Double-Blind

by Loren L. Coleman

  "Initial contact. Vanguard reports one lance of mediums." Pause. "Make that two."

  Damn. So much for Rashier's guarantees. Marcus swallowed dryly, the ozone scent and acrid taste of warm circuits scratching at the back of his throat as Ki-Lynn calmly informed him of the presence of raider forces forty minutes sooner than expected. Not good.

  Already the output of his fusion engine, combined with the natural heat of the day, had driven up the temperatures of his cockpit. The Angels had reconfigured the cycling time on all weapons to compensate somewhat for slower heat dissipation, but it wouldn't take more than a few minutes of hard action to spike heat levels into the red.

  Marcus tightened his hold on the Caesar's control sticks, their neoleather grips chafing under his grasp. And we've got to draw this out long enough for Rashier to join up with us. He expertly sidestepped a cleft that might have trapped The Archangel's foot. Think, he commanded himself, and quickly.

  Paula Jacobs and Brandon Corbett comprised the two-'Mech Vanguard element. Jericho Ryan and Chris Jenkins, the last MAF warriors, made up Visitors, a second two-Mech element running parallel to Vanguard out in front, though not swinging out as wide. Both elements were operating as advance scouts, running a few minutes ahead of the Angels' main force on a north-by-northeastern track that was supposed to lead them all up to the border of the city of Shervanis.

  Marcus commanded the main force, a lance of their heaviest BattleMechs already deployed in a ragged line of battle. Ki's Archer, his Caesar, Connor Monroe in Faber's Marauder, and Brian Phillips anchoring the west flank in Marcus' old Warhammer. They made for a solid anchor on which the outriding elements could depend.

  The last two BattleMechs were Charlene's Hawk and Tamara Cross in the Grasshopper. Escorted by The General and his ground troops in three civilian hovercars, they made up the Reserves element running a few kilometers behind. Holding these forces back had been Charlene's addition to the general plan, setting up another delaying action. It seemed now as if they would need it.

  Another twenty klicks further along, according to the plan Marcus and Caliph Rashier had originally worked out, Vanguard could have pulled at least one lance of raiders off to the east to tie up the enemy forces in a game of hide and seek among the maze of narrow arroyos and washouts. If they did that now, it would bog the Angels down here, in the middle of the badlands, with Rashier's forces at least an hour distant north and west—and probably closer to ninety minutes.

  And that was just too far away.

  Marcus opened communications with Ki-Lynn. "Have Vanguard slide off to the west. Repeat, west." It made sense to him. When the reinforcements can't reach you in time, move the fight closer to the reinforcements. "They're to switch to a running game. Swing them toward the rendezvous." Marcus wanted to ask Ki to break radio silence and check on Rashier, but knew that would be risky. Ki's good, but that's still some distance through difficult terrain, and Rashier probably wouldn’t break the silence anyway.

  Forty minutes early. The time hung over his thoughts like a specter, and Marcus fought an urge to kick his 'Mech up into a run. The early appearance of the enemy upset him. What happened? Patrols they didn't know about? Rashier had guaranteed Marcus a close approach. Right about now the Caliph's warriors should be making their first diversionary attacks on the city of Shervanis, attacks intended to keep some of the enemy forces tied up. Now Marcus couldn't even count on that.

  It was every commander's nightmare that no plan survives contact with the enemy.

  Make them react to you. The thought cut through all the useless ruminating. It was a military tactic dating back thousands of years, and basically amounted to making the enemy think you were defeating him. The Angels knew how to do that. Marcus also knew that somewhere far off on either flank were supposed to be the Mech Warriors of the Desert Wind tribe and possibly others. They weren't going to interfere, but they might pick off stragglers.

  "Drake, this is Lyre," he said, calling Ki-Lynn. As usual Ki acted as his filter, though one of his channels was a general frequency that anyone could use to radio him. Marcus referred to it as the panic channel, and voices coming over it heralded bad tidings. "Tell Vanguard to swing a bit wider than planned, and don't be afraid to pour on speed. If they can make any of the raiders fall behind, the tribes might lend us a hand after all." If they actually followed us into the badlands, Marcus thought. And not stayed out in the desert.

  "Copy, Lyre," Ki said, the radio filters stripping away any emotion her naturally calm voice might have allowed. A few seconds later, just as calmly, she said, "The Visitors are falling back, reporting contact with heavy BattleMechs."

