A Call to Arms

by Loren L. Coleman

  Stepping forward, Raul held up one hand to cut off her building tirade, placed the tips of his fingers against her lips and readied himself to be slapped again for daring to touch her. She stood mute, the beginning of tears softening her glare, and he leaned in close with eyes never once wavering from hers.

  “Thank you,” he said simply, choosing only to acknowledge her first, better wishes. Backing his hand away from her mouth to his own, he kissed the backs of his fingers as if she might feel it through the brief, earlier touch. “Today we’ll need all the luck we can get.”

  “I haven’t forgiven you yet, you know.”

  “I know. But there is always the possibility, and that’s enough to keep me safe.” He stepped aside, reaching for the chain link ladder that hung down the inside of the Jupiter’s leg. “Not one wound, then. I promise.”

  “Maybe a little one,” she said to his back. Raul thought he heard a trace of actual humor in her voice. “Couple of painful stitches, and a good scar.”

  It wasn’t much, as far as good wishes went, but Raul would take what absolution he could get. Lady Janella Lakewood had been right about that, too. One was never past the need for forgiveness.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and then scaled the ladder for his new cockpit, three stories up.

  25

  Early To Rise

  River’s End

  Achernar

  18 March 3133

  Star Colonel Torrent habitually rose before dawn on Achernar, his diurnal rhythm set to the twenty-three-hour Tigress clock. Here, he always seemed to have more time than he needed. Most days Torrent wrote it off to an impatience instilled in him over the course of the protracted campaign. This morning, though, an urge drew him down to the Lupus’s ’Mech bay and his readied Tundra Wolf. One last round to search out any forgotten thoughts before the evening battle. Before victory.

  The bay’s cavernous interior was still on the half-lights order for nights, which Torrent immediately countermanded. Darkened overhead panels flickered and then shone brightly. A few night-duty technicians made a busier show of loading munitions through the back of a Catapult. Torrent ignored them for the open bay door, checking that two sentry vehicles—Scimitars, as it happened—properly blocked the access ramp.

  That was where the alarm found him.

  The metallic gong of a shipboard general quarters alarm sent the Star Colonel sprinting for his BattleMech, preferring to learn of any danger with seventy-five tons of myomer and armor wrapped about him and his fingers on the triggers of a Longbow missile XX-rack and Series 7 laser. This was what had drawn him down here so early, he knew, scaling the gantry and gaining quick access to his cockpit. With practiced efficiency he released dampening fields from the BattleMech’s fusion reactor and cycled through a dozen prestart checks.

  A comms headset held up to the side of his right ear connected him with the DropShip’s bridge. “Torrent.”

  “Star Colonel. Remote listening posts have contact with a militia column, coming down out of the base heading east-southeast.”

  Achernar’s militia thought to steal a march on the Steel Wolves? He cast aside the communications set and drew down his neurohelmet from its resting shelf. Plugging himself in, he asked, “Any response out of River’s End?” he asked.

  “Neg, Star Colonel. River’s End is quiet.”

  MechWarriors Verin and Rheese made the ’Mech Bay within seconds of each other, scrambling for their pair of Pack Hunters. Torrent sped through his security procedures, answering with identification and his verbal key without being prompted. “To each, his own,” he said, putting emphasis in a slightly different place than the ages-old saying.

  His computer released full control about the time his ready-scouts checked in from the ground. A pair of Shandras had beat him out from another bay, but then Torrent had cleared a BattleMech in less than three minutes from alarm to his first, confident step. He would be the first officer on the scene, and if the militia thought to seriously challenge him here, now, he would be first to draw blood today.

  By the Great Father, he swore it would be true.

  And it would be, because even from the bottom edge of the ramp, calling the Scimitars to him on an auxiliary channel, his HUD lit up with a chaotic jumble of enemy icons. Legionnaire. Joust. A trio of JES tacticals. He read the IFF tag codes with a veteran’s ease. DI Schmitts. Two Giggin APCs, no doubt brimming with armored infantry.

  Jupiter.

