Blaire nodded perfunctorily. “They could be dropping right on top of us.” He eyed Raul and Tassa, backed them away with a gesture. “Maybe we can resolve this and negate any need for your Ryoken. All right, is there visual feed?” The corporal at communications nodded. “Give it to me on the main screen, and return full audio and visual.”
A six-foot screen snowed to life on the forward wall, quickly filled by Star Colonel Torrent’s visage. A large man, Raul thought, made more impressive as he loomed over the entire command center, with serious brown eyes and a no-nonsense expression masking any true emotion. Standing in front of his own video pickup at a modified parade-rest, he looked like a man totally in control.
“Colonel Isaac Blaire. I am Star Colonel Torrent, of the Kerensky Bloodname. Prefect Kal Radick has decided to move Achernar under his direct protection. I have won the right to carry out his will.”
Blaire was no fool. “Direct protection? Is that his latest euphemism for armed rebellion, Star Colonel, or is it yours?”
Raul’s memory tripped over Torrent’s comment of having won the right to battle. Old Clan protocol, he remembered from his RTC days. Officers bid down to the smallest force needed to take an objective. The lowest bid won the privilege of combat. Kal Radick had kept alive more Clan traditions than anyone had apparently thought.
“Achernar has been reclassified as vital military infrastructure. The uncertain nature of your militia, and the presence of Lord Governor Sandoval’s personal army, warrants Prefect Raddick’s concern. My orders are to take control of the local situation.”
“If you are under the orders of Prefect Radick, then you follow illegal orders and you damn well know it. Lay-gate Stempres has jurisdiction. If he doesn’t like that, Prefect Radick can call for a vote of no-confidence.” Blaire dialed for his command voice. “Stand down, Star Colonel. Return to your JumpShip.”
“My JumpShip has departed,” Torrent said evenly. “I will not require it. We will set down in your Highlake Basin and claim that as our staging area. I accept any offer of uncontested landing.”
Next to him, Raul heard Tassa Kay whisper, “Safcon. He is asking for safe conduct.”
All Raul could think of was the devastated territory of Highlake Basin, a good half-day’s travel or better northwest of River’s End and the military base. He’d never forgotten his last simulated battle, and could see why Torrent might choose that as his base of operations. Good open ground for landing fields, and there would be no covert marches against him.
“You want me to guarantee you uncontested access to Achernar?” Blaire asked, incredulous. “What possible reason would Ah have to grant that?”
Torrent grinned arrogantly. “To limit damage to your own forces. Are you truly prepared to resist me?” He glanced to one side. Raul couldn’t say why, but it felt as if Torrent had just given an order to someone off video.
“Resist? Ah’ll give you hell with a hand grenade, and welcome to it!”
“That is too bad. I hoped for a sensible attitude. I planned for stubbornness. Colonel Blair. With what forces will you defend Achernar?”
Tassa Kay visibly winced and Raul trembled with a cold thrill of adrenaline. This is not happening, he wanted to shout. This only thinks that it’s happening. For all his protestations about serving the Republic and doing an important job, Raul never thought he would see real war. And certainly not between factions of the Republic! Civil war? Staged here on Achernar?
“What forces?” Blaire growled out, completely nonplussed. He calmed himself with visible effort. “I will defend Achernar with everything I can order, scrape together, and call in from outside.”
“All you have set against all I have?” Torrent paused, shrugged. “Bargained well and done.” His video fee cut out with a flash of static, and then light snow once again filled the forward screen.
The finality in Star Colonel Torrent’s words left a new chill washing up Raul’s spine. There had been a dark promise in them. And laughter. Torrent had been far from surprised, as if his plans had already factored in Colonel Blaire’s response.
They had, and Raul learned how not a moment later.
Tension welled up in a surging wave that lifted several voices at once. “Target deviation… IFF transponders are lighting up… we have multiple incoming… Stone’s Blood!”
The wave crested over and struck the command center a heavy blow, shaking the floor and dancing coffee mugs on desks. The large, forward view screen cracked as the entire wall buckled and threatened to cave inward. Lights flickered and several workstations tripped off under surge protection—one blew apart in a cascade of sparks and dancing electricity, peppering the hands and face of a young sergeant with shards of green glass.
