Fortress of Lies

by J. Steven York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Fortress of Lies

  A Roc Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2004 by WizKids, LLC

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-7865-4418-X

  A ROC BOOK®

  Roc Books first published by The Roc Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ROC and the “R” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: January, 2004

  1

  Aloha Agricultural District

  Glastonbury continent, New Aragon

  Prefecture V, The Republic of the Sphere

  1 September 3134

  The bombs fell on New Aragon, their shock waves sending out ghostly rings of tortured air. Aerospace fighters streaked overhead, black arrows against a red sky, bloody with the smoke and dust of three weeks of unending battle.

  The ground was pocked with craters, the huge footprints of forty-ton BattleMechs and lined with tracks recording armored battles decided days before. In the near distance, wrecked tanks smoldered, trailing black smoke. Crushed battle-armor lay scattered on the raw earth like broken eggshells, black jelly that might once have been men oozing through the cracked metal.

  Thankfully, Erik Sandoval could not smell the battlefield in the filtered air of his cockpit. Only the stink of his own sweat, the ozone smell of overheated circuitry, and the tang of hot metal reached his nostrils.

  This, reflected Erik, was the terrible beauty of war. The unspeakable wonder, the sights that could never be forgotten, burned into the brain to emerge in the nightmares of old men and women—those who were foolish enough, or unlucky enough, to live that long.

  Such was the loss of perspective that came from thirty-three days spent primarily in the cockpit of a ’Mech, striding high above the battlefield. It came from watching lesser combatants scrambling ahead, from forgetting your humanity, and simply becoming a walking, twelve-meter-tall engine of destruction, facing more targets than you can shoot—more targets than you have time to chase down or ammo to kill. Small targets that shoot back, sometimes with enough force to sting even a mighty BattleMech. Small targets that, if a MechWarrior got sloppy or inattentive or simply overwhelmed, could even kill him.

  A movement caught Erik’s eye, and he pivoted his Centurion, gyros whining. The weakened left leg, damaged in a brawl with a modified MinerMech three days earlier, caused his humanoid ’Mech to limp slightly. In the distance, the upright insect form of a green and gold Spider BattleMech strode from behind a hill—a shaft of sunlight glancing off its bubble cockpit, carbon scoring streaking its extended wings. It moved rapidly to Erik’s right, perhaps not seeing him. He zoomed in with his optics, placed his targeting reticles over the exposed flank and squeezed off a laser burst.

  There was a flash, and a jagged streak of molten armor appeared across the Spider’s right shoulder. A hiss of disappointment escaped Erik’s lips. He’d been aiming for the damaged lower torso, hoping for a critical hit on the reactor. A week earlier he might not have missed, but such subtleties of battle were for fresher warriors and fresher ’Mechs. At this range, he knew he should have been glad to get a hit at all.

  The Spider whirled and began running backward, lasers flashing with return fire—a clean miss—the House Liao pilot perhaps rattled by the unexpected attack. The ’Mech spun again and sprinted away from Erik. The broad wings sprouting from the ’Mech’s shoulders presented a tempting target, but Erik knew where the machine’s critical systems were hidden—knew the distinction between an easy shot and a victorious one.

  He considered following up with a missile before remembering that his tubes were empty. He’d been leading his formation back to the command DropShip for resupply, repair, and perhaps a warm meal and a few minutes of fitful sleep. That would have to wait now.

  So would the kill shot. The Spider was fast. He had to slow it down if he hoped to do more significant damage. Erik thumbed back to his lasers, targeted, fired another shot. A flash against the Spider’s lower right leg left glowing traces but did only superficial damage. The Spider fired its jump jets, staggering into the air from amid a cloud of plasma-blasted debris. It managed to make it to the top of the nearest hill before the jets flickered and died, dropping it heavily to the ground. The ’Mech stumbled, and for a moment Erik thought it would fall. Then it got its footing and vanished over the hill. He instinctively reached to shove the throttle forward and give chase.

  “Commander.”

  The Spider was fast, but given its damage, and possibly disabled jump jets, he should be able to overtake it.

  “Commander.”

  After weeks of hard-pressed fighting, the forces of House Liao were on the run. In the far distance, a dark sphere rose over the horizon, trailing a column of almost blindingly brilliant fire. It was another Mule- class DropShip fleeing New Aragon. Targets, once lined up from horizon to horizon, were now hard to find. This might be his last chance to take down a ’Mech before—

  “Erik!”

  He blinked and ran his tongue across his dry and cracked lips, feeling the edge of the day-old stubble growing above them. He blinked again, rewinding the last few moments in his brain, finally recognizing the voice crackling in his headset.

  “Captain Cutler?”

  “Begging pardon, sir, you’re ranging awfully far forward of the formation. We can’t offer much cover for you back here.”

  “Cover?”

  “Yes, sir. The patrol is spread out pretty far, and we can’t watch your six and protect our armor at the same time. Can you give us a few minutes to close up?”