  Torrent read it again. JP3-a. The same tag his computers had assigned to Kyle Powers during their Trial of Grievance. The Knight had returned from the dead—or at least his BattleMech had. Switching to thermal imaging, he centered his crosshairs over a distant red smear and then called up magnification on an auxiliary monitor.

  There it was, standing at the edge of the spaceport tarmac where the razed military field bumped up against the larger civilian side. Torrent smiled. “And today I thought my best victory would be over a Hatchetman.” If the militia wanted to gift him with another kill on the Jupiter, Torrent would oblige.

  His Pack Hunters had cleared the bay, and from all three of his DropShip’s vehicles and infantry poured, along with a converted ConstructionMech and an AgroMech, Star Captain Demos in her personally modified SM1 Destroyer. All that Star Colonel Torrent had left to him on Achernar. Enough to deal with the militia and still take River’s End away from Erik Sandoval.

  “Form on me, line abreast,” he ordered, strutting the Tundra Wolf forward toward the far end of the field. “No one fires until I have chosen my target.” He wanted the Jupiter, of course. If the militia pilot would agree.

  He dialed over to a common military band, one which all Republic forces scanned. “I am Star Colonel Torrent, of the Steel Wolves. Who challenges for the San Marino Spaceport?” Not that he expected a true call to Trial, but the forms had to be observed. So Kal Radick expected, and so Torrent of the Kerensky bloodline would do.

  The militia had shaken itself out into an inverted wedge, inviting him in toward the center by placing a line of weaker tanks and infantry carriers there, surrounding a Tribune mobile HQ. It was on the closer flank, though, where the Jupiter stepped out.

  “Captain Raul Ortega, Achernar Militia. We do not challenge, Star Colonel. We are here to force you from Achernar, or whittle you down to size so that Lady Janella Lakewood will wonder where all your forces went.”

  The bluff was so transparent that Torrent was inclined to dismiss it for bravado. Still, with thirty seconds to close, he allowed himself the caution of turning over the threat in his mind. By his count, the militia mustered two BattleMechs and one converted ForestryMech, a trinary’s worth of tanks—what the regular forces might call a strengthened company—and an estimation of twenty-five battlesuit squads. With the Swordsworn fighting alongside them, working fist-in-gauntlet, perhaps. But not like this. Not now.

  “It will take more than a knight’s BattleMech to back such a call to arms. Allow me to demonstrate.” And from extreme range, Torrent let fly with every long-range missile at his disposal.

  The XX-rack dumped a full score of warheads into the air. His Advanced Tactical Missile System automatically selected for extended range and chased the first flight with another nine missiles. Before these had arced over, Torrent was already in range for his laser and timed it so that the spear of bloodred energy carved into the Jupiter at the same time as his missiles pummeled the enemy ’Mech.

  “Steel Wolves,” he said calmly, waiting for his weapons to cycle, “engage at will.”

  River’s End

  Achernar

  If Erik Sandoval had not demanded quarters befitting his new station, River’s End might have been lost.

  Ducking his Hatchetman into an alleyway, its shovel-blade feet kicking a dumpster along in front of him as Erik might a tin can, the young lord escaped the crossfire that had been set up at the nearby intersections. The Demon’s lasers angled up and past him, slicing free only a small ridge of armor from hi
s left shoulder before he made his full escape. Safe for the moment, Erik throttled back, planted one wide foot through the alley’s thinner ferrocrete and then shoved himself back the way he had come, ax poised in the air overhead and sensing more by instinct than any sensor shadow that one of the Demons, at least, would chase him into the narrow side street.

  One did. Saving his autocannon ammo, Erik smashed down his titanium hatchet once, twice. His first cut crushed both laser barrels into mangled ruin. His second caved in the tank’s cockpit, bursting ferroglass shields into a rain of splinters and jagged shards that littered the street and sparkled dully in the yellow glow of a streetlamp. Erik kicked the end of the Demon around, letting him gaze down through his own shield at the telltale insignia.

  Achernar militia.

  Backstabbing sons-of-a-Liao.

