A Call to Arms

by Loren L. Coleman

  Heat washed through his cockpit as the laser’s energy draw spiked demand from the BattleMech’s fusion reactor. Circulation fans pulled it away quickly, though, as the power level settled back into the green band. It hardly broke a sweat over Erik’s forehead. Still, he was not about to let the daring crew off so easily.

  “Sergeant Bosley, there is a Shandra coming up fast on your flank.” If he was correct in placing his Gnome battle armor, in fact, the Shandra would be driving right into their waiting arms. “Weak right side. Finish it.”

  “Got him,” the battlesuit infantry leader responded. “Missing one wheel. Now two. It’s in our hands, Commander.”

  Quite literally. Erik paused at the top of a smooth rise, saw the Shandra being disassembled by his squad of Gnomes. He could almost hear the tearing-metal shrieks of wheels being ripped free from axles and armor shredded under mechanical claws.

  “Commander, Able-Victor Six.” Erik’s lance of Mark II Scimitars. “We are still pushing back the Steel Wolf Elementals. Some trouble from strafing runs—got a couple of aggressive Visigoths over here—but they seem to be happy enough to hold us north of their line. Do we press forward?”

  Having force-marched a mixed company of troops over the Taibek Hills, Erik still hadn’t decided on how much aid he would give the local defenders. The Steel Wolves seemed content to poke and prod at his lines, but so long as he held back near the foothills that eventually became the Taibeks (and further north, the Tanagers), they were content to hold him off the main battle.

  Able-Victor Six was the more expendable lance, as Erik preferred not to risk his valuable ’Mechs or any of his Swordsworn-converted battlesuits. Not beyond reason, anyway.

  “Push them, Able-Victor. Don’t threaten that DropShip, but drive for the Flatlands.” Dropping from the Dales and into the River’s Run Flatlands would allow his Swordsworn to link up and coordinate efforts with the militia. “See if they will let you approach the Republic forces.” Erik bet they wouldn’t.

  Of course, it wasn’t his life he wagered with.

  In his pause, Erik’s own lance had caught up with him. Three converted MiningMechs stormed up behind him, their tank treads cutting at Achernar’s ground. Diamond-bit cutters slashed the air. One launched a brace of missiles from its shoulder-mounted launcher, the projectiles falling far short of the nearest Steel Wolf target, blasting small craters into a hillside.

  “Short-range missiles,” Erik berated his driver. “Short! That Condor was half a klick distant. Watch your range-finder.”

  “Yes, Lord. That is, I don’t have a range-finder, Lord.”

  “Eyeball it, then,” Erik snarled. “Better yet, don’t fire expendables unless you see another ’Mech fire them off first.”

  Erik switched off the frequency for his own lance, not wanting to hear any more sycophantic whining. The mining drivers were masters in their own right, but they weren’t soldiers and he shouldn’t expect them to be. That would come with experience.

  He switched his frequency open again. “Forward at your best rate,” Erik ordered them. “Concentrate fire on targets. Garibaldi, you call them out.” He levered his own Hatchetman into an easy walk, coming in behind the MiningMechs, keeping an eye on his HUD and always watching through the forward ferroglass for any sign of a shift in battle.

  Garibaldi put the trio of converted machines on a hoverbike squad, chasing after the fast-moving craft. One of the mine drivers actually managed to cripple one hoverbike with a (probably) lucky missile barrage. Seeing that speed meant a great deal on the battlefield, as opposed to the static course they had trained on, Garibaldi started to angle after slower targets. Working together, they managed to threaten a D1 Schmitt into breaking off its attack run.

  “That stirred them up. Pull back, pull back!”

  On Erik’s HUD, one of his armored vehicles flared bright sapphire and then winked out of existence. “Able-Victor Six, report!”

  From his height, swaying three stories above the battlefield, Erik saw his remaining Scimitars race back from a boiling fury of VV1 Rangers and Elementals. He balled up one fist, smashed it down on the armrest of his command couch.

