Malicious intent

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Well, I guess that means I can take care of a month of luncheons and dinners before I go." The Prince sat back down at his desk. "And make sure that month is full of 'Mech simulator sessions and actual training runs for me."

  Jerry smiled. "In a two-to-one ratio?"

  "At the very least, Jerry, at the very least."

  14

  DropShip Lobo Negro Outbound from Wotan

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone 10 January 3058

  The cabin he'd been assigned aboard the Lobo Negro as senior Khan of the Wolves felt to Vlad as if it still belonged to Ulric Kerensky. He haunts this place. The spartan furnishings, the scant few mementos of a life glorious in service to the Clans—everything seemed to press in on him, but less because it reminded him of Ulric than because it reminded him of what Ulric had left him.

  As the Wolves had headed out for the last battles in their war against the Jade Falcons, Ulric had entrusted Vlad with the future of the Clan. He bequeathed it to me. Vlad had told Ulric that if the Wolves lost and the ComStar truce were repudiated, he would take the Wolves and race ahead of the other Clans, taking Terra and fulfilling the whole purpose for the invasion in the first place.

  Ulric had replied, "I think it would be best for all if you die here with me today."

  And I almost did—as did our Clan.

  At the time he spoke, Ulric knew Vlad could never have succeeded in such a plan. He had seen the troop strengths of the remaining Wolf units. Whole Battle Clusters had been wiped out. Galaxies were filled with broken 'Mechs and mangled pilots. Many of the best and brightest had fallen—especially those who espoused Crusader views—while others had followed Khan Phelan into the Inner Sphere. And took ten percent of our warriors with them.

  Ulric's intention had obviously been to form a Clan colony within the Inner Sphere. Just as obviously he'd intended to leave a shattered Clan behind. Ulric had believed that Vlad would take the survivors and follow Phelan into the realm of the enemy. The dominant Wolves would be Wardens, and would be opposing the Clans from without rather than within.

  Ulric's jihad against the Jade Falcons had been very successful, but the price had been grievous. The numbers had begun to trickle in from the bits and pieces of units scattered all along the attack corridors Ulric and Natasha Kerensky had used to devastate the Jade Falcons. At best a Galaxy and a half of combat-ready Wolves existed, and that was only if Vlad suffered the indignity of counting solahma bandit-hunters as line units.

  The paucity of warriors left to his Clan recalled to mind Martha Pryde's comments to him. In such a weakened condition, Clan Wolf would be a logical target for a true Trial of Absorption. The fact that Ulric's war had been mostly waged on Jade Falcon planets meant that the Wolf holdings in the occupation zone were quite attractive. If Vlad could not defend them, other Clans would take those worlds, leaving no hope of the Wolves ever becoming dominant again.

  Vlad walked around Ulric's desk and sat in the canvas campaign chair from which he had been lectured on so many occasions. It was too much to expect that Ulric's wisdom would be inherited by whoever took his place. Even so, something about the spare surroundings seemed to help Vlad sort out and organize his thoughts.

  His first problem seemed very clear—he needed to rebuild the Wolf warrior caste to fill the void left by the dead or defected. Though many of the most promising sibkos had gone into exile with Phelan, enough of the sibling-companies remained to guarantee a future supply of warriors. Expanding the breeding program would create more sibkos, and screening the current sibkos for precocious warriors would get some new blood into 'Mechs more quickly. Recalling warriors who were training sibkos to active duty would hurt the training program in the short term, but he needed bodies quickly.

  The possibility of adopting likely candidates from the Clan's lower castes into the warrior caste occurred to him, but Vlad almost rejected it out of hand. He had a warrior's distrust of and distaste for the martial abilities of anyone—any freebirth—born outside the Clan's breeding program. The fact that Phelan had been a freebirth heightened his hatred for freeborns, but he stopped short of allowing emotions to close an avenue of opportunity for him.

  I need bodies. The obvious place from which to pull reinforcements for his line units was from the various units garrisoning worlds the Wolves had conquered. But doing that would mean losing control of those planets unless he could find troop replacements. Much as he disliked the idea, Vlad realized he would have to start recruiting from the lower castes in massive numbers to release his best warriors for use in his line units.

