“It is. Sir Powers has asked me to feel you out on a formal alliance for the defense of Achernar. His proposal establishes you as ‘a legitimate foreign-auxiliary commander.’ That’s the designation used when competing branches of military service—or foreign militaries—work together on a joint mission.”
It wasn’t formal recognition by Exarch Redburn, Erik noted, but damn close. It elevated his Swordsworn to a politically supported entity at the very least, and the fact that Powers even proposed such an alliance meant only one thing. “The Republic is in bad shape,” he whispered aloud. A political push here, some military action there—how much could the Sphere government stand up under? His uncle had been right all along. Best to salvage what they could. Drawing a reference from the Unfinished Book—or was it the original New Testament?—it was time to render therefore unto Caesar the things which were Caesar’s.
Or, more to the point, they would take back unto Sandoval those worlds which were Sandoval.
“Legate Stempres,” Erik finally said. “Have a message ready to send Powers as soon as his JumpShip arrives in system. You discussed the matter with me but have been unable to secure my official cooperation. Yet. Please attend to that right away.”
“You sound as if you’re in a hurry to be off, Lord Sandoval.”
“I am.” Erik nodded toward his northwest quarry. Visible over a rocky outcropping of pale stone, one could catch the profile of his Hatchetman’s elongated head. “If I push, I can be over the Taibeks with a small force and coming to the aid of the Republic before their own reinforcements arrive.” Engaging lightly, ready to draw back as needed, Erik could seem to be the rescuer and still put very little of his own assets at risk. “It will do well for Powers to see me contributing even without his official sanction. Then, when he sends you to try again, I can—reluctantly–agree.”
“What possible reason can that serve? Why not reluctantly agree now and save yourself the damaged resources?”
But Erik only smiled at the old officer’s lack of political shrewdness, stepped back onto the Warrior’s skid and grabbed a handstrap on the side. He rapped against the ferroglass window for the pilot’s attention. Made a circling motion with his finger. Cut his hand over toward the quarry. The pilot flashed him a thumbs up and throttled the VTOL to life, leaving Stempres behind as they lifted off for the short hop to Erik’s local military compound.
And it wasn’t until they were airborne, far from Stempres’ ears, that Erik answered the legate, his words lost in the beating thunder of the H-9’s rotor blades. “When you are playing Caesar’s game,” he said, “it is always best to cement your alliances.
“Before you take advantage of them.”
Taibek Foothills
Achernar
Raul Ortega had his back to the wall in the moments before Erik Sandoval’s arrival. Or, more to the point, the Steel Wolves had forced his Legionnaire back to the Taibek’s lower foothills.
The battle had started in the Agave Dales, with the Steel Wolves caught trying to loop around River’s End to hit the industrial sector or perhaps moving further afield toward the lower dams near Vera-Stiago. Tassa Kay had chased off after a pair of Demons, stretching their line thin. Raul might have held strong if not for a pair of raiding Visigoths and a new push by conventional forces.
Culled out from the main body of his task force by a solid line of Condors backed by Hauberk battlesuit infantry, Raul managed to keep a Schmitt and a pair of Rangers with him as the Steel Wolves threw into the gap a trio of ’Mechs led by a laser-bearing Blackhawk. The Blackhawk chased after him, pulling a squad of Condors and two SM1 Tank Destroyers with it. Faced with running a deadly gauntlet at the side of the slow-moving Schmitt or trading ground for time, Raul allowed himself to be slowly driven back, waiting for Tassa Kay to fight her way free of two Pack Hunters or for the reinforcements he’d summoned from River’s End to arrive.
That was almost an hour ago.
An hour of standing up under several missile bombardments and being pushed around the Agave Dales by powerful hovercraft. An hour of hit-and-fade tactics that was finally taking its toll. His armor profile didn’t look healthy, and his ammunition supply was red-lit—down into the last half-ton of fifty-millimeter rounds. In the northern Dales Raul had traded one of his Rangers for an SM1 Destroyer—both vehicles shredded into scrap metal and left leaking fuel and the blood of their crews onto the thirsty ground. But even keeping up such tactical victories, in the end the Steel Wolf MechWarrior had more than enough force under his command to outlast Raul.