  Jericho Ryan and Chris Jenkins. They would fall back on the four-Mech lance Marcus headed, trying to pull faster raiders after them that could then be quickly put down by their six machines. "Call up the Reserves," he ordered. "Place them on hot standby." One of the options the Reserve element gave them was the ability to act in minor what Rashier would do seriously—hitting after the initial engagement to promote confusion. All our players are accounted for, Marcus thought, and our grace-time is all used up.

  The Caesar managed less than two dozen steps before Jericho's BattleMaster and Chris Jenkins' Vulcan swung out of an arroyo not three hundred meters ahead and to the right, running back toward Marcus' lance, which was spread out in a line across the dry basin. After a hundred meters the BattleMaster pivoted back. Marcus leveled the Caesar's right-arm PPC at the arroyo, easing into the shot just as a raider Ostsol ran onto the basin and a Quickdraw skimmed a low rock formation in cover of it. On the far left another pair of raider 'Mechs swung out from behind standing rock columns, trying to engage Brian Phillips in his Warhammer at extreme ranges.

  The computer was busy painting the raider 'Mechs as red squares on the Caesar's tactical screen, as opposed to the blue circles of the Angels, when Marcus identified the greater threat. Triggering his PPC he sent a lance of azure energy streaming at the Quickdraw. In a high-heat environment, missile boats and autocannon had the advantage. The Ostsol depended on lasers, which would run up the raider's heat quickly and ruin its effectiveness.

  With the odds at four against two—or five against two, if he counted Connor Monroe's Marauder traveling at the outer edge of its range against either pair of raiders—one would think the fight a quick one. Marcus knew better. BattleMechs could soak up a lot of damage, which gave the raiders a chance to withdraw or inflict some good damage of their own. Either way, the bulk of the raider force would not be far behind, and the Angels couldn't afford to slug it out, no matter how well they could divide up the enemy.

  The first exchange of heavy fire proved the point well.

  Jericho had also scored against the Quickdraw with a full brace of four medium lasers and her SRMs. Another two hundred meters off to Marcus' left, Connor Monroe had also blasted it with the Marauder's twin PPCs. Ten years ago such a shot would have been impossible for the Marauder, almost six hundred meters distant. Rediscovered technology had extended weapon ranges, though, and the C3 computers slaving the Marauder fire control to Jericho's BattleMaster improved targeting by almost fifty percent.

  Their combined fire slammed into the Quickdraw just as it touched down, vaporizing armor and raising a cloud of molten particles around the raider 'Mech. Unable to keep his balance under the barrage, the raider pilot released a full spread of long- and short-range missiles into the back of Jenkins' still-fleeing Vulcan before falling.

  Even a few missiles could have penetrated the weaker back armor of the Vulcan. And as the Quickdraw lost its footing under the heavy fire, the Vulcan's entire body shuddered and stumbled first to its knees and then went prone. Gyro hit, Marcus thought, his jaw clenched tight enough to ache. The Quickdraw would probably regain its feet faster than Jenkins.

  Marcus swore softly under his breath, then stabbed at the comm switch, opening a line to Visitor element only. "Jenkins, your weapons are in the front of your 'Mech. So's your stronger armor. Get up, dam
mit."

  The Ostsol caused almost as much damage to Marcus' team. The pilot chose Ki's nearby Archer as his target, chewing into her right torso with both large pulse lasers, carving away almost every last ounce of armor protecting her ammunition storage. Ki kept her 'Mech standing and launched a full spread of forty missiles in response. Only a third of them hit, with fully half the missiles detonating prematurely. The effect looked quite minimal.

  Until the Ostsol took another step.

  The premature detonation had littered the ground with Thunder submunitions, effectively mining almost nine hundred square meters of terrain just in front of the Ostsol. The ground itself seemed to explode around the raider 'Mech, hiding it in a veil of smoke and flying dirt. For a moment Marcus dared hope that both raider 'Mechs were down and could be finished off quickly, but then the Ostsol was past the cloud of smoke and debris and still racing on into point-blank range with Ki-Lynn's Archer. The armor on its right leg had been shredded—stripped right down to the ferro-titanium bones of its framework— but it still came.

