side—at least the areas where the burns were only second degree and blistered instead of charred and blackened. He felt the stab as McCall slapped his good arm with an autoinjector, firing two hundred milligrams of antidoloric into his bloodstream. Still unable to hear a thing, he wondered if he'd been deafened by the shock wave of a Gauss slug passing a few meters above his head.

  Reaching up with his right hand, Grayson grasped the front of Davis McCall's jump suit. "Did ... they ..."

  He couldn't complete the question. Consciousness was slipping away like water running through his fingers.

  There was so much he wanted to ask, and he couldn't communicate any of it. Had they won? Was Alex all right? Had the Davions been pinned or pushed back into a position advantageous for the Gray Death?

  Would the Legion come through this intact?

  Davis was saying something, but Grayson couldn't make out the words. Yet now, far off, in that same distance that held his pain and much of his awareness, he could hear a growing, throbbing roar, like surf on an ocean shore.

  McCall hit him with another injection. Other people were gathering around, but it was hard to make them out. That darkness . . . was it the deepening twilight, or was he dying?

  He didn't want to die. So many, many questions ...

  Alex. He was there, squeezing in next to McCall, looking down at him with anguish in his eyes. Alex! He'd come through it!

  Relief washed through Grayson, following on the heels of the coma drug Davis had just given him. "How ... ?"

  Alex seemed to understand. Though still looking painfully worried, he managed a wide grin, then held out his fist, the thumb pointed up. "We did it," Grayson thought he heard his son say behind the roaring in his ears. "We won! The Gray Death won!"

  That was all he needed to hear. Grayson Carlyle let himself slip away then, into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Epilogue

  New Edinburgh Spaceport

  Caledonia, Skye March

  Federated Commonwealth

  0915 hours, 21 April 3057

  "How is he?" Caitlin asked. "I mean ... is he ..."

  They were standing in the public observation lounge of the spaceport at New Edinburgh, overlooking the tarmac and the three Union DropShips in their craterlike blast pits. Loading was almost complete. The last few BattleMechs were being taken aboard the Endeavor now. Launch was scheduled for 1000 hours, just forty-five minutes from now.

  "He looked pretty bad," Alex said, trying to keep his tone neutral, but knowing he failed. He closed his eyes. Every time he thought of that hideously fire-blackened body ...

  "I didn't mean to make it worse."

  "You didn't."

  "I wonder if you realize what your father really is to the rest of us, Alex? I mean, he's your father. Of course you love him. But we all do, too. Some of us would die for that man, I think."

  Alex smiled. "He has that effect on people."

  "So, have you heard ... anything?"

  "MedTech Jamison is taking good care of him,
" Alex told her. "She took off his arm last night."

  "Oh ... Alex ..."

  "They won't be able to fit him with a prosthesis until we get back to Glengarry, of course, but I'm sure they'll be able to fix him up pretty well. Jamison is good. Real good." He shrugged. "For the rest, I'm told his hearing was damaged, but he won't be deaf. There is a big ... a big question, though, as to whether he'll ever pilot a 'Mech again. A lot depends on, well, on what his condition is when he comes out of the medical coma."

  "Damn, damn!" Caitlin smacked one small fist into the open palm of her other hand. "They didn't catch the bastard who did it, did they?"

  "No. But Dupré'd better hope the Caledonian rebels aren't the ones who catch him. They feel pretty strongly about Grayson Carlyle too."

  "Not rebels," Caitlin reminded him. "Not anymore."

  The last of the Gray Death Legion's 'Mechs boarded the elevator that would carry it up into the Endeavor's 'Mech bay.

  It was only four days since the Battle of Falkirk, but the war—brief as it had been—for all intents and purposes was over and won. The battle had actually sputtered on for some hours following Marshal Zellner's death, but the end had been more or less a foregone conclusion after the destruction of the Atlas. It was true the pace of the fighting had been interrupted when so many of the Striker Force 'Mechs had turned to deal with Zellner's attack, and it hadn't helped that Alex had left his 'Mech to tend to his father. No one was blaming him for that, save possibly himself, but his absence from the battlefield for a critical thirty minutes had kept the Legion from achieving a total victory. The Third Davion Guard 'Mechs thrown back from the encampment by Alex's flank attack had routed into the Guard's Second Battalion, still lying in wait behind Big and Little Round Top for the expected Legion march around that flank. The collision had resulted in a splendid confusion, but by the time a reunited Legion Third Battalion under the command of Major Frye had resumed the tempo of the advance, the broken forces of the Davion battalion had stopped retreating and, their backs against the Round Tops, had been preparing for a last-ditch defense. They'd lost all their artillery and most of their supplies in Alex's attack, but they still mustered more than a full battalion. A head-on attack by the Legion force would have been worse than futile. It would have been suicidal.