He watched the Destroyer and half of the Condors power away to the northeast, on another flanking attempt he guessed wrongly. Then an electronic crackle in his ear warned Raul of an incoming transmission. “Republic force, this is Sword-One. Can you use assistance?”
Surprised by the designation, it took Raul several long seconds to recognize Erik Sandoval’s voice. His HUD was dialed in for short-range maneuvers, searching for hidden infantry or stealthy armor, but Raul found the neutral-blue blip of Erik’s force on his long-range sensors.
“All I can get, Sword-One.” Raul’s voice cracked, whether from a lack of moisture or the galling taste of being rescued by Sandoval, he wasn’t certain. He swallowed painfully. “I have more units pulled off to the south, but can’t reach them.”
“I’ve inherited part of your problem,” Sandoval said, his voice growing more serious. “Thanks for the Destroyer! I just lost a convert.” A pause. “Look, get moving. I can hold here and pull back into the Taibeks if it gets too difficult. Go find your people.”
It was still his people and Erik’s, Raul noted, but wasn’t about to question the offer. If Sandoval wanted to play with the Blackhawk, he was welcome to it.
Raul ducked his Legionnaire under the sweeping path of a Condor’s autocannon, centered the vehicle under his crosshairs and spent a precious burst of his limited ammo into its side armor. The Steel Wolf Blackhawk wasn’t about to let Raul get into him for another tank, though, and stalked forward to threaten again with torso lasers and the Streak-equipped missile launchers mounted on either arm. The arcing warheads fell all around and over him, shaking the ground and knocking his Legionnaire with fiery punches.
“Are you trying to draw him after you?” Sandoval yelled. “I can shift his attention toward me if you get moving.”
Raul ordered the VV1 Ranger to lead the way with the Schmitt to follow, but hesitated himself. “Are you sure?”
“You are the hardest people to help,” Sandoval complained. “Go now!”
Not even the Condor hovercraft could keep up with Raul with his Legionnaire at a full run. He turned and throttled up, moving out of the Blackhawk’s reach and trailing after the Schmitt. Reaching its side, he slowed back to a walk and paced the tracked vehicle south.
“This is Ortega. Tassa, where away? We’ve picked up some help, finally.”
“I heard.” Her response came back wreathed in static likely caused by the discharge of her own PPCs. “Middle Dales. No sign of reinforcements and—damn!—I can’t shake these two loose.” She faded from the air for a moment. “They broke us into three pieces. I held out as far north as I could, hoping you would rejoin. But if you’re still up by the foothills, you are a good twenty minutes away.”
Raul measured the distance in his mind. “Ten,” he promised her. Then he ordered the VV1 to blaze a trail for the Schmitt, both of the vehicles taking a roundabout path back toward the base. He throttled up. “I’m at a run and heading your way.”
“I have a bottle if you have glasses,” Tassa said, then cursed again and turned her attention back to the fight.
A lot could happen in ten minutes. In ten seconds, even, on a live battlefield. Raul stomped his way over the rolling Dales, his cockpit swaying dangerously far to each side as he pushed the Legionnaire harder than he should for the uneven terrain. Tassa checked on his progress every few minutes, helped guide him in. Raul smelled fuel and saw smoke before he ever found the
battlefield, running up on a militia Scimitar overturned and burning. From there Tassa knew exactly where he was, and bent her battle toward him to help link up faster.
Tassa Kay had one of her two Condors, a Behemoth and pair of tactical Jessies left at her side when Raul found them. She would push at the Steel Wolf force, and then the pair of Pack Hunters pushed back. The thirty-ton BattleMechs each wielded a PPC and eight General Systems micro lasers. With a top speed of one hundred twenty kilometers per hour and the full energy array, Pack Hunters were designed to harry and pursue and eventually wear down the opposition. With Shandra scout vehicles and Hauberk infantry chasing around in their specially modified Maxim carriers, it was no wonder Tassa couldn’t shake her pursuers.
Raul’s arrival gave them something else to think about. Suddenly the weight seemed to shift into the Republic’s favor.
“Are you feeling sick or something?” Tassa asked him, pulling her Ryoken even with the Legionnaire. “Lay into one of them.”