  “We opened a hole in their line,” the lead Scimitar reported. “By accident more than intention,” he admitted, “but for a second we had an open shot to rendezvous with the Republic Guard. Those Visigoths and a Jaga-something pounced on us and strafed us full of holes. Then the Rangers and Elementals hit with a vengeance. They don’t want us getting through there, Commander.”

  Message received, Erik silently told the Steel Wolf commander. If the Swordsworn wanted to push through, these Clan wannabes would make them pay for it. Erik smiled grimly as his MiningMech converts cheered their own little victory, having pushed forward just far enough to hammer a squad of Steel Wolf Cavalier infantry with multiple missile barrages. They may have put two or three Steel Wolves permanently out of commission.

  “AV-6, pull back north nor’west. Let them think they can split us. Do not make further attempts to press forward.”

  “Copy that.”

  Erik reigned in the cowboy warriors in the converted ’Mechs as well as his various infantry squads. With a bit of stage direction, he planned to pull them all back and westward, ostensibly to link back up with his lance of wayward Scimitars. It pulled his company out of the main battle, but allowed them to skirmish with whatever dregs the Steel Wolves wanted to throw their way.

  It was how Erik would build warriors. He’d let the two larger factions battle each other, saving his troops for later.

  “I’ve learned the hazards of jumping in too soon,” Erik whispered to his cockpit, hearing his words echo in the tight confines of his neurohelmet. As his uncle admonished, this time Erik would exercise greater patience. He’d wait, and plan, and train his drivers into true soldiers. And then, he’d strike.

  With any luck, the other factions would bloody themselves up so badly that when the smoke cleared, Erik would remain the uncontested commander on Achernar. Without a shot fired.

  He laughed. It was a pleasant fiction, and whiled away the time as Erik pulled his forces further from the main battle.

  6

  Enemy Down

  River’s Run Flatlands

  Achernar

  16 February 3133

  Raul Ortega used the dry riverbed as a natural bypass, able to move from one side of the Republic’s strung-out battle line to another. Opening skirmishes and strafing runs by the overhead Steel Wolf OmniFighters had already cost him a damaged knee actuator. Throttling the Legionnaire up to a fast walk, favoring the right leg, Raul curled around tall stands of Ponderosa Pine and thorny monkey trees that weren’t much better than very large cacti. A pair of hoverbikes abandoned the dead riverbank, following his lead, flying off the drop and kicking up a large cloud of dirt and debris in their wake.

  “Ortega on the way,” he said in an encouraging voice, willing the recovery team to hold out.

  “Whatever you can do, do it fast,” came a clipped, no-nonsense response.

  Raul nodded to the empty cockpit, swallowed painfully, mouth parched from breathing the dry cockpit air. He tasted flatland dust and wondered just for a moment how wise it had been to rechannel the river away from Highlake Basin on a shorter path to River’s End. Only five kilometers north of the military base, once-grassy plains had become a virtual dustbowl in the last thirty years. Except for summer storms, the River’s Run Flats wouldn’t see much moisture until late autumn. With temperatures outside peaking at forty Celsius, that made for a miserable battlefield.

  Pivoting into the final river bend, the Legionnaire’s feet nearly skidding out from beneath Raul on old hardpan and river rock, he judged the timing about right and turned into the steep bank. Flange-formed feet dug at the side of the river. Raul bent forward at the waist, throwing the ’Mech’s center of gravity forward as his neurohelmet transferred his own sense of equilibrium down into the stressed gyroscopic stabilizers. The Legionnaire actually fell
uphill, arms out to catch the upper lip of the riverbank.

  Raul pulled himself out of the riverbed just as the hoverbikes chose a likely looking slope of their own and jumped the bank to either side of him. Working his footpedals and control sticks, he stumbled back up into a flat-out run and toward the beleaguered recovery team.

  He couldn’t fault the fix-it team for trying to salvage the Behemoth II after it took crippling damage to its drive train—an assault tank was no easy piece of technology to abandon on the field. He could have asked for a more defendable position, however. The isolated crew sat out in the open with their JI 100 recovery vehicle cowering behind the stranded Behemoth. Steel Wolf forces pressed in from two sides, sniping from long range at the fix-it team, kept off them only by Tassa Kay’s Ryoken and the frantic racing of twin Condors which worked hard to guard both flanks at once.

