A Call to Arms

by Loren L. Coleman

  Despite the attraction and the flashes of heat that had passed between them, Raul was caught completely off his guard. So much so that it took a moment for his brain to catch up, only to realize that he had wrapped a hand around the back of Tassa’s head, pulling her in stronger, tasting her. The MechWarrior did not melt away before him, holding her own, challenging. He broke away first, though reluctantly. A sharp intake of breath nearly drowned him in her lavender scent.

  “Luck,” she said in a husky whisper.

  “Funny.” Raul shook his head lightly. “I wouldn’t have thought that you believe in luck.”

  “A little good luck never hurt anyone. Neither did a morale boost.” She made a show of looking coy. “So, are you boosted?”

  Tassa’s grin was infectious, spreading from her mouth to his. “The Wolves aren’t going to know what hit them,” he said, then turned away for his nearby Legionnaire, securing the last word for once.

  He felt the hot caress of Tassa’s gaze follow him as he walked around to the side of his BattleMech’s foot and took hold of the chain link ladder. Remembering Kyle Powers’ ascension Raul swarmed up the ladder to his access hatch, and then threw a jaunty salute back toward the waiting cameras and a second one to Tassa. Fifty meters away, a pair of JES tactical carriers fired up their lift fans, blowing out twin halos of dust and debris. A Saxon personnel carrier also fired up as a squad of Purifiers finished loading, the APC and infantry filling out the Republic’s augmented “lance.”

  A warm raindrop splashed Raul’s ear and he glanced up into the heavy skies just in time to catch another pregnant drop against his face. Licking the gritty taste of desert rainfall from his upper lip, he ducked inside his cockpit before the skies truly opened up. Local storms, like Achernar’s usual heat, were often severe.

  Settling into his command couch, Raul fastened himself into the five-point harness and then reached up to a shelf to draw down his neurohelmet. He pulled it over his head, shifted it about to make certain the sensors made decent contact with his scalp. A coil of metal braided hose and another cord of flexible nylon sat between his feet. Raul threaded the metal-braided hose into a restraining ring on the hem of his coolant vest, then snapped the lock-tite fastener into the vest plug. The initial coolant charge jolted him, standing gooseflesh out on his bared arms and legs. He shivered, then set about fastening the nylon cord with its socket plug into some velcro straps on the vest front, finally threading it up to connect into the chin of his helmet.

  The neural connection complete, Raul released the dampening field on his Legionnaire’s fusion engine and fired the massive furnace to life. Up through the cockpit deckplates came the massive thrum of barely-controlled power, massaging his lower legs with radiated warmth and subsonic vibrations. The Legionnaire’s computer brain ran through several systems checks on an auxiliary screen, returning all-green indicators and a final prompt for MechWarrior identification.

  “Raul Ortega,” he identified himself. “Captain, Republic Standing Guard.”

  “Identity confirmed.” The computer’s synthesized voice was only slightly more feminine than masculine, devoid of any real inflection or feeling. Just enough, Raul guessed, to make a MechWarrior feel comfortable with the disembodied voice without paying it too much attention. “Proceed to secondary security protocol.”

  Because voiceprints could be faked, and there was a very real threat in having a BattleMech captured and put back into service against you, security systems used a second line of defense that stopped all but the best-trained code breakers from making the attempt. A simple quotation, created by and known only to the MechWarrior, which would be checked for accuracy using voiceprint and neural wave patterns. A personal key.

  Raul looked out through his cockpit’s ferroglass, past the streaks of broken rain that trickled down the transparent shield to the now-animated Jupiter which moved to take its place at the head of the Republic formation. “To be all that we are,” he dredged up his quotation from an ancient Terran author, “to become all that we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

  “Lockouts released,” the computer responded. “ Legionnaire is now weapons-able.”

  And with a live BattleMech at his command, and the memory of Tassa’s lips still warm on his mouth, Raul was finally ready for battle.

  He hoped.

