A Call to Arms

by Loren L. Coleman

  Raul Ortega had stung at him again, but not without losing blood of his own. Erik would make it cost him again.

  “Legionnaire and Agro—two Agros—heading east on Carrington.” Erik’s remaining VTOL pilot, back on observation. “Count three . . . four . . . five vehicles now. They’re spreading out over two streets, on parallel tracks.”

  Giving up on their attempt and heading for the spaceport, Erik throttled up to his best walking speed, just over forty kilometers per hour, and struck a parallel course to the fleeing raiders. This street had not been reinforced, not even in the old days, before the Succession Wars, when Achernar IndustrialMechs was one of the region’s largest producers. His feet punched down through brittle-thin ferrocrete, like a man walking over hard-crusted snow, and forced the Hatchetman to slog forward at less than optimum speed. It slowed him down too much. Not that he doubted it would matter.

  Erik had only a basic idea of where all his units were, but he had to imagine that three ’Mechs working together would find a hole and crush whatever light resistance he might toss at their feet. City streets were too confining—too favorable for the smaller, mobile force. They had a slight advantage. Until he could pin them in the open, inside the industrial sector which lay in between the San Marino and River’s End proper. That was where he would hit them with everything he could muster.

  That was where he would kill them all.

  26

  The Gemini Gambit

  River’s End/San Marino Spaceport

  Achernar

  18 March 3133

  Raul Ortega shook his head furiously as if trying to clear it of the noise. Comm channels bled over each other as reports, orders, and shouted warnings were passed up and down the militia line. Static crackled in between words and sometimes through an entire order. A moment of clear reception was rare, rare. And when it happened, too often it was the lull before a storm of new, concentrated fire savaged the militia and drowned out transmissions with thunderous explosions.

  Fire and shrapnel raged constantly in the no-man’s-land that separated the Steel Wolves and Achernar’s determined militia. Bright lances of light speared back and forth, reflecting against ground haze built up from the smoky discharges of missile exhaust and burnt autocannon propellant. As the night gave way to sunrise, the only signs of battle falling off were the vehicles left broken and burning in the firefight’s wake. Raul counted a militia Fox armored car and two hoverbikes among their early casualties, lost back on the southwest side of the spaceport landing field where the firefight had begun. At least four APCs had been crushed and mangled over the tarmac since then in trying to deploy screens of battlesuit infantry, marking each gruesome shift north and east.

  Two of the APCs had managed to disgorge their cargo of armored soldiers. Two had not.

  Despite the cost in lives and material, Raul knew that the militia so far had staved off heavy casualties. Their advantage, so far, was their combat VTOLs, the low-altitude craft giving the militia air superiority for the first time since the initial Steel Wolf assault against Achernar. A Yellow Jacket, in fact, a flying version of the Marksman or SM1 Destroyer, could worry even Star Colonel Torrent with its nose-mounted gauss rifle. The militia would not keep that advantage much longer now that daybreak was upon them, but it had been enough to help move their ragged line to the spaceport’s northwest border, past the Steel Wolf DropShips and about even with the main tower and various administration buildings.

  Nearly at the back of Tassa Kay’s retreating picket force.

  It took some effort, mentally untangling the cluttered HUD, but so far everything held more or less in accordance with the militia’s rough planning. Raul’s late positioning was the less. Tassa’s early arrival, the more. Tassa had led most of her people from the capital just as dawn broke, turning back on the pursuing Swordsworn and holding them at the city’s edge, making feints as if trying to regain the industrial sector.

  “Sandoval is getting edgy, Raul. Make this happen soon.” Tassa fell back a few more paces, limping on a ruined left knee actuator.

  Using his twin PPCs and light autocannon to drive back the Steel Wolves’ one remaining M1 Marksman, Raul bracketed it with lances of azure energy and then blasted deep, angry wounds into its armored flank. It pulled back and Raul let it go, wary of the next head-to-head push by Star Colonel Torrent and still fighting toward Tassa’s position.

  Torrent’s attention had been diverted again as a Giggins APC successfully delivered a squad of Gnome battle armor into his line. As Steel Wolf Elementals worked to keep those Gnomes clear of the Tundra Wolf, Raul threw two Jessies down the enemy line, strafing the seventy-five-ton BattleMech and the wounded Marksman with flight upon flight of short-range missiles.

  It bought him a handful of seconds. A moment, perhaps.

  Raul pivoted the Jupiter toward the admin buildings, claiming another two hundred meters in long, five-meter strides. With white-knuckle grips on his control sticks, Raul shied away from one of the open DropShip landing pads, saving himself from a three-story fall to the underground service area. He still felt unsteady at the controls of such a large assault ’Mech, but the natural touch which had originally recommended him to the militia reserves held strong for him now.

