At any rate, her unit now numbered nine. She, the four warriors from Aidan's Star, and the four remaining Trinary warriors. Other surviving personnel—techs and warriors whose 'Mechs were inoperable—were crammed into 'Mech cockpits for transport back to Glory Station, where they might be useful as reserves or support personnel.
Aidan had wanted to suggest leaving behind the techs and the warriors without 'Mechs, to be rescued later. The unit as a whole could move faster without placing extra burdens on the 'Mechs. But Joanna did not ask his opinion, and the dark band prevented him from volunteering advice. So what? he thought. The band, after all, made little difference when dealing with Joanna. She would not listen to advice, no matter who offered it. Once she had decided what the universe was about, it could never be anything else. She had been that way on Ironhold, and seemed to have changed little since then.
Now all the 'Mechs were gathered in a clearing. The vegetation was less dense over this part of the godforsaken jungle, and the night brought some slight illumination from the few stars seen through the canopy overhead. Perhaps the animals of the place were disturbed by the strangers in their midst for there were more sounds of movement among the trees, and chatterings, screeches, and calls seemed to increase rather than settle down for the night.
"Star Commander Jorge," came Joanna's hated voice over the comm, "we have, I believe, accounted for every warrior in the Trinary. Some techs are still among the missing but, well, they are merely techs, after all."
Aidan understood her only too well. By "merely techs," she was saying that they were, most of them, freeborns. And the trueborns among them had failed to qualify as warriors. So they were all expendable, disposable.
"Can you supply me the coordinates of this location so I may plot our journey to Glory Station?" Aidan enjoyed the privilege of remaining silent, awaiting her specific permission. "All right, all right. Respond, Jorge."
"I can transfer the program to your communications system, but I recommend you allow us to guide you and your warriors out. We have traveled this way before. There are many pitfalls, dangers ..."
Her sudden silence entertained Aidan. He pictured Joanna in her cockpit, squirming relentlessly, struggling with herself to give in for once on a point.
"I agree," she finally said. "And Jorge . . . From now on, I give you permission to respond without awaiting my signal in any mission or tactical situation."
How much that concession must have cost her, he thought, and the idea gave him more enjoyment than a triple fusionnaire with a native wine chaser.
His pleasure was short-lived, broken by the distant sound of explosions and the flashes of light suddenly illuminating the jungle canopy.
"Freebirth!" Joanna shouted. Even over the comm, the stridency of her tone came through. "The battle has begun. We must get started. How far is it to Glory Station?"
"About a hundred kilometers."
"And the plain is nearby?"
"The site Kael Pershaw has chosen is ten or twelve kilometers from the station."
"That is too far. Plot our course so that we come out of the swamp on Glory Plain."
"With all due respect, Captain, I think we require some downtime in the station to make repairs and—"
"We have no time to backtrack to the station. We are Clan. It does not matter if our 'Mechs need repair. Considering the many we lost in the crash, I believe destiny has awarded us our present condition."
Aidan wanted to tell Joanna that she was getting carried away, but he held his tongue.
"Kael Pershaw is undermanned," she continued. "His bid is demeaned by Clan Wolf's deceptive strategy. If we are not on the field soon, the battle will be lost. Jorge, you and your unit are bid into the battle, quiaff?"
"Aff."
"I thought that, as you were freeborns, you might have been withheld. You must choose our route to Glory Plain."
"Star Captain Joanna, with all due respect, you just delegated me as your guide out of here. Not only do the 'Mechs need to be checked out, but we should go out into the field fully armed. We do not even know if the weapons systems of your surviving machines are completely operable. Not only that, but—"
Even though Joanna was not speaking, Aidan could sense her busily plotting and relishing her next words. "Star Commander Jorge, you seem to have no taste for combat. I had not thought your dark band was for cowardice."
"It was not. It was for—"
"Then why do you attempt to oppose my order? I propose getting right into battle and not slinking back to Glory Station to lick our wounds. We are fighters, we are warriors. You know all the chants. They do teach the chants to freeborns, do they not? Respond, please."