Raul caromed off the corner of the comms station, then snatched up an auxiliary headset to keep plugged in as Blaire’s aide-de-camp. Damage control reports flooded the system, but these Raul held off for any hard intelligence that came his way.
The communications tech was ahead of Raul and faster even than Blaire’s tactical officer. “Aerospace fighters!” he warned, fast-switching in between two different frequencies and somehow making sense of both. “Second wave hitting in three… two…”
The floor jumped again, but not so severe this time. Raul dialed in on the corps engineers, found them debating the damage amongst themselves in an almost luncheon-calm discussion. “That was our monorail,” Raul announced for Blaire’s benefit. “We just lost the fast-track system.”
Blaire glared his question at Tactical, who seemed to feel the heat spearing into his back. “We have three confirmed two-craft elements of aerospace fighters making high-speed passes. That’s a full squadron. Third wave in thirty seconds. We have a DropShip… Okinawa-CC… making planetfall right behind the fighter’s flight path.”
An Okinawa-CC? That was a civilian-converted vessel, or supposedly so. Dread chill walked icy fingers up Raul’s spine and he ran to Tactical. It was also the same designation as the DropShip that had been “stuck” in orbit for nearly a week. He reached past one of the technicians, selected the civilian band aerospace traffic control and fed it to his screen. The Okinawa–merchant was gone.
“Sir, Colonel. We’ve been had.” Raul yanked off his headset, turned to Blaire and laid out his findings. “They put forces in orbit five days ago.”
“Okinawa’s can’t carry ’Mechs,” Tactical said. “Fighters only.”
Raul shook his head. “They don’t carry them normally. Any DropShip can ferry BattleMechs, though, if you are willing to stack them in like freight. Or infantry or armor. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“Agreed.” Blaire rounded on Tassa Kay. “You can have your Ryoken hot and walking in five minutes if you’re willing to risk a VTOL. Ah’ll release a Yellow Jacket to get you over to the spaceport. If Lay-gate Stempres agrees to full value in the next five minutes, you will turn the ’Mech over to one of my pilots.” The floor shook again as the next wave strafed some other part of the base. “Otherwise, you are free to engage at your own discretion.”
“Done,” Tassa agreed. “Get me a jeep at the north entrance.” She bolted for the door.
“Ortega, make it happen.”
Raul pulled his headset back on, calling for a ready vehicle from the motor pool and keeping tabs on the Yellow Jacket Gunship that Blaire had asked for. He paced a short path in between the commander and his desk. The room smelled of spilled coffee and fear now, but slowly the trained routine of military preparedness was taking hold in the room.
Then a new strafing run slammed into the building.
Plaster fell out of the ceiling, raining down thick dust and adding premature gray to Raul’s dark hair. He shifted to an active, tactical channel. Heard the report of a wounded enemy fightercraft as base assets finally responded to the attack. “Two VTOLs just crippled an enemy fighter,” he reported. “It’s trailing smoke but still airborne. One VTOL destroyed, one crippled.” He relayed more estimates of damage
and enemy strength as they came in.
“Colonel, we have a MechWarrior down!” the comms tech shouted.
Blaire was beyond surprise or even anger. “Ah don’t even have a MechWarrior in the field yet,” he complained.
“She was on the monorail when it took the hit. They medvaced her to the hospital.”
“You’re just full of good news,” Blaire told the comms tech. “Who is it?”
“MechWarrior DePriest.”
Charal. Not just a random name but someone Raul knew—had known well—was already a victim of the violence. This was getting very real very fast. Raul yanked the headset mic back from his mouth. “Is she all right?”
“Unknown,” the tech told him, then stuttered a quick apology to Colonel Blaire. “No news on her status,” he told the CO.
“Who’s my ready-alert standby this watch and where’s his post?”
Caught up in the moment, trying to juggle three incoming calls and follow the room’s conversation and layout of the building battle all at once, Raul was caught unawares. Blaire’s tactical officer consulted a duty roster on his noteputer, then glanced up sharply. “Sir, it’s Lieutenant Ortega.”