  All that would help the Wolves recover a year or two from now, but Vlad's second problem demanded an immediate solution. When the Grand Council met again, some Clan or other would request a Trial of Absorption directed at the Wolves. Such Trials had been granted only twice in the past because in all the other cases the weakened Clan had been able to muster a show of defiance that impressed the other Clans enough to buy them time.

  To sit back and prepare to defend his holdings would only invite assault—no matter how costly it might be for the attacking Clan. We are warriors. To be passive is to deserve absorption. Though preparing to defend his holdings would make the absorbing Clan pay dearly—as the Widowmakers had done with the Wolves long ago—his efforts would not stop the Wolves from vanishing for all time.

  Vlad realized that boldness was the only real hope of preserving his Clan. He had to gather what few military assets he had and strike out at another Clan. And he would have to hit hard so his prey would have no doubt the Wolves still had very sharp teeth. He would also have to wound their honor enough that they would bid hard to win the right to a Trial of Absorption. If he chose his target well, they might even bid away too much to win the right to absorb the Wolves, then be unable to conquer him.

  The choice of target was crucial and he knew it. He also knew it had to be one of the invading Clans. The other Clans, by dint of the fact that they had not won the right to invade, were really beneath his notice. To prey on any of them might even be interpreted as a sign of weakness.

  The Clan he attacked must be haughty and full of itself. The Jade Falcons immediately came to mind, especially as the shame of hegira still burned in his heart. But he rejected the idea most instantly because the strike against the Falcons would only further weaken both Clans. Though Vlad had no love for the Falcons, they would not be the most inviting target for Absorption.

  The other Clan that filled the bill had the added benefit of being another old foe of the Wolves. The Smoke Jaguars and the Wolves had been rivals almost from the start, and the fact that a Wolf had replaced a Smoke Jaguar as ilKhan still ate at the Jaguars. More important, the Smoke Jaguars were solidly tied up fighting against the Draconis Combine, so they would be in a poor position to strike back at him.

  And a strike against them would remind Lincoln Osis that I am his peer, not someone he can command.

  The fact that the Ghost Bear Occupation Zone lay between the Wolves and the Smoke Jaguars also worked in Vlad's favor. He would not tell the Bears what he was going to do until after it was done. They would protest, but the Bears and the Wolves had been allies for as long as the Wolves and the Jaguars had hated each other. Though Vlad might have to make some concession to them, the Bears would fight against a Smoke Jaguar incursion into their space.

  The Jaguars would be honor-bound to demand the right to absorb the Wolves. Others would dispute that right because allowing the Jaguars to absorb the Wolves would result in joining two of the most powerful Clans. That would make the outcome of the invasion a foregone conclusion, and none of the other Clans wanted to see the Smoke Jaguars elevated over them.

  Vlad smiled to himself. "The Smoke Jaguars it shall be, then. Is that what you would have done, Ulric?" Vlad did not really believe in shades of the dead speaking to the living, but the heavy silence of the cabin seemed its own answer. "Then, without objection, here and now begins the rebirth of the Wolves. The goal from which you shied, Ulric,
is now mine to realize."

  15

  ComStar Military Headquarters Sandhurst Military Academy, Berkshire

  British Isles, Terra

  20 January 3058

  Precentor Lisa Koenigs-Cober grunted with the impact of the panels against her back as her Quickdraw jetted up into the air on an argent trident of fire. Though she was seated in a simulator at Sandhurst Military Academy while the rest of the Terran Defense Force and the Twenty-first Centauri Lancers were using simulators in the complex at Salina, Kansas, the experience felt as real to her as if she were back in battle on Tukayyid. Had she stabbed her feet down that forcefully on the jump jet pedals in combat, inertia would have jammed her down hard into her command couch—and the panels in the back of the simulator's couch reminded her of that fact in the most firm manner possible.

  Her BattleMech shot skyward as the ground beneath it exploded. A rising fireball toasted her 'Mech's legs, but the auxiliary monitor showed no damage. There's a miracle. Had I stayed down, that salvo of long-range missiles would have ripped me to pieces. Even though the damage would have all been in the form of zeroes and ones in the memory of a computer, she wanted to avoid it as much as if it were exacted in blood and bone.

