"No." Her expression softened then. "I'm sorry, Commander. Pull your people back if you must. But that will force me to pull several companies out of position, and then the Union DropShips will have free reign in several areas."
Marcus recognized the desperation in her eyes. Major Woods felt trapped by her responsibility for the people of Marantha. She had counted on the Angels in her defense plans, and pulling his unit out would mean that, somewhere, something else would have to give. She doesn't want to make that choice, but she's ready to if I force her.
"Got it, Marc." Charlene walked over, stretching the headset's cord to its maximum and ignoring the impatient gestures of the commtech. "The Pinhead spotted the Overlord coming down on the peninsula in a safe zone, maybe three hours southwest of the ordnance depot, depending on 'Mech speed. Apparently they didn't want to try slugging it out with our DropShips."
Marcus couldn't blame them there. The Head of a Pin was as close as a craft could come to the junkyard and still remains in commission, but it was still a Fortress Class ship—well armored and bristling with some heavy weapons. He considered what that might mean as far as the raiders' approach to the depot, then decided that he was still all right. "Does that give us the time to get over there?"
Major Wood started to shake her head, but Charlene jumped back in. "Yes. I have an Ensign Klepper on one channel with a double-lance of Sparrowhawks. He said that each can take one passenger and get us there, if we can handle the Gs."
Before either Angel could make the request, Jericho Ryan snapped to attention before Major Wood. "Ma'am. Auxiliary unit Avanti's Angels requests support by four Sparrowhawk aerospace fighters."
Marcus and Judith Wood locked gazes, mentally probing each other's resolve. Jericho's request had reminded them of the verbal agreement reached back at the administrative building. The major would have to abide by the payment terms, and Marcus would have to do his best to defend the installation. The major nodded once and immediately turned to the map Marcus had lit up. "Can you do it?"
Four Sparrowhawks. The Angels didn't have air cover of their own, but knew how to work with it. Marcus looked over the heavy woods covering most approaches to the ordnance depot. The fighters would only be good against 'Mechs once the raiders broke cover, and then only for the short time it took the Hegemony machines to get into the compound and between buildings. So I have to turn the enemy away from the depot, Marcus thought. Keep them in the open.
And the plan began to come together.
"Okay, Charlie, get Faber back on line. Have him hold back his Marauder, Ki's Archer, Jericho's Griffin, and my Warhammer. Also the Savannah Masters." He stepped back over to the map and located the two hills again. They'll want to swing north, he thought. "Everything else is to deploy just inside the treeline, northwest of the depot behind hill 15-32. Add Jericho's lancemate, the one with the Trebuchet, to the forces being held back." He glanced at Jericho, who nodded acceptance of his deploying her lance into the battle plan. "The deployed units will dampen reactors to minimum power and hold position. Those will be your forces, Charlie. You can get the Jager-Mech out there quick enough after we arrive, but I want them in place and cooled down."
Major Wood eyed him with some concern. "In strategic terms, Commander, that's called splitting your forces before a superior enemy."
"Since when are raiders considered superior?" he shot back with a thin, humorless smile. "Charlie, tell Faber to board all noncoms onto the Heaven Sent, and pull both DropShips back at low altitude to grid 45-350. That should place them about ten klicks from the depot, across Freyja Sound. They'll bring in the reinforcements."
Charlene finished the message then threw the headset back to the technician. "Sparrowhawks are on the pad, waiting for us," she said, already moving for the door.
Jericho caught Marcus by the arm before he could follow. Concern creased her brow, but her voice was only a gentle reminder. "Major Wood can't guarantee reinforcements, Commander."
Marcus smiled. "So she said. But the raiders don't know that, now do they?"