  15

  Trials and Grievances

  Sonora Plateau

  Achernar

  10 May 3133

  A hard deluge hammered down as if weapons fire had opened mortal wounds in the skies over Achernar’s Sonora Plateau. Fat water drops carrying desert grit splashed against the Tundra Wolf’s ferroglass shield, pushed into horizontal bands by sharp, gusting winds, smearing the landscape into a gray watercolor. Sight was hardly an issue, though, as target-lock warnings screamed for Torrent’s attention, giving the star colonel a scant three seconds’ warning before a new rain of warheads fell over and around him. Blossoms of fire tore into the armor mantle protecting his right shoulder and gouged new craters over the ’Mech’s left leg. Geysers of smoke and earth erupted down a line right in front of the seventy-five-ton Tundra Wolf, throwing up blackened, smoking dirt that pattered down against his cockpit’s ferroglass, mixed with streaks of actual rain and clotted against the shield.

  Torrent sidestepped his Tundra Wolf several meters to the left, anticipating the follow-up. A single, coruscating particle beam blasted through the gray downpour but passed wide to the BattleMech’s right. One PPC less than the Jupiter could have—should have—used.

  Light damage and a defensive enemy posture. That was Torrent’s immediate assessment.

  Still, he throttled back, wary of the Jupiter’s long reach and not quite ready to commit to a full press. His extended-range laser stabbed blood-red energy into the assault ’Mech’s side, carving a deep, angry wound into its armor. The whistling screams of hard-burning propellant slashed by his left ear as the Tundra Wolf’s shoulder-mounted launcher spread a score of missiles into the air. His computer counted better than half of the missiles peppering the Jupiter’s lower legs.

  It wasn’t enough to goad Kyle Powers into a premature advance, though. Trusting to his assault machine’s impressive armor, the Sphere Knight ignored Torrent’s assault to turn his weapons against a second Steel Wolf, inviting return fire from both warriors.

  Torrent grinned at the implied insult—that he was not worth the Knight-Errant’s full attention. Grinned, and continued to orchestrate an envelopment.

  His Tundra Wolf held the center of the Steel Wolf line. Of course. Early on in the shaping battle, just after his Elemental infantry lost their Maxim heavy transport vehicle to the Jupiter’s PPCs, Torrent had swung two AgroMech conversions, each modified with medium-grade autocannons, wide to the left and right. Now they were almost on the direct flanks of the Jupiter and Legionnaire, waiting for his orders. He had kept the M1 Marksman tank and his surviving Elementals in close, putting them on his Tundra Wolf in vanguard positions. Once his AgroMechs tore into the Republic flanks, his abbreviated unit would be the jaws snapping for their neck.

  Kyle Powers seemed to invite the encircling maneuver. He kept the much-faster Legionnaire pacing alongside his Jupiter, and never too far away. The two Republic ’Mechs protected a Saxon hover transport, which waited in their immediate backfield, while both JES hovercraft carriers ran a picket line out front, daring any Steel Wolf to close on against their short-ranged missile barrage.

  Torrent would dare, but he would do it on his own terms.

  One of the Jessies limped along on damaged lift fans, the result of an earlier run-in with an AgroMech conversion. It was the key to Torrent’s plan. He opened up a channel to his Marksman, identified the JES carrier as its primary target, and then traded another salvo with Powers’ Jupiter.

  Again the Knight-Errant divided his fire, spending new flights of LRMs and a single PPC on Torrent while he used his second PPC and half of his ultra-ACs to back off the advancing le
ft-flank AgroMech. The Steel Wolf pilot did not return fire, under strict orders to leave the Knight to Torrent. Instead, the AgroMech’s autocannon hammered fifty-mil slugs into one of the tactical carriers, chasing after as the hovercraft spun and dodged back for the right side of the field.

  With calm deliberation, Torrent opened an all-hands channel. “Begin,” was his only command.

  Like hunting dogs cut loose from their leash, the AgroMechs vaulted forward on huge strides, coming in with autocannons belting out long swatches of destructive power. Catching the SRM-toting JES carriers in a blistering crossfire the wounded hovercraft stuttered and paused, losing armor and precious time.

  It was all the Marksman needed.

  Packing a Lord’s Thunder gauss rifle, the M1 turned its rail gun against the damaged JES. A one hundred kilogram nickel-ferrous mass slammed through the air with enough kinetic force to shatter rain into bands of spreading steam. The gauss slug smashed into the hovercraft’s turret. Impact peeled back the turret like an opened can, ruining one of the launchers and exposing the crew quarters.