  Michael Eus had been able to tell him very little, rousing Erik from the president’s apartments at Steyger Railways’ city offices. Erik was not one to dwell on creature comforts, not usually, but the office complex also had the good fortune of being located only a dozen blocks over from the Achernar HPG station. From his new living room window he could see the massive dish suspended over the compound by geared towers. An impressive underground vault, left over from pre-Republic days, was large enough to house his BattleMech as well as two Condors.

  Most of the Swordsworn had mobilized for the city’s edge by the time Erik fired up his Hatchetman and set it on a similar course. He still could not say for certain why he had spread the Condors out in a flanking search except his inherent distrust—now—of Michael Eus. Erik’s care had tumbled the militia’s plans several minutes sooner than would have happened otherwise, as first a dark-running VTOL and then a hostile VV1 Ranger was sighted.

  Erik’s small unit claimed the Ranger, but then lost one Condor to a prowling Legionnaire and an AgroMech conversion. Since then, the nobleman had traded block by crucial block, summoning up both MiningMech conversions from the HPG station and calling in VTOL support and fast tanks from Eus.

  The second Demon was missing, likely trying to head him off further down the avenue. Instead, Erik turned again for the station, intent on regrouping his forces as close to the HPG as possible. He chose the larger city streets—those which had been reinforced to allow ’Mech movement without collapsing. Then, rounding a corner, he stepped into the middle of an infantry firefight with Hauberks routing a rooftop emplacement of his Purifiers. A Saxon APC waited in nearby shadows while a converted AgroMech disappeared around the next corner.

  Erik dealt with the APC first, again slamming down with his handheld ax. Better than against wheeled or tracked tanks, however, the impact was enough to ground out the hovercraft and hold it in place while its lift fans tore themselves to pieces against the concrete walk. A few Hauberks turned on him with their missile-firing backpacks. He easily shrugged aside these detonations while the Purifiers leapt down for hand-to-hand combat. Erik lent a hand—and a foot—as he could. One Hauberk moved too slowly, and ended up a smear of mangled metal and flesh.

  “Back to the station,” Erik ordered. “All free units, converge.” He set off again, this time giving a ride to a few of the Purifiers while more ran and leapt along in his wake.

  The militia plans became clear enough as pieces fell into place. A heavy push at the Steel Wolves, to draw everyone’s attention, while a covert strike force penetrated River’s End from another direction and tried to reclaim the HPG. Except that now he had the small raiding force nearly surrounded, cut off from the spaceport battle by the same soldiers he would have sent to aid against the Steel Wolves. Aid in a limited and self-supporting manner, perhaps, but the militia could have expected some relief.

  Now, instead, he would hunt down the raiding force and deal with them personally, leaving the rest to Torrent. And when the Steel Wolves tried limping back to their DropShips, bloodied and weak, then Erik would be waiting.

  But first, the Legionnaire and its supporting force.

  Ortega. No matter that Eus claimed to have intercepted a transmission, placing the militia warrior at the spaceport. Erik bet family money on the Legionnaire being piloted by Raul Ortega, who had made a point to defy the noble at every turn since the two of them met. Even before the customs officer turned MechWarrior, he had shown a penchant for disregarding Erik’s authority. Like a mosquito, biting and biting at him, always just out of reach and believing that he could not be smashed. Well, he would learn.

  All of them would learn before this day was finished.

  Some faster than others, he decided as his sensors painted a Warrior H9 attack helicopter cruising over a shopping mall and parking itself over the top of a bank. Its missile system reached for a lock on the Hatchetman. Erik pulled his crosshairs over the fragile craft, held the shot for a solid tone, and then pulled into the trigger with a gentle caress. Eighty-millimeter slugs roared out of his left-arm autocannon, tracking in over the VTOL’s thermal silhouette.

  The pilot tried to sideslip, banking his craft over the main avenue, but Erik corrected his aim faster and the armor-piercing metal chopped into and through the H8’s light armor. Walking the stream of hot metal up into the rotor blades, he chopped away one, long vane and chipped up another. The unbalanced craft slewed through the air, losing altitude and finally dashing itself into the middle of the wide avenue where it erupted into a ball of orange fire and spreading pool of greasy flames.