15
Ordnance Depot
Indian Island, Marantha
Magistracy of Canopus
The Periphery
18 May 3058
Demi-Precentor Cameron St. Jamais moved his AWS-9M Awesome forward, the 80-ton machine snapping branches off trees like dried twigs as it passed from the woods. After almost four hours of pushing his way through the peninsula's dense forest growth he was glad to see an end to it. The Overlord had touched down too far away, he knew that now. Fortunately he'd been able to delay the drop of the Union Class vessels appropriately. By now the MAF forces should be too concerned with defense of three major cities to worry about the fate of a few mercenaries. He smiled grimly. Any time now the MAF commander would find out that each city was threatened by only a strengthened lance of six light-to-medium 'Mechs. Far too late to help the Angels.
Eight hundred meters ahead, across a clearing bounded to the north and south by two low hills, St. Jamais could see a section of fencing and some outer buildings that marked the perimeter of the Indian Island Ordnance Depot. His Awesome stood at the edge of the clearing that ran from the edge of the forest toward the depot, bottle-necking between those two hills. To either side of him his Word of Blake raiders were exiting the forest to form a ragged line of battle. Eighteen strong and averaging 60 tons per 'Mech, they were more than enough to take on a mercenary company.
And some of the most advanced designs available, he thought, 'Mechs such as the Shootist and the War Dog making his Awesome seem an old antique. But the Grand Crusader he normally piloted was too closely associated with Word of Blake, just as the other new designs were associated either with the Free Worlds League or the Capellan Confederation, in keeping with the cover-up. And the Awesome was no 'Mech to be taken lightly. With three extended-range PPCs, it wasn't dependent on ammunition and packed one of the hardest punches on the field.
His sensors had already marked five enemy 'Mechs and painted them on his tactical display as red squares with identifying labels. The most dangerous seemed to be a Warhammer-Marauder pair that sat up on the small hill six hundred fifty meters ahead and off-center to the left. An Archer, Trebuchet, and Griffin sat on a similar hill, slightly closer and off-center-right. All the 'Mechs stood within thin stands of trees, motionless. As if waiting for the raiders to obligingly walk right into a crossfire. It took a few long seconds of silent sensors before St. Jamais realized there were no other 'Mechs than these.
Five against a strengthened company of eighteen?
Cameron St. Jamais felt the first twinge of uncertainty. Where were the Angels? According to the intelligence fed them by Word of Blake personnel on Marantha, the mercenary company should have landed here hours ago. And what about the DropShips? Even the nearby hills couldn't have hidden the ten-story height of a Fortress Class vessel. Besides that, the Trebuchet and Griffin didn't fit the BattleMech roster he'd been sent, and both were painted with Magistracy colors.
An old ComStar maxim came to mind as he studied the unexpected situation—Better to take decisive action quickly than hesitate over the perfect response. So if he had somehow missed the mercenaries, Word of Blake could still do some damage to Marantha. He was about to order his raiders forward when almost on signal three azure streams of man-made lightning stabbed out from the Marauder and Warhammer to draw molten lines across Adept-MechWarrior Franklin's Anvil.
At over six hundred meters? That matched the reach of his Awesome Franklin's Anvil staggered back against a massive elm, which was all that saved him from falling, as the 'Mech's right leg had been neatly cut off at the knee by two of the PPC hits. St. Jamais was familiar with the damage charts for the Anvil, and knew such an injury could only be caused by one thing. Clan tech! Perhaps not all the Angels had touched down here, but obviously a few of them had.
St. Jamais felt a warm rush of anger as he triggered his own extended-range PPCs at the Marauder, two of them slicing ac
ross its left torso and arm and the third missing high. Not even the incredible array of new-technology heat sinks his 'Mech carried could shunt away that much output from the 'Mech's fusion generator, and a wave of heat slammed into him with almost physical force.
"All units advance," he ordered as his computer registered the three 'Mechs on the right hill, the trio suddenly firing a combined barrage of eighty long-range missiles.
That kind of firepower, hitting in one area, could cripple a BattleMech; his raiders had to move from under the umbrella of trees.
When his weapons cycled, St. Jamais fired again, risking the heat buildup as all three PPCs hit the Marauder. Rivers of molten steel ran to the ground, two of the energy whips laying the bird-like machine's right leg bare to its titanium-steel skeleton. Heat again flooded the cockpit. Sweat ran into St. Jamais' eyes, making his vision swim for the briefest second. To his right and left, his Word of Blake raiders were moving forward, firing flights of LRMs and probing the defenders with light autocannon and extended-range energy weapons.