  Sweat ran down Marcus' face, burning his lips with the taste of salt. He couldn't afford to push his heat so early, and he couldn't squander ammunition for his torso-mounted Gauss rifle. Only sixteen shots, he reminded himself, taking extra time to lock on to the threatening Ostsol. Make each one count.

  The Ostsol pilot wasn't foolish enough to run at high heat before he could close to a range where his medium lasers could tear into his opponent. Marcus counted on that, though Ki-Lynn let fly with another full spread of missiles as soon as possible. This time all forty were the real thing, and over half of them peppered the Ostsol. Armor plates shattered across its entire front, a few missiles digging deeper into its already ruined right leg, though apparently not hitting anything vital. Like a determined juggernaut, the raider 'Mech raced forward.

  In the lower half of the Caesar's left torso, power was pulled into the Gauss rifle capacitors, which would eventually discharge at a much higher rate of energy release than the fusion engine was capable of providing. At full charge, enough power trickled out and to the coils that lined the long barrel to generate a small electromagnetic field. It grabbed onto the nickel-ferrous metal slug loaded into the rifle's breech, polarizing it. Then the capacitors dumped energy into each set of coils successively, accelerating the slug along the barrel and finally forcing it out at a muzzle velocity approaching one thousand meters per second.

  The slug—slightly oblong and given an almost perfect spin from rifling in the barrel—weighed over one hundred kilos and took less than half a second to make contact with the Ostsol's left torso. There it impacted with a force rivaling the largest of BattleMech autocannons, shattering armor like glass and then punching through several internal supports. It ricocheted off the engine's physical shielding, tearing a gash along it that allowed excess heat to bleed through. Finally, its energy nearly spent, it rammed into the Ostsol's anti-missile system ammunition, which exploded with enough force to finish the job of gutting the Ostsol's left torso.

  Marcus never saw the Ostsol hit the ground, for he was already twisting his Caesar's torso back to the left as soon as he saw the AMS ammo cooking off in secondary explosions. The Quickdraw pilot had decided to remain prone, bracing his 'Mech's left against the ground while firing his missiles and right-arm mounted medium laser. Both Jericho and Connor Monroe pumped megajoules of energy into it, with Jericho bearing up under the return fire as she finally backed out of range of its medium weapons. Over the crest of a hill maybe eight hundred meters distant, Marcus counted another three 'Mechs skylining through the air to enter the battle on the basin. On the left flank Brian Phillips was getting desperate as his Warhammer fell back under concentrated fire from four more medium and heavy raider 'Mechs.

  "We need the Reserves up here now," Marcus said. Tying in through the BattleMaster's targeting and tracking system, he was able to get a hard lock onto the Quickdraw and adding to the raider pilot's misery with a new blast of blue-white PPC energy. Ki's acknowledgment of the order came a moment later as she finished off the Ostsol, aided by Chris Jenkins, who'd finally got the Vulcan back on its feet.

  "Have Monroe break off and assist Phillips on the left flank. To all warriors, we're going to pull off toward the west and then swing north, following Vanguard." That put the Warhammer and the Marauder, machines that preferred long-range jousting, to opening the hole they would need. Marcus could see the plan in its overall shape, the tactical implications all worked out in his mind. But each minor aspect worried him as he committed people and machines on little more than gut instinct.

  "This is the commander of the Marian Hegemony forces."

  The voice was low and sinister, even through the electronic filtering, and Marcus instinctively knew it was one practiced for dealing with the enemy on the battlefield. The emotion came through in the pitch and rhythm. Probably has a gentle and soothing voice ready for his own people, Marcus thought.

  "We will accept the surrender of any member of Avanti's Angels. Those who cease fire now will be relocated off-planet with their 'Mechs and allowed to return to Outreach. This is the only offer we will make."

  And extremely generous, Marcus thought as he maneuvered over to support Phillips and Monroe. He didn't believe the man for an instant. It was more than the cultivated voice. The raiders had gone out of their way twice now to bring overwhelming force against the Angels, and been thwarted. They want us dead and buried. The better to keep their secret. He found it difficult to believe the raider commander would make the offer, much less expect the Angels to trust them.

  Made it sound like we have no choice.