  A second salvo accelerated a new mass into the lift skirt, punching through to shatter vanes and drive gears. The front edge of the carrier caught the sloppy ground and flipped the vehicle up into a spread of medium-range missiles. Several warheads speared through the damaged turret, erupting deep within the carrier. Raw destructive force bulged the sides of the vehicle outward, erupting through seams, ports and panels to eviscerate the hovercraft. It twisted and rolled across the ground, digging up large globs of mud and earth and flinging them like dark blood spurting from an opened artery.

  Star Colonel Torrent slammed forward his throttle, pushing his Tundra Wolf past its usual best running speed of sixty-five kilometers per hour. Geared with myomer accelerated signal circuitry, the MASC-equipped machine was capable of short sprints nearer to eight-five. The storm-ruined plateau made such speeds dangerous, but Torrent never doubted his own ability to control the BattleMech as he pushed past his Elementals and the M1 for a head-to-head match with Kyle Powers.

  The Knight certainly didn’t miss Torrent’s charge, though standing true to form Powers again divided his attention between Torrent and the charging AgroMech. Torrent doubted that it would have mattered even if Powers had known—or guessed—that the AgroMech pilots were under strict orders to leave the Jupiter alone. The Jupiter’s dark silhouette moved to put itself in between the AgroMech and the surviving JES carrier, ready to bear the brunt of the offensive and protect the lives of men under Powers’ command.

  What Torrent had predicted, and counted on.

  The Tundra Wolf was an impressive design, especially at seventy-five tons. But Torrent had known from the start that it would all come down to closing with the Jupiter at point-blank range if he were to have a real chance of bringing down the Sphere Knight.

  A PPC blasted away armor from over his BattleMech’s chest, splattering molten composite to the wet desert floor where the bright embers quickly congealed into black-crusted, steaming puddles. Warheads threw a risky stutter into his pace, and a single missile clipped the side of his cockpit shield, scarring a long, deep fracture into the ferroglass.

  Torrent kept his attention divided between his HUD and the gray-scale picture resolving itself on the other side of his mud-streaked shield. The Legionnaire and remaining JES carrier had stopped one of his AgroMech’s cold, holding it off with blistering counterfire. The Republic’s Saxon APC burst forward as well, thrown into the fray on the side of the smaller of the two BattleMechs. Torrent ordered his M1 in to assist the besieged AgroMech. It looked more and more like Kyle Powers was ready to accept the duel of single combat. Warrior to warrior, the way it was meant to be.

  Except that Kyle Powers turned away.

  He actually turned his Jupiter aside, ignoring Torrent’s charge and putting up a blistering wall of particle beams and missile barrages against the AgroMech.

  A warm flush of anger heated Torrent’s brow as he pulled into a full barrage of every weapon at his disposal. Lasers flashed with ruby brightness in the gray rains, a few sparks scattering off into brilliant prisms. The LRM rack dumped out another score of warheads even as he dialed his right-arm advanced tactical missile system down to short range and let go with it and his four-pack of SRMs as well. The salvo chewed and blasted into the Jupiter’s armor, demanding Kyle Powers’ attention.

  For a moment, Torrent thought that he had gained it. The Jupiter half turned in his direction, and cut loose with a bright PPC beam that flashed past him on the left-hand side. He considered it a hasty shot and braced for the follow-up. Then he counted one less Elemental on his HUD. The report of the PPC’s effective blast was radioed in to him over his channel to the armored infantry even as Powers turned back to the AgroMech, pummeling it to a broken standstill.

  Torrent might be victorious or he might be defeated—it was all part and parcel to a MechWarrior’s life—but he would not be ignored! The AgroMech stumbled, falling to its knees and digging its threshing blades into the ground for support. The star colonel charged forward, closing rapidly with the Jupiter and running his heat quickly into the red band as he fired again, and again.

  Now Kyle Powers turned. And he blasted Torrent with everything the Jupiter had left. Two particle cannon arced brilliant scourges between the two machines, flaying away armor and rocking the Tundra Wolf back on its heels. Four ultra-class autocannons spat out long tongues of fire and longer streams of depleted-uranium slugs. Armor flew off in shards and splinters. And behind all this damage, missiles corkscrewed in to blossom two-dozen destructive fireballs that lifted the Tundra Wolf up and set it back several meters.