The first flight of missiles from the defenders all overshot, detonating harmlessly in the woods behind St. Jamais. He laughed, feeling the touch of Blake on him and his unit. Angels or not, the defenders would be easily crushed.
Then a Rifleman on the far left took a step forward and disappeared in a series of explosions that threw black-scorched turf up in a veil. It staggered back, missing its left foot, spun and crashed to the ground on its right side.
A Night sky, the smallest 'Mech the raiders fielded, with their light machines busy elsewhere, was not even this lucky. Taking advantage of slightly greater speed, it had tried to angle off to the right in hopes of threatening the missile-launching BattleMechs. Several explosions at ground level made it stumble forward and fall flat on its face, and then another series of explosions took off its head and penetrated to the fusion reactor at its heart. The machine disintegrated in a ball of fusion-heated fire, almost as if it never existed.
Mines! The word screamed out in St. Jamais' mind like a curse. He had walked his unit into a rapidly deployed minefield. That meant Thunder loads—specially designed LRM munitions that detonated before impact to scatter smaller submunitions across the terrain. Though Thunders were normally used to deny an enemy key ground during battle, the Angels must have guessed his approach and used the mines to establish a line of death. Even as the thought came, another wave of enemy missiles came pouring at his force. Trying to cut us off! At the thought of his unit being pinned between two rows of mines, St. Jamais changed targets in a desperate bid to keep the trap from closing. He twisted the torso of his Awesome and floated the targeting crosshairs over the Archer. In his haste, only one shot hit.
Knowing how high his heat was running, St. Jamais slapped at the override switch to prevent an automatic shutdown of his fusion engine. Forced into inactivity for a moment, he noticed two new threats blink into existence on his HUD—red squares moving fast along the rear of his battle line. St. Jamais switched over to rearward sensors, which painted the technical profile of two Savannah Masters on his auxiliary screen as they snaked along the edge of the treeline. One of the hovercraft jabbed at the weak back armor of a nearby Grand Dragon, while the other ran in complete defensive posture. A spotter?
The question seemed to hang in his mind as half a hundred missiles rained down on his machine.
* * *
Marcus blinked the sweat from his eyes and gave a shout of defiance inside the Warhammer's cockpit as he and Thomas Faber finished off the Anvil with their second concentrated volley as two other raider machines hit one of the Thunder-mined areas below. The enemy 'Mechs were beginning to slow their advance, some already moving back a few steps toward the treeline and apparent safety.
Arriving with only an hour to spare before the raiders attacked, Marcus and his two companions had powered up and moved quickly out of the depot. Charlene moved further afield to take command of the concealed units to the northwest, while Marcus and Jericho joined the other three on the hills. Per his orders, sent in a coded transmission while en route by Sparrowhawk, the Archer, Tre-buchet, and Griffin had been loaded half with Thunder rounds and half regular. They used almost every last Thunder missile to blanket the area. After the raiders' engaged, the Angels dropped their last few rounds back behind the attacking forces in an effort to unnerve them.
Then the Awesome, the largest raider 'Mech on the field, disappeared under a deadly hail of LRM fire. Thanks to the C3 unit being carried by one of the Savannah Master hovercraft, Ki's Archer accounted for over half of that.
Marcus knew the Awesome wasn't out of the fight— that fearsome 'Mech carried somewhere in the range of fifteen tons of armor. But he could hope for a few minutes of inactivity as the pilot recovered from the battering or, better yet, had to pick himself up from a fall. But then the giant war machine began to lumber forward confidently out of the veil of smoke, and Marcus cursed.
He sent twin lances of PPC fire into the forward-most raider 'Mech, a Shootest braving the Thunder mines in order to get its autocannon into range. The Warhammer's double heat sinks channeled away most of the heat buildup, and an extra flush of coolant through his vest kept Marcus focused. But if the fighting got much closer, he'd be turning to his medium weapons as well, and the heat would start climbing real fast.