  Backed by two Schmitts and flanked by VV1 Rangers, Raul reanchored the militia line another dozen steps—two dozen . . . three . . .

  Where he stepped into a barrage of missiles, drawing fire from a Steel Wolf Behemoth and paired JES strategic carriers.

  Weathering the storm of hammer blows, shedding some of the Jupiter’s armor reserves, Raul wrestled with his control sticks and then turned in to back off the Behemoth. “Blocked again!” Two icons on his HUD flashed dangerously close to the militia line. “Shandra scout vehicles at nine-five relative. Pick them up!”

  He wasted no time on the fast but lethal scout-runners, trusting the Rangers and some forward Cavalier infantry to handle them, and the Schmitts had already leapt forward to hammer long-range fifty-mils at a Big Jess.

  Raul pulled his crosshairs over the Behemoth’s large outline, pounding away double-flights of long-ranged missiles as soon as he struck good tone and chasing them with blue-white arcs of lightning from the Jupiter’s chest-mounted PPCs.

  Unfortunately, the one-hundred-ton tank could stand up to that kind of abuse, though after forty minutes of sparring the tank crew had to be worried about their armor. The tank rolled back on its massive treads, ceding a few scant meters. As if they needed further encouragement, a Yellow Jacket VTOL slid over the north side of the field and skipped a gauss slug off the ferrocrete tarmac next to them.

  Sensing opportunity, Raul shifted his own aim over to one of the forward JES carriers. Combining PPCs with his two light autocannon this time, he worried through the missile-boat’s armor. The hovering VTOL spent several dangerous seconds following Raul’s directed fire, punched a gauss slug through the carrier’s weakened armor and then spun around to race back south and west.

  Both Schmitts pounced, tearing into the carrier’s interior even further, and did not shy away until an ammunition magazine ruptured under their hard-hitting rotaries. The Jess’s sides bulged outward and then burst. Flipping side-over-side, the disintegrating hulk rolled up against the retreating Behemoth and added impetus to their temporary retreat.

  For just that moment, Raul found himself with no viable targets and a nearly open run between the militia line and spaceport tower.

  “Best chance we’ll ever get, Colonel.” He shoved his throttle forward to its stop, lumbering the Jupiter forward at its best speed of fifty-four kph.

  Blaire wasted no time doubting Raul’s word. “All units, swing echelon left.”

  VTOLs pressed forward, and a laser-equipped Cyrano fell under the flak-assault from another JES carrier, while most skirmishers dropped back and pulled into their new position. Stealing a quick-march on the Steel Wolves, the militia line swung around in a ragged but effective arc, following Raul’s lead and
closing the spaceport off from River’s End. Their line now held back-to-back with Tassa Kay’s smaller force, giving her safe refuge.

  Raul toggled his private channel to Tassa Kay, in case she was not already falling back. “All right, Tassa. Lead them out.” A waste of breath, as she first sent her damaged vehicles crawling for the safety of the militia lines and then followed in the borrowed Legionnaire. Raul turned back to the battle in time to count up the cost of their maneuver.

  His Rangers had overtaken and overturned one of the Shandra scout-runners, but not without losing one of their own to a salvo of concentrated laserfire. Raul had also traded one of his tactical Jessies for a Steel Wolf Scimitar—hardly equitable—and enemy Pack Hunters had nearly cut Captain Diago out of the militia formation. He escaped back to the safety of their formation, but minus a great deal of armor and losing one of his Legionnaire’s arms—severed at the elbow by a Hunter PPC.

  And worse, Star Colonel Torrent in his Tundra Wolf was left pressing forward right into the weak middle of the militia line. Frustrated with Raul’s evasion of any straight-up match, now the star colonel took it out on a nearby APC. Breaking the Saxon in less than ten seconds, scattering its load of Purifier infantry with well-placed kicks, he then turned his heavy firepower on the militia’s mobile HQ, and Colonel Blaire.

  Blaire had organized the enticing weak middle in case Torrent went for it early on in the fight, allowing the militia to encircle and neutralize the Steel Wolf commander once and for all. Up to and including the arrival of Tassa’s force at the city edge, that might have worked in their favor. Now it threatened to unravel their final maneuvers, should Torrent manage to split the militia line.

  “Fill that gap,” Raul ordered. “They break though, and we’re done!” They had to hold. Hold and wait, as Tassa lured the Swordsworn out of the city’s edge.

  Their modified ForestryMech made an attempt, stalking in between Torrent and the Tribune. Autocannon chipping away some of the Tundra Wolf’s armor, the pilot managed to draw Torrent’s attention long enough for the HQ to fall back a safe distance. Before Torrent could vent his full ire on the Forestry Mod, however, Raul stalked forward of the formation and lined up a long-range shot, carving one of his particle cannons into the Tundra’s flank.