  Erik watched the fall, the fire. He rocked his throttles forward, kicking up into a walk, before he saw the Legionnaire standing on the far side of the wreckage.

  A gout of yellow flash-fire erupted from the Legionnaire’s overhead rotary, and fifty-mil slugs buried themselves in the Hatchetman’s chest and upper right leg. The hammering impacts shoved Erik back, but could not knock him completely off his feet. The young noble brought his left arm up again, drew a bead over the Legionnaire and chased it into a side street with a long pull from his Imperator Class-10 autocannon. He chipped more stone off the bank’s facing than he did armor from the fifty-ton BattleMech. Before he could lower his aim, a pair of militia Jousts burst from the opposite side of the same street, crossed the main avenue, and chased off after the Legionnaire.

  “Legionnaire spotted,” Erik broadcast, walking in pursuit of the militia machines. “Madison and Ninth, heading south on Ninth. Disregard previous orders. Station guard, protect the HPG. All other units converge on my position.”

  A JES tactical and his Condor had already homed in on the light of the burning VTOL. Two other ground units radioed in confirmation while a pair of Swordsworn VTOLs raced up from the south to take spotter positions overhead.

  Michael Eus called in with other contacts. “Lord Sandoval, we have heavy infantry contact across the southwest edge of the city and as many as half a dozen vehicles reported. They hit and run. Our forces are being pulled southeast and northwest at this time. My bearing on you, one hundred ninety relative, distance point-eight kilometers.”

  Erik felt his upper lip twitch toward a snarl, worked to keep his voice level and authoritative. “They are opening up a hole for the Legionnaire to escape through. Close it!” He pivoted into the corner, ordering his tanks forward and checking that the other two vehicles racing up behind were also his own.

  The Purifiers leapt onto the bank roof, skipped over to the shopping mall . . . and disappeared inside a conflagration of missile impacts and converging lasers.

  Forewarned, Erik was not about to walk into an ambush. “Five second delay,” he ordered his armored lance, then slammed down on the jump jet controls with both feet. His Hatchetman leapt skyward on jets of superheated plasma, rocketing in a short arc up and over one corner of the deserted mall while Erik counted, “Five . . . four . . .” At three he began the sharp, short fall into the wide parking lot on the building’s other side. Two found him raising back his five-ton hatchet, ready to decapitate the Legionnaire. One.

  Landing on bent knees into a ready crouch, Erik stepped forward and deli
vered a shoulder-level swipe at the nearby Legionnaire. The blade bit in just below the BattleMech’s armored mantle, crushing through protective plating and some myomer musculature but failing to sever anything critical.

  His blow staggered the Legionnaire, shoving it forward into a tall lamppost, which could not bear the weight of a fifty-ton ’Mech. Sparks flew as the lamp heads shattered against the street. Erik’s VTOLs dipped down long enough to spray some lasers into the Legionnaire’s face. He would have wanted his armored vehicles to take further bites out of the resilient design, except that as they raced around the corner they fell into a point-blank firefight with the Jousts and one of the Agro conversions.

  From down the local boulevard, a hoverbike squad raced up to support Erik’s assault. He left the smaller forces to them, concentrating on the Legionnaire. Thumbing the firing stud on his autocannon, he smashed several hundred rounds of hot metal into the BattleMech’s back. Armor rained down over the parking lot and street in a fury of shards and splinters.

  Then the Legionnaire regained its balance, spun back at him and bit into his side armor with lasers and a furious stream of autocannon fire. Erik felt his control slipping—his Hatchetman falling backward under the terrible onslaught. Fighting against gravity, he managed one stumbling step backward, then another. Enough to slam up against the shopping mall’s three-story facing, protecting him from a bone-jarring fall.

  Also enough to rob him of several crucial seconds. Erik rocked forward, putting his BattleMech back on stable footing. He traded one last burst of autocannon fire, and that much more armor, with the retreating Legionnaire. Then it squeezed in between a corner building and a burning Condor, and was gone again.

  The fire-gutted Condor was Erik’s, as was a crippled but safely landed VTOL. He counted a militia Demon and the smashed ruin which had once been a Joust also among the victims of the short, violent firefight.