Marcus had fully expected the raiders to fall back in the face of his defense. He'd surprised them with liberal use of Thunder munitions and the long reach and heavy damage of the few Clan-tech weapons the Angels had on the field. Two raider machines were down to stay, several more wounded. But as more raider missile fire and lances of energy swept the two hills on which the Angels stood, his worries returned. The raiders still outmassed his small unit by eleven machines and more than six hundred tons. He had to convince them to turn away, to decide that the potential gain wasn't worth the losses even if they could absorb it all.
As if summoned by divine intervention, a new line of destruction stitched its way along the length of the attackers' line, shredding more armor as laser fire stabbed down from the skies. Marcus nodded to himself as he tightened his grip on the Hammer's control sticks. Ensign Keppler and the Sparrowhawks had joined the battle.
Fall back, he thought, trying to press his will against that of the enemy commander. You have to fall back.
Marcus speared the Shootist again, lopping off another two tons of armor from across its blocky torso. But instead of falling or even backing off under the damage, the pilot carefully stepped his machine up to a nearby tree and uprooted it. Even as Marcus watched, the 70-ton machine began to literally sweep a path ahead of it— using the tree to detonate the Thunder mines before the 'Mech could step into them. The effort slowed the 'Mech down, and even caused some lower-leg damage, but it also created a path the others could use without paying such a price.
Marcus exhaled noisily, the sound echoing inside his helmet as he thrust the PPC-arms of his 'Mech forward for another brace of shots at the Shootist. Who were these raiders?
* * *
The second pair of Sparrowhawks began an attacking run on the raiders. They followed in the same line of attack as the first lance, low and straight down the enemy ranks. A mistake, and one the enemy commander made them pay dearly for. As if on cue, almost every missile-carrying raider 'Mech filled the air with long- and short-range missiles. They rose on columns of fire and smoke to throw a screen over the raiders that the light aerospace fighters flew right through.
Ensign Daniels' fighter absorbed the brunt of the attack, a savage brace of LRMs launched by a raider Apollo battering the nose of her craft and shredding her right wing to its internal framework. She fought against the damage, and had almost cleared the gauntlet of devastation when a swarm of SRMs punched through her cockpit and sent an explosion into the heart of her craft.
She was dead long before the fusion reactor lost containment and expanded to gobble up whatever fuel it could find.
* * *
En
sign Keppler would live to regret his mistake.
Daniels had been on the fast track to advancement, already having amassed the 35,000 C-bills necessary to buy a promotion into the Royal Guards on Canopus. When she pulled ahead of him on the attack run, he didn't rein her back in even though he outranked her. Then, when the missiles spread before them in a lethal curtain, he followed the first course of action his mind frantically suggested and slipped over into Daniels' wake to follow her through the hellstorm.
By the time Daniels' Sparrowhawk disintegrated over the far end of the battlefield, Keppler had managed to evade all but the most minor damage to the front and underside of his aerofighter. He never once fired his lasers, too busy performing limited erratic maneuvers— first to throw off the ground fire and then to avoid the pieces flying off the forward Sparrowhawk. Flying in and out of Daniel's jet-wash subjected Keppler's Sparrow-hawk to a beating that made it shimmy so violently it almost tore the control stick from his grasp.
The last hit Keppler took was just after Daniels' craft exploded. A large section of her armor—off the engine cowling, he thought—knifed into his right wing and shattered almost another half-ton of his own armor. As he cleared the debris and rose back up to safer altitudes, he checked his head's-up display. The other two Sparrow-hawks were already back on station, holding high cover over the battlefield, and the amber crosses of four raider aerospace fighters were dropping from the upper atmosphere to engage.
A cold rage settled into Ensign Nathaniel Keppler. Rage over the senseless death of Daniels and the very audacity of the Marian Hegemony to raid his world. He pulled his craft around, back toward the battlefield and gaining altitude.
Double-Blind Page 12