  The salvo had come from the far side of a line of hills. She knew a company of the Lancers had to be dug in on the reverse slope, but prior to cloudscraping she'd had no clue where they were located. As her Quickdraw reached the apex of its jump, she saw the irregular trench gouged out of the earth, and as much as it spelled trouble for her command, she knew there was a more immediate danger to her people.

  They have a spotter calling in missile strikes by the Archers and Catapults in that ditch. Where? She punched her holographic image of the battlefield over from magnetic resonance scanning to ultraviolet. Two tiny lines, dark against the gold of the grassy prairie, met at a point further out along the foot of the hills. The spotter, using an ultraviolet laser, had marked her 'Mech, then used another UVL to relay the targeting data to the 'Mechs waiting to ambush her people.

  "T-Def One to all units. Alpha Company, lay down suppressive LRM fire in and around grid coordinate 323,455. Beta and Gamma Companies, turn to heading 37.5, spread and move to speed. They're beyond the rise."

  Feathering the jump-jet pedals, Lisa brought her Quickdraw to ground about a hundred meters in front of where she'd been before. Her 'Mech squatted as the thick myomer bundles absorbed the force of the landing. As it straightened back up to its ten-meter height, her Alpha Company's LRMs arced up overhead. A kilometer down-range they obliterated the target grid-sector and all eight that touched it.

  The computer created a firestorm over where the Lancers' spotter had been. Beta and Gamma Companies were already charging across the open area toward the hills, and Alpha Company had begun to follow them. Alpha would hang back and direct suppressive fire at Lancer targets as Beta and Gamma requested it, providing an umbrella beneath which the Striker and Close Assault Companies in One Battalion could operate most effectively. Now that's the way a unit is supposed to work.

  She brought her Quickdraw up to 40 kph, switched her display back to vislight, and started to follow Gamma Company as it cut around the end of the hills to flank the Lancers. Fear began to knot in her belly, but it wasn't the same dread she'd experienced when facing the Clans. That had been almost crippling, but she'd fought through it because the Clans had to be stopped. Back then, the fear had been born of death and failure.

  Now embarrassment gave it birth.

  The Twenty-first Centauri Lancers had been performing very well in their orientation exercises. The results hadn't bothered her at first, largely because the Precentor Martial had lately begun rotating green troops in to the Terran Defense Force from Tukayyid. She'd put the dismal performance of the Com Guard units down to fatigue from the travel to Terra, plus the fact that many commanders were still becoming familiar with their new personnel.

  Things still weren't going well for her people, hence her decision to join them in a series of exercises. In this, the third operation she'd participated in, her troops had begun to perform at levels she'd expect from Com Guard units. In the first two, they'd been tentative, but they were following the lead of their commanders who, in turn, were uneasy about being watched by their boss. The Lancers had dealt with them rather handily in those engagements.

  Lisa came around the hill and found a valley full of fire and smoke. Gamma Company had broken itself down into a trio of 'Mech lances that poured fire into the Lancer position. The mercenaries, while dug in, took fire from Beta Company as it came over the rise and Gamma as it came in on the flank, which gave them far too many targets to ever fight off effectively.

  Scarlet laser darts burned into the head of a Lancer Crusader, then a PPCs blue beam impaled the cockpit viewport. The Cyclopean 'Mech pitched backward as the computers cut off all input from the pilot's simulator pod. Black smoke billowed up from the ruined face as the Crusader smashed into a flat-headed Thunderbolt, and both of them went down.

  To her right a Com Guard Centurion reeled back from the Lancer line. The armor had been stripped from both legs, and the left one had lost everything below the knee. The pilot fought valiantly to keep the 50-ton 'Mech upright. A half-dozen short-range missiles plowed into its damaged back, blasting away armor. The added destruction and explosions were enough to knock the Centurion forward, sending it crashing down unceremoniously on its face.

  Lisa stepped her Quickdraw into the breach created by the 'Mech's destruction. Catching a glimpse of the Wolverine that had finished it off, she dropped the red cross hairs onto its broad silhouette. As the targeting cross went green, she triggered her two medium lasers and let loose with her one-shot SRM launcher.