"They do, Star Captain."
"I see. Perhaps the words are not understood by freebirth filth in the same way we trueborns do. Indeed, for us it is more than mere understanding. We absorb the words that proclaim the bravery of our warriors and the way of the Clans. They become part of our personality, our character. Listen to me, Star Commander Jorge, and do not protest like the freebirth filth you are. Plot our course out of his hellhole. Do you understand?"
"I understand. But there is one order . . . belay that word, one request I must make of you and your warriors."
"Yes?"
"You must power-down your weapons systems, shut them off completely wherever possible."
"Your request mystifies me, Star Commander."
"We are going to be traversing one of the most cluttered terrains in the entire Clan empire. The area we will pass through is more forest than jungle. At times you will be surrounded by trees. A blast from a laser, an idle shot at a spooky shape in the darkness, and the entire forest can be instantly aflame around you. You could be incinerated or turned into a dessicated shell before you could eject. And, if you did manage ejection, chances are you would drop into a severe conflagration. With a battle raging at the other end of our journey, and the odds against us, we cannot afford to lose any more 'Mechs through accidents."
"All right, Jorge. I will give the orders. But when we are in Blood Swamp and can smell the foul stench of the Wolves, we jack them back to full power."
"Agreed."
"What right have you to agree, freeborn filth? The proper response is a mere affirmative, quiaff?"
He suspected she relished his hesitation as much as she liked the sound of her own words. "Aff," he said finally.
As she instructed the contingent to phase down their weapons, Horse's voice came over their private comm-line. "What kind of swamp gas were you emitting there? The whole forest instantly aflame? There's about as much chance of that happening as there is of me becoming ilKhan. The leaves positively drip with moisture, the bark is like sponges."
"I was counting on Joanna's ignorance of the terrain. Her weakness has always been impulsive action. I did not want her to endanger her . . . her command with a rash act, especially since a too-quick trigger finger could—"
"Wait, wait. You know I hate the trashborn and would not mind if they were all enveloped in fire. But I don't believe you are all that concerned about the safety of the command. This is something between you and Star Captain Joanna, isn't it? Isn't it?"
"Please, Horse, no contractions."
"Now I know that something is going on with you. You only get upset about contractions when you go back to seeing yourself as trueborn. You're on your high horse, Jorge. This Joanna has taken over your role and you're looking for revenge. I hear it in every response you give her. And maybe this urge for vengeance goes all the way back to Ironhold, am I right?"
"I just do not want trigger-happy intruders killing wildlife native to—"
"You are reaching for straws. Since when were you so worried about wildlife? You're angry at her for pulling rank. You want to exert control, even if you have to do it secretly. Pull strings from behind the scenes."
"Give it up, Horse. We have a mission here."
"Just don't put the rest of us in jeopardy for your own private vendetta, Jo
rge. We may not have the same genetic brand as you, but we have served you well."
"I know that, Horse. I grant you that I resent Joanna, and I would welcome the chance to get her into the Circle of Equals and crush her this time, but-"
"This time? It has happened before? You two have fought before?"
Aidan recalled the time Joanna had beaten him in an honor duel within the Circle. And suddenly he saw that Horse's speculation was quite accurate. He wanted to avenge that defeat, needed to. There was a moment when, back then, he had vowed that he would. The vow was as good as a Clan oath to him.
"There is no need to discuss this further, Horse. We have a mission."
"I hate it when you turn trashborn."
"I am trashborn and you know it."
"Yes, I know it."
Horse's voice was unusually bitter as he abruptly cut his link to the commline. The one person in the universe Aidan did not want angry at him was Horse. They had been together for so long that, in a skirmish, they acted in concert without communication. They had qualified in the Trial together and had served in the same units since. He would have to make it up to him.