  Erik Sandoval was supposed to have closed in on this side of the battlefield by now. Obviously he was running late.

  “Ortega has the right side,” Raul offered, his Legionnaire limping forward at a still-respectable ninety kph.

  “Tassa has the left.” The Ryoken turned in a graceful, predatory leap even as she warned him, jetting up and over the Behemoth on fiery streams of plasma. The Condors gravitated to her as if drawn by a titan’s lodestone.

  Raul kept the hoverbikes. “You corral them, I rope them.” The fast hovercraft sprinted out ahead of him, already worrying a lumbering JES Strategic Missile Carrier with their twin laser system.

  If the JES crew thought they had time to deal with the hoverbikes and escape, they misjudged the speed of a Legionnaire. Raul stabbed his targeting crosshairs directly over the back hatch, exhaled an extra-long second waiting for his targeting computer, then remembered that Charal had either ripped it out or had it removed intentionally. Instead he carried a trio of medium lasers to supplement his rotary autocannon.

  He pulled into his main trigger, holding it down as the overhead rotary chewed through several hundred rounds of high-explosive ammunition. Charge-loaded slugs blasted into the back of the JES Carrier, cratering large holes through its armor and feeding even more damage into the vulnerable crew quarters. The entire vehicle shuddered, swung around at an awkward angle, and then ground to a halt, dead on the plains.

  It didn’t hit Raul for another dozen steps that he had just executed a Republic-born military crew. He throttled off, slowing to a walk as he stared at the gutted carrier.

  “Head’s up,” Tassa warned him. “Here they come again.”

  Twin lines of autocannon fire chewed up the flatlands ahead of him as two bone-white Jagatai skimmed the flatlands, strafing arrows at Raul’s Legionnaire. He sidestepped out of the obvious damage path, but one of the pilots reacted on instincts and lightning-fast reflexes. The tail end of one Jagatai slewed around, correcting its aim. The craft thundered by overhead, and for a second Raul believed he was safe. Then the pilot flared wing flaps and pulled the OmniFighter’s nose toward the heavens, angling his tail down at the Legionnaire’s back and spraying a mix of laserfire from his aft-mounted weapons.

  The blood-red lance burned the ground off to one side, but bright emerald darts from a pulse laser stung all up and down Raul’s backside. Armor ran down his BattleMech’s legs and splashed into the dirt, smoking small craters into the flats.

  Raul felt heat radiating up through the cockpit deck even before he checked his wireframe damage schematic and saw that he’d lost a good chunk of physical shielding around his fusion reactor. Temperature levels had jumped up to yellow-band equivalent, and now just about anything Raul did with the ’Mech, including an easy walk, would begin to bake him alive.

  He suddenly felt a touch less sympathy for the Steel Wolf crew in the Big Jess, seeing how close he had come to a fiery death of his own.

  “Unless you’re in full shutdown, how about an assist?”

  Tassa Kay’s sarcasm cut through Raul’s brief seconds of reflection, snapping him back to the here and now. He checked his HUD, deciphering the code of icons and IFF tags, saw that Tassa’s Ryoken was herding a pair of Demon medium tanks around the far side of the stranded Behemoth. Both vehicles slid around into full view, saw the waiting Legionnaire, and then cut sharply out toward the middle of the flats and the safety of their own lines.

  Raul reached out for one of them with a few long-range bursts from his RAC. Both missed, chewing up the ground just behind the lead vehicle. Tassa was not going to be denied so easily. Twisting her ’Mech’s torso further to the left, she bracketed in the rear vehicle with her twin PPCs. The particle cannons spent incredible power into two hellish streams of blue-white energy.

  One cut across the front of the rear Demon, a literal shot across the bow.

  The second PPC smacked into the tank broadside.

  The physical force of impact rocked the Demon onto its right-side wheels, shoving the vehicle over several meters, while the focused energy in the beam cut and tunneled its way through armor. The vehicle poured on speed, racing out from under Tassa’s weapons. She tried to chase after it with her torso-mounted lasers, but the scarlet shafts cut down into the ground just short of their intended target.