Easier said than done. Even outmatched, getting a Pack Hunter to hold still long enough for a solid lock wasn’t easy. Also, “I only have about a dozen pulls left in my rotary,” Raul admitted.
“They don’t know that. And you still have lasers. Threaten them if you can’t hurt them! Chase down the left-most Hunter. I have the other.”
Although not in the chain of command, Raul defaulted this time to Tassa’s authority. She had the strongest ’Mech on the field and she had been involved in a cat-and-mouse game with these two Steel Wolves for the better part of the day. He spent more of his precious ammunition at the Pack Hunter she’d assigned him, tried to split it away from its partner.
The other ’Mech reminded him that it had teeth as it sliced a particle cannon across Raul’s left arm, blasting away armor and cutting into the myomer and mechanical joint. The Behemoth saved him further damage by putting a gauss slug just over the Pack Hunter’s shoulder, making the pilot think twice about getting too close.
Able to go one on one with the other enemy BattleMech, Tassa used her jump jets to grab a side-deflection shot. At the height of her arc, she laid into the Hunter with both PPCs. One carved a glassy trail into the ground behind it. Her second shot burned into the Hunter’s leg, spilling a ton of molten armor over the Dales.
Tassa dropped down in between two of the Maxims, staggered back toward Raul’s position with infantry missiles chasing after her, pockmarking her armor with ragged holes.
“Rotten, waddling lilliputaner-nadels!” It sounded German to Raul, and hardly complimentary. Her next few curses he couldn’t begin to place.
“If those were Elementals,” Raul admonished her, “you’d be ripped into shreds right now.”
“If those had been Elementals, I would have taken out the infantry carriers much—blazes!”
Tassa’s Ryoken disappeared from view as fiery explosions blossomed over her head and shoulders and the ground around her exploded in a series of unnatural geysers. Raul knew from recent experience what had caused that, and found the Blackhawk cresting a hill on their near left flank, launching missile spreads from short range.
“Damn Sandoval, you were supposed to hold him up.” He watched as Tassa limped out from underneath the cloud of smoke and debris, her Ryoken stripped down to a walking skeleton. “Jessies on the Hauberk battlesuits. Condor …Six,” he pulled its operations tag out of his HUD code, “distract the Shandras.”
Raul left the Behemoth to its own choice and threw his Legionnaire forward at the Pack Hunters, leaving the Blackhawk in Tassa’s hands. He’d had no time to check Tassa’s status or form any plan more complex than engage and overcome. All he knew was that allowing the Pack Hunters to link up side-by-side with the Blackhawk spelled a complete rout for the militia forces. Tassa’s Ryoken had the only weapons capable of putting the missile-capable ’Mech down quickly. She was either fit to take it, or they were both as good as dead.
Doubting that Tassa wasn’t good enough to cover his back was never an option.
Whatever the two Pack Hunters had expected with the arrival of their larger brethren, it certainly had not been a full-push offensive. Raul’s Legionnaire was just as fast as they were, and given a few second’s lead he covered ground in long strides to set himself between the Hunters and the ’Hawk. His lasers spat ruby arrows at the smaller machines. His rotary autocannon chewed down through his reserve bins as he peppered first one ’Mech with armor-piercing slugs, then the other.
The Behemoth added some misery of its own as it spread missiles from its twin Holly racks over the shoulders of one Hunter.
Tassa had stumbled up into a loping run, shaking off the assault with characteristic speed. Her PPCs stabbed out angrily once, and again. On the second salvo, her beams fused into a single, hard-hitting strike that rocked the Blackhawk back on its heels.
Raul’s Legionnaire shuddered as a PPC cut down through his left leg, slicing through myomer but missing any critical mechanisms. He emptied his rotary’s drum with one last, long pull. Then committed himself to a slow walk forward with lasers still flaring bright, bejeweled energy. He kept one eye on his rear-facing monitor the entire time.
Wading through the Blackhawk’s return fire, shrugging aside more missiles and hard-stabbing lasers, Tassa blasted two, red-tinged wounds across the ’Hawk’s chest and then hit it with the two Streak six-packs she’d held in reserve. A dozen of the wide-bodied missiles burst from their box launchers, drawing gray lines of corkscrewing smoke from her Ryoken to the Steel Wolf BattleMech.