  “Formation.” He took a deep breath, shook off the tunnel vision that had locked his entire being on the fleeing Spider. “Sure, Hank. He’s too badly damaged to be worth the chase. Besides, he’s doubtless forming up with some friends. I’m out of missiles and too hot for that kind of skirmish.”

  “Yes, sir. Here come the bikes.”

  A pair of hoverbikes flashed by on either side, curving in front of him to pass each other and begin counterrotating orbits around his position. They were ungainly-looking things, but fast and hard to hit, capable of lightning in-and-out harassment attacks on an enemy. One of the riders flashed a quick salute as he zoomed in front of Erik’s ’Mech.

  A moment later they were joined by two squads of Purifier battle armor arching in gracefully on jump jets. They settled in front of him like a flight of tan-and-green wasps, leaving just enough of a gap in their formation so he could move past them, if necessary, without trampling them under his ’Mech’s thundering feet.

  The wheeled and tracked vehicles would be farther back, he knew, still scrambling to catch up, another squad of Purifier battle armor guarding their flanks. He looked at the hill where he’d last seen the Spider and sighed.

  This was modern war. There had been a time, long before he was born, when countless ’Mechs would have ruled the battlef
ield, when two ’Mechs meeting in combat would have squared off, like colossal gladiators, for a fight to the death.

  That day was gone. Once he had established The Republic of the Sphere, Devlin Stone had done his best to create a state based more on commerce than on warfare. He had never been entirely successful, but during his tenure as Exarch, many BattleMechs had been decommissioned or scrapped, and even the capacity to manufacture replacements had nearly been lost. Now ’Mechs were rare, too precious to send out alone, vastly outnumbered by more conventional armor, attack vehicles, and infantry. Now a Mech Warrior, even a commander, had to think like a team player, trusting others to watch his back and compensate for his valuable ’Mech’s few weaknesses.

  Erik dreamed wistfully of those lost times and wished he could have lived then, when MechWarriors were royalty, needing to trust only themselves, fully in control of their own destinies. But that was then.

  ’Mechs and their pilots were still the kings of the battlefield, for their relative scarcity. But there was a subtle change in how they were treated. Now the tankers and infantrymen knew that battles were rarely won by ’Mechs alone, and with this knowledge came a growing sense of their own importance. A few, when well lubricated with liquor and when they thought they were out of earshot of any MechWarrior, would even voice the idea that they didn’t need ’Mechs at all.

  It was a foolish notion, of course, though perhaps only a little more foolish than pining for days long gone. For the foreseeable future, winning battles would require a balance of forces, each playing their role. Even as Erik was nostalgic for the old times, he was a realist. These men and women who entered the battlefield without the awesome armor and firepower of a ’Mech well deserved his respect.

  To Erik’s mind, the military was a unique social order. While there was a clearly defined chain of command, in a sense all warriors were, on some level, equals. They had all paid their dues of danger, pain, and fear. They had stood together, literally or figuratively, shoulder-to-shoulder on the field of life and death.

  Even the greenest and most untested recruits had pledged their lives to that service, and the smell of death waited for them up the road. There was a brotherhood and sisterhood of arms that no civilian could ever really understand. From the lowest private to a battle commander, they were bound by blood.

  Yet it was from the role of commander that Erik now saw this war against the Liao incursion, and it chafed at him. He longed not just for the days of old, but the freedom to fight as a true warrior. If ’Mechs were too rare to risk alone on the battlefield, his status made him even less expendable. He did not hold himself apart from the men and women under his command—not at all. Rather, he was held apart from them.

  Erik checked his heading back to the DropShip, and started a wide turn that the formation would find easier to follow. A row of cracking noises worked their way up the side of his ’Mech, from waist to shoulders, the last making a loud report against the ferro-glass canopy next to his head.

  Small-arms fire. Nothing to trouble a ’Mech, but close enough to be worth his attention. The squad was too close to the grounded DropShip, and he didn’t like to see this level of enemy activity. He thumbed his com to address the whole formation. “I’m picking up some plink, from the south-southeast I think. Bikers, watch yourselves. Let’s get the scout car out there for a look. I’ll watch your six. The rest of you group up and hug cover.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He recognized the voice as Dallas, pilot of the formation’s Fox armored car. The unit moved past him on the right, hoverskirts flapping as it turned, sun glinting off its bubble cockpit. He throttled up to follow, taking a slightly different path to cover more ground and give him a clear shot at any threat.

  The low rolling hills offered ample cover for enemies, allowing for attack from almost any direction. The flat expanses between had once been swampland, before the early settlers drained most of the planet’s two major continents through a vast network of trenches, dams, and artificial waterways. Small streams were everywhere, and many of the lowlands still flooded in the spring rains.

  He saw movement along the horizon, but it was only a fleeing herd of Geef, thousand-kilogram grazing amphibians whose appearance fell somewhere in a combination of toad, buffalo, and alligator. These were probably from a commercial herd, escaped as the result of fighting, or perhaps released by their owners to fend for themselves until the hostilities were over.

  New Aragon was no stranger to war. Agriculture, ranching, and the ecosystem itself had only just recovered from the damage done by Blakist chemical weapons decades earlier.