  The ruby lasers sliced chunks of armor from the Wolverine's right thigh and flank. Spiraling in on the Lancer 'Mech, two of the missiles hit one each of the 'Mech's arms, another its left knee joint, and the last slammed into the Wolverine's cockpit. That last missile, which flaked armor from the 'Mech's head, caused more trouble than damage as the pilot shied and the Wolverine took a step back. .

  Lisa winced. On a head hit, the simulator pods tended to shake a pilot around like a bug in a jar. She kept her cross hairs on the Wolverine and fired again without giving the pilot any chance to recover. Lisa knew that even though her Quickdraw massed five tons more than the Wolverine, she was undergunned and underarmored for a slugging match at this range.

  The spears of laser light boiled armor off the Wolverine's left arm and flank, but she didn't like the way her shots had scattered all over the target. Though she'd begun to nibble away at the armor in a half-dozen spots, only being able to employ two medium lasers meant she'd be all day picking the 'Mech apart.

  The Wolverine settled back on its heels, but managed to bring its weapons to bear. The ball-turret on the 'Mech's head whipped around, and the pilot fired a salvo of scarlet energy needles from the pulse laser, blasting the Quickdraw's SRM launch pod to smithereens. Warning sirens sounded in the cockpit and the auxiliary monitor showed damage to the midline armor on the 'Mech's chest.

  Pressing the attack, the Wolverine's pistol-like autocannon lipped flame and spat out a hail of projectiles that chipped armor from the Quickdraw's arm. Its left-shoulder SRM launcher blossomed fire as it spat out a half-dozen missiles. All six hit, peppering the Quickdraw's torso and left arm with a chain of explosions.

  First, the simulator pod -shot backward, then began twisting slightly to the right. When the missiles hit, it whipped hard to the left. Little tremors coming up through the command couch felt exactly like the heavy footfalls of a 'Mech fighting to stay up. Lisa threw herself forward against the restraining straps, then pushed off against the left arm of the command couch to twist her body to the right.

  The neurohelmet she wore translated her moves and sense of balance into computer commands the Quickdraw's control unit could understand. The computer shunted energy from the fusion engine to power converters. From there electrica
l impulses contracted and relaxed the various myomer-fiber bundles that served the 'Mech as muscles. Limbs shifted, feet dug in, and the 'Mech remained upright despite being the target of an assault that would have utterly razed a city block.

  Lisa's lasers burned back at the Wolverine. The first slashed a molten scar down the 'Mech's breastbone, burning a path through the colorful blue and silver marking the Lancers used to decorate their 'Mechs. The second struck the 'Mech's head, vaporizing several layers of armor. The computer controlling the simulation made the armor gush down in steaming sheets over the 'Mech's shoulders.

  Another head shot and he could go down hard like that Crusader did.

  Before Lisa had a chance to line up more shots, another Com Guard 'Mech stepped between her Quickdraw and the Wolverine. She watched the Wolverine pilot making an effort to withdraw as the smoke cleared and he identified the 'Mech shielding her.

  Precentor Victor Kodis's Hunchback had been designed especially for just this kind of close-in brawling. The boxy autocannon on its right shoulder vomited a gout of fire, the 'Mech twisting with the recoil. The stream of depleted-uranium shells it fired devoured the remaining armor over the Wolverine's center torso, opening a gaping wound that revealed the ferrotitanium structural supports that were the 'Mech's skeleton.

  As the Hunchback's left-arm pulse laser melted armor on the left side of the Wolverine's torso, Lisa waited for the 'Mech to go down. That much damage almost always sends a 'Mech to the ground.

  The Wolverine stayed on its feet.

  It even fired back.

  Four SRMs hammered the Hunchback, one missile hitting the 'Mech in the head and the remaining trio shattering armor on the left arm. The autocannon clicked over into rapid-fire mode, doubling the number of shots, and sawing through half the armor on the Hunchback's left leg. The Wolverine's pulse laser bubbled armor off the Hunchback's chest and, to Lisa's horror, sent the smaller 'Mech to the ground.