  Hunching forward, throwing every bit of his equilibrium into fighting gravity, Torrent kept the Tundra Wolf on its feet by sheer force of will. Waves of heat slammed into him with almost physical force, and his vision swam with heat stress and the blurred ferroglass shield.

  His wireframe schematic showed better than sixty percent armor loss, and the telltales on two medium lasers and one of his missile racks lit up to signify that they had been destroyed. He didn’t need to see a readout on his engine—he could tell from the rising temperature levels that Powers had cracked the reactor’s physical shielding.

  Damning his heat curve, Torrent wrestled his ’Mech to a full-front profile, biting and clawing with every weapon left to him. There was no planning now, no grand strategy. His simple counterattack was brutal and effective. Lasers cut deeply into the Jupiter’s leg. His Streak Missile Rack misfired, holding back the four short-range warheads, but his ATMS locked on and managed to spend more crippling damage into an already-ruined knee joint.

  The Jupiter’s right knee actuator crushed in on itself, staggering the mighty titan. It fell to one knee as if bending down in supplication. But rather than shove back, Powers threw his arms out wide and divided his weapons again. In what Torrent might have considered a spectacular display of targeting any other time—any other time when the tactic wasn’t insulting him—the Knight-Errant scoured away more of the Tundra Wolf’s armor with PPCs, gutted the engine on the rising AgroMech with his left arm autocannon, and even managed to score double-wounds against the advancing M1 Marksman with his right arm ACs.

  The martyr son-of-a-Blakist was still taking on all-comers.

  Grinding his teeth together, Torrent rocked his throttles forward and advanced. Drawing his targeting crosshairs in a line across the Jupiter’s shoulders, he counted his thundering heartbeats until the reticle burned the flashed a golden tone of targeting lock and then waited a second more until he could steady the shot with a confident touch on the controls.

  He would show the Knight-Errant’s foolishness in disregarding Torrent as a worthy adversary. Steel Wolf or Republic Knight. One of them would die trying.

  Raul Ortega caught on to the Knight-Errant’s plan from the start. By keeping Raul’s Legionnaire in close, and always dividing his fire, he acted as a lodestone, drawing Torrent in and making cert
ain the Steel Wolf remained focused exclusively on the Jupiter even while Powers was free to whittle away at the enemy defenses.

  Long-range jousting caught the enemy Maxim APC in a series of devastating scourges, left it dead or dying far in the Steel Wolf backfield. The AC-toting AgroMechs were a threat, flanking the tight Republic force, but Powers let them come, always adding a brace of missiles here, or a scouring pull from his autocannons there. Waiting. Waiting for Torrent to make his move.

  And then he unleashed hell.

  Too late. Raul knew it, and was certain that Powers had known it even beforehand. Powers had warned Raul, after all, that Torrent was out for blood. If the fire-gutted Jessie wasn’t proof of that, the star colonel’s pincer-charge confirmed it.

  Raul bit back any further warnings, inhaled deeply against the steel-band grip around his chest, and worked his rotary autocannon in a series of long and short pulls to hammer one of the AgroMechs into submission. The surviving hovercraft missile carrier had slid around behind the Torrent’s Marksman, threatening its slightly weaker rear armor and trying to pull it away while their Saxon APC dropped Purifier infantry in a skirmish line around the AgroMech.

  He was looking away when Kyle Powers’ Jupiter stumbled to one knee.

  He turned back in time to watch Sir Kyle Powers die.

  Not two hundred meters distant through the gray downpour, Star Colonel Torrent’s Tundra Wolf towered over the kneeling outline of Kyle Powers’ Jupiter. Raul watched as the Knight Errant divided his fire in three directions, a stunning display of BattleMech command but dangerous—so dangerous—point blank with the Tundra Wolf. Raul pulled back around his own weapons, coming to Powers’s aid despite the Knight’s earlier orders. His Legionnaire swiveled at the waist. His right-arm laser had barely acquired targeting lock when Torrent proved just how deadly he could be. Even at a distance and through the curtains of rain, Raul saw the glowing wound of a laser-cut slicing from the Jupiter’s chest up into—and through—the ferroglass canopy . . . which was all that stood between a MechWarrior and a closed-casket service.