When he thought of Horse as the single person whose approval he needed, Aidan realized that it was not quite true. There was Marthe, too. Since the last time he had seen her on Ironhold, she had, he assumed, risen quickly in the ranks. She was probably a Star Captain by now. She had, after all, entered the warrior caste with two "kills" in her Trial, which started her at a higher rank. Aidan never asked others if they had heard about her and never checked rosters of other Clusters on other worlds for her name. They had grown up together in the sibko, and until Marthe had surged ahead of him in warrior training, had been very close, closer than most sibko members ever became. Joanna would probably know where Marthe was now. But he would have gone on his knees and begged Kael Pershaw for the information before he would ever ask Joanna anything.
12
Star Captain Dwillt Radick's BattleMech, a Viper, surged with power and what he liked to think of as confidence, as the 'Mech's own eagerness to get into battle, an alacrity that duplicated his own. As he settled into the cockpit's command couch for another check of his instrumentation, he called up terrain maps onto his secondary screen. Kael Pershaw's choice of combat site had surprised him. It was a relative flat-land, and except for a swamp into which no Mech-Warrior would take his 'Mech by choice, offered few hiding places. A lot of scrub and large clumps of shaggy bushes dotted the ugly, so-called Glory Plain. This area deserved neither the name of plain nor of Glory. Plains were meant to be magnificent, even majestic—fields of grain moving with the wind, brilliantly green grasslands, open spaces with few civilized interruptions.
From what he knew about Glory, very little of the planet reflected the honorable name given it by some mad cartographer. It was a hellhole where no sensible person would come unless he or she had a damned good reason. The Pershaw gene heritage was just such a reason. The Pershaw line was a solid one that had consistently produced the kind of warriors Clan Wolf respected. No gloryhounds, just heroes with an astonishing victory ratio. Clan Wolf scientists had sifted through Bloodnames from several Clans, and the Pershaw line had checked out as among the most superior. Because neither Radick nor even Mikel Furey was privy to the major goals of Clan Wolf, Radick could only suspect that acquiring genetic strains with a glorious tradition was part of the rumored program to make the Wolves the most powerful of the seventeen existing Clans.
Looking into the distance, Radick saw some hills to the left and Glory Station to the right, but neither landscape was any more interesting than the one before him. Behind the Clan Wolf forces, at the foot of a long slope, began the infamous Blood Swamp. Pershaw's strategy of setting the Clan Wolf forces in front of the swamp had an insidiousness to it that Radick admired. He was not especially eager to fight with a swamp at his back, but it was a drawback he could easily turn to his advantage. He had already given his Cluster a stirring speech about their having so little room behind them because Clan Jade Falcon obviously knew that Clan Wolf would never retreat. The enemy, on the other hand, had plenty of room for retreat, proof of their cowardice. But all that was mere rhetoric. Radick knew that Pershaw and the warriors of the Jade Falcon Clan were brave and famed for tenacity. Pershaw had chosen this troop deployment for some strategic purpose, perhaps related to his already-diminished manpower. Radick had already sent a couple of 'Mechs into the swamp to see what might be gained if he were forced into it. He hoped those scouts could find their way back.
"Star Commander Ward!"
"Yes, sir?"
"What do you make of the Jade Falcon deployment?"
"It is strange. It reminds me of what I have heard of ancient Terran warriors battling in front of city walls."
"Freebirth! You are improvising. City walls, indeed. Kael Pershaw would not know anything of pre-Clan military history."
"As you say, sir. It was merely an observation."
"Instead of observing, calculate. What will be the Jade Falcon's first move?"
"To wait for ours, I expect."
"No, we will wait for him. He is undermanned. It is only fair that we, out of courtesy, allow him the first move. How much time until the battle may commence? "
"Three minutes."
Radick returned his attention to the terrain, trying to find in it a clue to what Kael Pershaw might be up to.
* * *
"Lanja!"
"Yes, sir."
"Time?"
"Two minutes, sir."
"Are your Elementals ready?"
"As always."
"Yes. I need not have asked."