Only two missiles missed, scraping by to either side of the Blackhawk’s head. Half of the rest burst into large fireballs against the ’Mech’s chest, some burning new damage deeper into the engine and gyro housing. A pair of missiles slammed into the bulbous cockpit, cracking ferroglass and no doubt shaking the warrior hard against his restraints.
Raul gave credit for the Blackhawk’s fall to one of the torso-striking missiles, though. The way the entire BattleMech shuddered and drunk-staggered to one side, he knew that it had cracked through the gyro housing to upset the high-speed gyroscopic stabilizers inside. The Blackhawk toppled to one side, burying half of its raptor-like profile in the earth. Tassa stood over it, weapons ready to cook the MechWarrior alive should he try to rise again.
That was enough for the Pack Hunters. The fall of the larger ’Mech, and watching Raul’s slow, purposeful advance, sent them in full flight north. Monitoring them on his HUD, they did not begin to slow down for a good half kilometer. The remaining Steel Wolf armor and infantry followed at only a slightly slower pace.
“You have anything left?” Tassa asked.
“A pair of lasers and maybe an ounce or two of armor.” Raul checked his wire frame, saw that he wasn’t far off the truth. “And if I’m reading my sensors right, our friends just picked up the Blackhawk’s support team.” He counted three Condors and an SM1 Destroyer deploying at the far reach of his sensors, giving the Pack Hunters a secure flank. They must have forced Erik Sandoval back into the Taibeks. Raul supposed he should thank the noble for delaying them as long as he had.
“They aren’t going to stand by and let us drag our trophy back to River’s End, then.” Tassa held her vigil, though, waiting as the Condor glided up and sent two armed guards out to take the fallen MechWarrior prisoner. “Pity,” she said, once the man was secure.
Then she raised up one large, metal-taloned foot and crushed the cockpit into ruin.
Raul had never thought to see someone treat a BattleMech with such disregard for its worth. “Tassa! What are you doing?”
“Sending a message,” she shot back. “If the Steel Wolves are going to keep playing in Achernar’s backyard, they are going to lose toys. Star Colonel Torrent needs to know that it is time to get serious or go home.”
“How do I know you’re hoping he ‘gets serious’?” Raul asked in a resigned voice. Still, he couldn’t help his sharp thrill of excitement at the other MechWarrior’s resolve.
The way he
r Ryoken swiveled around toward him, it was easy for Raul to imagine Tassa staring at him through the ferroglass shield, her head bent quizzically to one side. “If you actually believe that Torrent will just pick up and leave, you are going to be sadly disappointed. Trust me. If he is a Kerensky, then he is not the type to leave empty-handed.” Then she turned to follow after the Condor, slowing only to keep pace with the sluggish Behemoth.
They were still in radio contact, but Raul could tell she meant it as one of her infamous parting shots. “She does that a lot,” he whispered, careful of the voice-activated mic. Then he throttled up for the long walk back to base.
10
Kyle Powers
Achernar Militia Command
Achernar
26 February 3133
“Ortega!”
The corridors at Achernar’s command post bustled with activity as aides and junior officers swept in and out of offices, running errands and putting on their best show of martial diligence for the visiting Knight Errant. Raul was still trying to wake up after a short night of restless sleep, debating between coffee versus the pair of caff-tabs in his pocket, when his former roommate called to him.
Raul Ortega waited outside the briefing room door for Captain Jeffrey McDaniels to catch up. The newly promoted armor officer had opted for dress uniform, making Raul’s utility greens look shabby by comparison. The other man tsked at Raul’s casual dress, brushed some imaginary lint off his own shoulder. Raul smiled and gave his friend a familiar wave—having been recently promoted himself.
“They don’t enforce much discipline among you ’Mech-jocks, do they?” McDaniels had an easy smile and a sharp tongue, two traits that complemented his thick shock of red hair. His pale blue eyes were shot through with red, evidence of another hard night out with the guys. When the going got tough, the Irish went drinking. “Colonel’s pet.”
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