  Now war was here again. It was unclear if it had come to stay.

  The Centurion’s limp was more pronounced at this speed, making the cockpit lurch with every second step. He could hear the frayed fibers of synthetic muscle in the bad leg twang, like an amateur plucking randomly at some huge guitar. The heat indicator, which had been falling since his last laser shot, now began to slowly climb again. That shouldn’t be happening. Clearly there was damage somewhere that wasn’t showing up on his diagnostics.

  His eyes scanned ahead, looking for the hidden infantry that was the likely source of fire. A stand of trees, most smashed and broken off to stumps by earlier action, offered an excellent potential hiding place, but a gully to his right and some rocks uphill beyond the trees were also possibilities.

  He heard the chatter of a light machine gun in his helmet’s earphones, and sparks danced across the cockpit of the Fox. “There they are,” yelled Dallas, “in the rocks.”

  “I’m on it,” said Erik, turning the Centurion to wade through the stand of fallen trees. He put his crosshairs on the rocks, but could see no obvious target. “Get me some infantry support here, and get the tanks in position to pound those rocks.”

  There was a whistle as the Fox disappeared in an explosion of earth and shattered metal. Just that fast, Dallas was gone. “Artillery!” Erik swung the humanoid ’Mech’s torso looking for a target, but the artillery was likely out of sight behind one of the nearby hills. “Bikers, get out there and find those guns!”

  “Incoming!” Cutler’s voice broke in. “Incoming!”

  Erik pulled up a rear camera, and saw explosions around and among the armor. “Damn, damn. Spread out! Make them work for it!”

  The column began to scatter, but it was too late for an M1 Marksman Tank that was nearly swallowed in an explosion. When the dust began to clear, he could see one front track flopping loose, the other track on that side apparently frozen. The unit spun helplessly in a circle, the still functional turret restlessly searching for a target.

  A movement far below alerted him to a more immediate threat. From the trees, soldiers in Purifier battle armor swarmed. While several units trapped him in a circle of laser fire, two others fired their jump jets to leap onto his ’Mech. He managed to lash out with the ’Mech’s right arm, smashing one out of the air with a satisfying bang, but the other landed on his right shoulder, too high for him to easily reach. He lost sight of the unit. Then there was a loud hammering at the hatch behind him.

  They’re trying to take my ’Mech!

  Helplessly, he looked around. Neither his weapons nor his arms could reach his tiny tormentor. Then he had an inspiration.

  His ’Mech began to run, breaking free of the circle, heading directly for the rocks that had been his original target. If the machine gun opened fire on him, all the better. They’d be more of a threat to the Purifier than to him. If not, he’d overrun them.

  But that wasn’t his primary intent. Through the neurohelmet that controlled the ’Mech’s balance, he stopped fighting the limp and leaned into it, causing the ’Mech to lurch and stagger sickeningly with each step. He began flailing the Centurion’s massive arms, twisting the torso, swinging it forward and back. His stomach lurched at the chaotic motion of the cockpit. How much worse must it be for his “passenger”?

  He couldn’t reach the infantryman on his neck, but he coul
d slam the arms wildly against the ’Mech itself, making the entire structure ring like a massive bell. He cringed as the sound stabbed into his ears, overwhelming the noise-canceling effect of the headphones. He could feel it in his chest, in his bones.

  He dug the ’Mech’s heels in, simultaneously whipping the torso from side to side, slamming into the stops at either extreme. Then he swung the Centurion forward at the waist, almost toppling it. Above him he heard a scrambling noise, followed by a thud, as the Purifier, its hold loosened by the movement and noise, flipped over the ’Mech’s head. The infantryman tried to fire his armor’s jump jets, but it was too late, and his attitude was all wrong. He landed at an angle and crashed hard into the ground.

  The trooper struggled weakly to rise, but Erik was moving again. It was only a second before he dropped his right foot on the struggling man and pressed down. The ’Mech’s foot settled onto the rocky ground.

  Erik turned. The other Purifiers were fleeing as fast as their jump jets would take them. The artillery fire had stopped, and he heard one of the bikers calling in a bearing on their location.

  In the confusion, they were moving right toward Erik’s formation, and Erik would quickly be within range of their guns, helpless. While not as satisfying as taking out a ’Mech, Erik would be happy to settle for taking out what must be several units of House Liao artillery. To his right, he could see the crew of the crippled M1 transferring to an Armored Personnel Carrier, as the rest of the column charged after the artillery. He radioed in a recovery unit for the M1. Then he fired the Centurion’s jump jets. The nozzles in the ’Mech’s legs blasted out streams of glowing plasma, sending the ’Mech in a high arc over the formation, allowing him to take point. At this moment, Erik Sandoval wanted to kill something. He wanted to kill a lot of somethings.

  Duke Aaron Sandoval leaned back in his couch overlooking the DropShip Victory’s command center. In the center of the crowded room, a holotable flashed three-dimensional maps of the ongoing battles, the view changing every ten seconds or so as the display rotated through the various hot spots scattered around New Aragon’s two continents.