Kael Pershaw was performing his last prebattle checklist. He had stared at charts and screens for hours, it seemed, and no matter how he analyzed and reanalyzed, he did not have good numbers for going up against Clan Wolf. Star Captain Dwillt Radick had the extra Trinary on the field, while Pershaw's was off somewhere beyond Blood Swamp, perhaps twisted in wreckage, or disabled, or lost. And then there was Jorge's Star. Pershaw hated to admit it, but with the impressive enemy array in front of him, he would not mind having that contingent of stinking freebirths in the field right now. Lanja had told him often enough that they were good fighters—a bit unorthodox, but good. Still, he would be happier to be on a planet where there were no freebirth warriors.
"It is almost time, Colonel," Lanja said. "One of my Point says he knows of Dwillt Radick, and that the man will wait for you to make the first move."
"How civilized of him. Our first move, as you call it, must be a majestic one, quiaff?"
"Aff. We await your order. The time is up."
At the same moment Pershaw gave the order, the LRM-equipped 'Mechs in his command sent off a barrage that might have been compared to a similar massive flight of warrior arrows in some ancient battle. Unlike arrows, of course, these missiles were riding invisible beams to their targets. He had ordered half his 'Mechs to fire the long-range missiles at a flat trajectory, while the other half lobbed theirs in a high arc. If nothing else, this forced the Wolves to allocate their anti-missile systems to one group or the other, with the chance that some of the other missiles would hit without being engaged.
Even before any of the missiles had come close to their targets, Lanja—with the bloodcurdling scream that was her trademark—started her three Points of Elementals forward. Fifteen of the armored giants shot up on tongues of flame that would send them toward the Wolf Clan line.
Pershaw watched both tactics on separate screens, his head twisting back and forth to trace the dual actions. As he had expected, many of his LRMs were blown out of the air, sending up a curtain of smoke and debris that partially obscured their direct visuals of the Clan Wolf forces. The low-flying missiles were something else. Countered by the anti-missile systems, their explosions occurred closer to their targets, kicking up dust and boulders, many of which made contact with 'Mech legs, and sometimes higher. Pershaw was satisfied to see some leg armor flyin
g, and he had hopes that these hits were the beginning of attacks that would disable 'Mech limbs.
Seeing one of the salvos make a direct hit without being engaged, Pershaw responded with a satisfied grunt. The Clan Wolf 'Mech had either used all its anti-missile ammunition or been the victim of a malfunction. The hit was not fatal, but large chunks of armor sailed outward, strong walls undergoing the first cracks of the assault.
Under cover of the explosions and smoke, Lanja's Elementals had already gone halfway across the intervening field before any Clan Wolf Elemental had even moved. Radick had bid away so many of his Points that the Jade Falcon infantry was the one battle factor where Pershaw had a slight edge. The Points of Elementals from each side were an awesome sight as they headed toward one another. In their battle suits of super-thick armor plate, they looked like alien beings from some distant corner of the universe. For a face, they had a dark, V-shaped viewport. Their feet were cloven and shod with steel. With no real neck to the suit, their heads looked like mere lumps rising from their shoulders. The right arm ended in the muzzle of a laser; a machine gun was slung under the left forearm. Mounted on the back of the suit was a boxy double-barrelled missile launcher. Bred for height and strength, these Clan infantry were supermen on the field. Clan Wolf's Elementals opened fire first, but the Jade Falcon Points were quick to retaliate. Soon crossfire seemed to weave both sides together, but not a single 'Mech from either side had yet moved.
Time, Kael Pershaw thought, to take the next step in the initiative.
"Charlie Assault Nova," he ordered, "take the right flank."
He had decided to send this detachment from his Trinary Striker Force because it had more than one reason to fight well. It had been Star Commander Bast's unit. Traditionally, units that had lost leaders (Bast had been replaced by Mech Warrior Ersik, whom Pershaw had given a field promotion to Star Commander) fought more fiercely. No one knew whether it was to impress their new commanding officer or to honor the memory of the dead one.
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