Raul snapped his head around so fast, he tweaked a muscle in his neck. That was right, though. Every second shift he stood in as a back-up MechWarrior or field officer.
Blaire caught him staring. “Ah got to spell it out for you, Lieutenant? Grab some togs, grab a jeep, and grab your ass out to the hangar. Move it!”
Except for nearly slipping in the puddle of spilled coffee next to his desk, Raul couldn’t remember touching the floor as he fled the control center for the long hall outside. His footsteps echoed hollowly in the near-empty corridor, reminding him of distant artillery fire. Tunnel vision focused him on the door at the end of the hall, and it wasn’t until he cracked that and saw daylight that he even remembered the headset he was still wearing. He yanked it off and clipped it to his belt, blinking the bright day out of his eyes and looking around for a vehicle to flag down.
Blaire’s comms tech already had a jeep pulling up and a corporal waving at him, yelling that he should move it or lose it.
On his sprint to the jeep, Raul saw three enemy aerospace fighters flash by to the south on high-speed runs. He clambered into the vehicle, which started with a desperate lunge to get where it was going before a passing pilot decided it made a nice stationary target.
They raced east, toward the BattleMech hangars. Ahead of him, just taking to the air, Raul saw the Yellow Jacket that Blaire had called for Tassa Kay. She would be on the field as well. He might never hear about Dieron, he suddenly realized. And as a strafing fighter tore up the road in front of them with its nose-mounted autocannon, Raul quickly came to realize something more important about live combat.
He might never hear about anything again. Ever.
5
Face of the Enemy
Jagatai Aerospace Fighter
Over Achernar
Prefecture IV, The Republic
16 February 3133
Star Captain Laren Mehta thumbed the firing stud on his joystick. The twelve-centimeter assault cannon mounted into the nose of his Jagatai OmniFighter spat out a long tongue of flame and several hundred rounds of angry metal, laying down a storm of fire that tore through yet another line of monorail tracks. Earth and stone and splinters of metal struts exploded into the air. Then, with a thunderclap of displaced air and the roar of his Zeon 280 engines, Mehta’s Jagatai flashed overhead like some vengeful spirit in search of a new sacrifice.
Already he had claimed a Demon armored vehicle and a very foolish Cyrano pilot who thought the VTOL’s pitiful armor and single large laser could match up against his seventy-ton OmniFighter with its full array of heavy weaponry. Earlier he’d almost caught a Yellow Jacket gunship, until it ditched him by flying low between buildings. One close-in encounter with a JES missile carrier had already convinced him of the danger in chasing VTOLs into ambushes.
Rolling his Jagatai off of its original line of attack and then pulling straight back on the stick, he rocketed up for a bird’s eye view of the base. Behind him, Mehta’s wingman checked his maneuver. Leaving off their nape-of-the-earth runs, they thundered out over the northern stretch, leveled off, and cruised back in for an overview.
When Star Colonel Torrent had approached Mehta with this mission, launching this surprise first strike against Achernar, the Star Captain had resisted. Even when his rank and part in the plans guaranteed him the position of second-in-command, Laren Mehta only saw that he would be second to an un-Bloodnamed warrior; one who wanted to deploy the fightercraft on a ground-strafing assault meant to buy conventional forces a free ride to the planet’s surface.
Kal Radick convinced Mehta of the merits concerning both sore spots. Torrent’s position was easier for the pilot to accommodate, as the MechWarrior officer had twice turned down opportunities to compete for a Bloodname. Such was not unknown among the Clans as young ristars waited for a Bloodname with a long and valiant heritage. Mehta’s own Bloodname had been owned by less than two dozen warriors. Twenty-one, to be exact, dating back to the formation of the Clans some three hundred years before.
With that kind of pedigree, Laren Mehta was destined for leadership.
Which was Prefect Radick’s second argument. As the forward officer, claiming first blood from the enemy, Mehta demonstrated his independence from Torrent. No one was ordering him or his pilots to bomb civilian targets or strafe aerospace craft on the ground. Strategic damage against the base was a necessity, of course. But other than knocking the monorail out of commission and inflicting some basic structural damage, Mehta and his fighters were free to engage targets of opportunity as they presented themselves.