  "Marcus." Jericho's voice was disembodied and stripped of most feeling, but he could still hear the distress. Besides Charlie and Ki, she was the only other person with a private channel to him, "Marcus, check out the advancing 'Mechs. The Awesome."

  The Awesome would be the raider commander; Marcus had felt sure of that on Marantha. Why it would bother Jericho he didn't understand, but if the Angels could bring that 'Mech down, it might throw the raiders into disarray. On his HUD Marcus found the Awesome, one of the three 'Mechs approaching from over the hill dead ahead, and punched in a tight visual on his primary monitor. In his mind he was already directing a thrust to bring the assault 'Mech down.

  Those plans died in a wave of horror and shock as the image resolved into the Awesome's broad-shouldered visage.

  Just below the cockpit window was a narrow lip of metal. A deflection plate. In case of catastrophic failure of the fusion-reactor shielding, the plate would direct the blast away from the air immediately over the 'Mech so as not to injure the pilot who might be ejecting. A person stood on that lip, ropes around arms, legs and torso holding him in place. Marcus zoomed in again, losing some definition but still able to recognize the build and general features. Jase Torgensson.

  A quick check showed two more warriors tied just below the cockpits of the 'Mechs flanking the Awesome. Kelsey Chase, and possibly Shannon Christienson, one of Jericho's Mech Warriors. Marcus' numb brain supplied her name as he let the Caesar slow to a halt. He was barely able to comprehend what he was seeing.

  Whoever the raider commander was, he would make sure that at least three Mech Warriors died before any of these 'Mechs were fired on at all.

  40

  The Fringes

  Shaharazad Desert, Astrokaszy

  The Periphery

  11 July 3058

  Heat washed through the cockpit, turning it into a sauna. The air stank of sweat and the acrid ozone-scent of warm electronics. Pulling the Caesar's upper torso around in a violent twist that strained its turret-assembly waist, Marcus scanned the path behind him for any sign of the Orion that had chased him into this maze of standing rock columns and narrow passages.

  The sweeping end-run Marcus organized on first contact with the raiders had allowed the Angels to break away initially. Drawing the raiders after them in a running fight that pulled them all north and w
est—always north and west—the Angels had fought to link up with Caliph Rashier. It had gained them nearly forty minutes. Now, having nearly run out of the badlands and the cover they provided, into what Rashier had called The Fringes, Marcus also felt himself running out of options.

  Around him other members of the Angels fought and ducked among the stone labyrinth, sometimes matched against two raider opponents. Where Marcus could get a target lock he added his assistance with all the hellish blue-white energy from his extended-range PPC. Every few moments his heat buildup forced him to alternate to a trio of medium lasers, as he carefully rode the edge of the yellow band, teetering on the red. He switched just before the heat buildup could begin to seriously hamper his targeting effectiveness.

  The Orion that hunted him labored under no such penalty. Leaning out from behind a wide rock column, it cut loose with its LB-X autocannon again, the round breaking up into smaller fragments that struck The Archangel and scoured armor off like some giant shotgun. One or two plates clanged off the side of the Caesar's protruding head, throwing Marcus against his restraint straps too violently for him to return fire.

  He opened communication with Ki-Lynn. "Where the hell are the Reserves? I wanted them to close up with us ten minutes ago. This Orion is taking me a bite at a time."

  Where the hell was Rashier, for that matter? Marcus wondered again. Ki had been trying to contact the caliph for a good quarter-hour. By now the man should have realized that their plan had been shot to hell by the early arrival of raider forces. Or at least, Marcus trusted that Nihail could puzzle that out.

  As if sensing his thoughts, Ki-Lynn replied to both questions. "Raiders slipped their second lance of light-mediums in behind us," she said, sounding unflappable as ever. "Reserves have reported two Blackjacks causing trouble with Streak-variant short-range missile systems. Still no answer from Rashier."

  Marcus checked the nightmare that had settled over his tactical screen. The passages were so narrow and the rock thick enough to shield magscan that he had only a rough idea of where any of his forces were. Half had been forced out the far northern side of the maze, up onto a plateau—part of an area known as The Fringes. These Fringes might still offer the Angels some basic cover, but beyond them were the flat desert plains where sat Shervanis' city and a few of his protected villages. From what Marcus could tell, maybe only four of the Angels remained in this tight area of the badlands. The battle raged all around him, but far out of his control for the moment.