  The Demons slid in behind a screen of JES Tactical carriers and Elementals.

  “Damn and blast!” Tassa yelled, then followed it up with curses in Deutch and a language Raul did not recognize. He checked his comms, saw that she was at least confining her transmissions to the MechWarrior’s-only circuit.

  “What happened to the Condors?” Raul asked, gasping for breath in the oven-temperature cockpit. According to his HUD, they had abandoned Tassa to chase after some Hauberk infantry and a Joust. That didn’t sound like Republic Guard tactics, splitting your offensive force.

  “I ordered them off,” Tassa admitted. “Those were our kills, and we missed both.” More curses.

  “Lieutenant Ortega, this is Recovery Team Three. Thanks for the timely arrival.”

  Raul muted Tassa’s input to prevent her anger from bleeding over into the support frequencies. “Welcome,” he swallowed new life back into his throat. The taste of sweat burned on his lips. “Now get out of here ASAP.”

  “We need five more minutes and we can have the Behemoth operational again. Can you buy us that amount of time?”

  “That’s hardly been the problem.” Tassa was back, her anger mostly spent. “The Steel Wolf ground forces are not pushing too hard unless they catch us off guard. We can hold a line here.”

  Raul had noticed much the same thing. “Probing attacks,” he said, catching his breath as the Legionnaire’s heat levels settled back into a bearable range. “This entire assault was designed to throw us off guard while the main force lands. They’re taking the opportunity to test our strength.”

  Already the enemy was shifting forces to the west, back into the area from which Raul had originally come. “Maybe we should take this chance to test theirs,” Tassa said. Without waiting to see if he would follow, Tassa’s Ryoken hit a long stride, stalking out toward the Steel Wolf lines.

  Not to be left behind, Raul throttled up into a loping run. She was right. It didn’t matter that this was not the main Steel Wolf push. The enemy was down on-planet, and it was a MechWarrior’s duty to face the enemy.

  Even when they had been part of the same army.

  Jagatai Aerospace Fighter

  Achernar

  Add one Rapier to Star Captain Laren Mehta’s list of kills. The wingman.

  It had taken him longer than estimated to break apart the two-fighter element chosen as his targets. He accepted help from no one, determined to bring down the enemy flight leader on his own skill. But then he had latched onto the tail of the wrong craft!

  He knew it within seconds—the uninspired way in which the pilot tried to shake him, twitching and rolling through the air as if Mehta was a raw cadet, to be fooled by such basic feints. Almost he pulled off, to go hunting better game. Almost. When you had the killing position, riding high in their six, you d
idn’t throw it away out of ego. You splashed the enemy first, and then you moved on.

  The Rapier had no aft-mounted weapons, and so it could only try to run. Laren Mehta played for the pilot’s fear and inexperience, often letting his victim extend out just enough that he could bracket the other fighter with lasers and long-range missiles. As soon as he tightened up again, switch to the assault-class autocannon and scrape away more armor with flechette submunitions.

  Finally the Rapier pilot dove for the ground, playing chicken with the star captain. Mehta hung in right behind, having played the game with braver men than some free born sparrowheart still hovering in the flight leader’s shadow. Five thousand meters. At four thousand his own wingman peeled away, maintaining a high watch. Three thousand. Two.

  The Rapier pulled up, right into Mehta’s crosshairs.

  The Jagatai’s autocannon started at the nose of the enemy craft and chewed large holes all the way back along the fuselage. High-velocity metal shattered the cockpit canopy, filling the tight space with flesh-cutting shrapnel, and then finally trailed off into the aft thrusters. The Rapier rolled belly-up and fell toward the ground even as Mehta rocketed by under a full power dive.

  Laren Mehta yanked back hard on his stick and pulled for full flaps, digging into the air for every ounce of lift he could find. His altimeter read four hundred meters by the time it started to crawl back upward again. Seconds to spare.

  A victorious howl died stillborn in his throat as Ripper Flight’s Star Commander Xera claimed the Rapier lead.