No one would remember the need for their Trojan Horse gambit. Radick promised that Laren Mehta’s codex would reflect only his command independence. For Clan warriors a codex—containing an accounting of their career victories and failures—meant everything.
“Stealthy Paw to Star Captain Mehta. Touchdown complete.” Their DropShip, setting down in the hills northeast of the base. “Ground forces are breaking through. We have sightings on enemy forces both south and several klicks north.”
So Colonel Blaire had finally rallied a response to the Steel Wolf assault. North… could that be the Swordsworn? If Erik Sandoval had force-marched his people over the Taibek Hills, it very well could be.
Mehta squeezed at his throat mic. “Ripper Flight, pull back and cover our brethren around the Stealthy Paw. Blood Flight, link up with Star Commander Orvits and guide them north. Form a shield at our backs, intercept the Swordsworn if they break two klicks.”
No need to respond, Mehta’s flight leaders signified their acceptance of his orders with double-clicks that briefly broke the channel’s background static. Mehta pushed his own craft over and dove for the northeast, his own flight, Fang, making a straight-arrow approach over the River’s Run Flatlands toward the twenty-story plume of smoke and steam that he knew hid the Okinawa–class DropShip. Then he saw the enemy ground forces, led by a dark-painted Legionnaire, and curved down on a soft spiral to come at it from an oblique angle.
“Incoming, incoming. Angel’s three. Republic Guard has scrambled four—four!—fighters and a squadron of attack VTOLs.”
Leveling off at three hundred meters, Mehta had just picked up a distance-lock on the Legionnaire when Star Commander Xera of Ripper Flight called in the spot on Blaire’s fightercraft. Mehta’s wingman moved up to safeguard his port side, buying the Star Captain time to take one stab with lasers at the lumbering Legionnaire below. One of the ruby lances scored an angry cut into the BattleMech’s leg and then Mehta yanked back on the stick, once again clawing for air.
Two elements of aerospace fighters dove down on the Clan warriors with the fury of angered hornets. A mixed flight of F90 and F92 Stingrays paired off, leaving an element of heavy Rapiers anchoring their line. The Clan OmniFighters rose to meet them, weapons reach
ing out ahead to peel back paint and armor from the local defenders. One Stingray took a gauss slug directly into the cockpit, gutting the control section and leaving the pilot as little more than a smear over the back fuselage. The fighter rolled over out of control, falling for the budding battle between ground forces.
Laren Mehta wished he could take credit for such a handsome shot, but gave credit where it was due. “High marks, Pilot Sascha.”
A rattle of autocannon fire skipped tracers off the forward spar of his port wing. Mehta rolled, but not before a half dozen holes popped through his armor like exploding blisters. He rolled out again, just for good measure. Then he was through the line of descending fighters, locking his sights on the lead Rapier that he knew would be the enemy wing officer’s stick.
Sometimes the locals made it all too easy.
Agave Dales
Achernar
At the controls of his Hatchetman, Erik Sandoval-Groell swiped the BattleMech’s large, titanium blade at a passing Shandra. Missed. His targeting computer more than compensated for the scout vehicle’s high speed, however, and in the next instant he had tracked a stream of autocannon fire in toward its ridged tires. The slugs chopped into steel-threaded rubber and armored supports, cutting free the middle tire and sending it bouncing over the smooth rolls of Agave Dales. The Shandra slid sideways, recovered, and then quickly dodged behind a small hill to escape the ’Mech which probed after it with extended-range medium lasers.
Heat washed through his cockpit as the laser’s energy draw spiked demand from the BattleMech’s fusion reactor. Circulation fans pulled it away quickly, though, as the power level settled back into the green band. It hardly broke a sweat over Erik’s forehead. Still, he was not about to let the daring crew off so easily.
“Sergeant Bosley, there is a Shandra coming up fast on your flank.” If he was correct in placing his Gnome battle armor, in fact, the Shandra would be driving right into their waiting arms. “Weak right side. Finish it.”
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