  It worked. Torrent shifted his BattleMech’s weight and turned it for the Jupiter. “Raul Ortega. You have deviled me for the last time.”

  Raul swallowed dryly. “If you can’t keep up, don’t blame me. Hold on and I’ll call off the dogs.” Switching over to the militia’s all-hands frequency, he ordered, “Lay off the Tundra. Let him come.” Then a dozen missiles cratered his Jupiter’s lower legs, and Raul once again fought to remain standing. Recovering, he back-pedaled, returning to his place in line and drawing the star colonel after.

  His fury unleashed, Torrent made his earlier displeasure known by keeping up a sustained rate of heavy fire as he stalked down the militia line. Missiles, laser, missiles again. With the militia units leaving off the Tundra Wolf as a target, the star colonel ignored all but Raul. A distinction of sorts, and one the MechWarrior might have felt better about had not the Tundra’s place at the center of the militia line not been filled almost immediately by the PPC-toting Pack Hunters. The Steel Wolves fielded too many ’Mechs for the militia to keep them contained much longer.

  In the meantime, Torrent advanced. And with him, drawn in his wake like filings to a lodestone, came the Steel Wolf line.

  Fighting side by side with Tassa now, their BattleMechs facing different directions as each concentrated on a different enemy, Raul checked his head’s up display and saw that the two of them formed the point of a new, thin wedge. Squeezed in between the Swordsworn and Steel Wolves, Tassa sniped at Erik Sandoval while Raul held up under Torrent’s determined assault. Only a slender line of militia forces connected them back to the spaceport’s northwest corner. It was time.

  Such orders should be given with dramatic presentation. Some kind of timeless oration that would stand up to history. Or so Raul had once thought. Now it was with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment that he opened up a channel and simply said, “Tassa. Now.”

  Like a steeply pitched tent with its supporting prop yanked out from beneath it, the militia wedge folded back in on itself as Raul and Tassa herded scurrying infantry and wounded vehicles before them. Raul opened up his general channel. “Retrograde maneuver,” he ordered. Colonel Blaire seconded the command, and began handing out the secondary assignments, which would pull the entire militia force back into a strong, secure fist.

  The idea was to swing the Swordsworn and Steel Wolf line into close proximity. One errant missile, a laser stabbed in at their former enemies: it wouldn’t take much. But first they had to maneuver into close range.

  Tassa was the first one to notice. “Raul. It’s not working.”

  Raul rocked back three hurried steps as Torrent sliced a small laser beam across the shield protecting the Jupiter’s cockpit. Molten ferroglass streaked down and recrystalized. Raul blinked to clear his vision of the ghost image temporarily burned into his retina. “Give it time.”

  As the militia continued to fall back, too often leaving a body or the fire-gutted shell of another vehicle behind, the Swordsworn and Steel Wolves were drawn forward, ever closer to each other. At the base of the collapsing formation, in fact, retreating soldiers reinforced each side, spreading the wings out in a north-south push that shoved the factions into three wedges of an asymmetrical pie.

  The Steel Wolves were still the largest, but it was the militia who fought on two fronts. So far.

  “Ortega . . .” Blaire’s warning growled in Raul’s ears.

  Someone else not privy to the officer’s worries noticed yet another problem. “The Wolves are getting up aerospace fighters.”

  That was true. With the militia finally pushed completely away from the taxiing strip, a squadron of four fightercraft rolled out from beneath the protective wings of the Triumph-class DropShip. Once in the air, with daylight to gauge their strafing runs, the Steel Wolves would heap more misery onto the militia’s plate.

  “VTOLs!” Raul knew he was sending good men and women to their deaths, but knew as well that Achernar wasn’t quite done demanding its sacrifice. “Forward and harass the fighters. Buy us time.” Two Yellow Jackets and the one remaining Cyrano thundered forward. The Cyrano never made it over the enemy formation, swatted down by a Catapult’s multiple missile barrages.

  Still the Swordsworn and Steel Wolves pressed in, close to fighting side-by-side now and hardly acknowledging each other’s presence. An SM1 nipped in and cut a leg from their ForestryMech, sending it crashing to the tarmac. Diago cut in on the senior officers channel. “Raul, maybe we should think about—”

  “It’ll work,” Raul promised, cutting him off. “Give it time.” He dropped crosshairs over the Tundra Wolf’s outline, lashing out with PPCs and running another ton of molten armor over the field ferrocrete. It had to work. Achernar was out of choices, and out of time.

  River’s End/San Marino Spaceport

  Achernar

  Erik Sandoval-Groell had nearly given up on the Legionnaire, counting it and the rest of the raiding party as lost once it cleared the capital’s southeast industrial sector ahead of him.

  On a private channel Erik railed at Michael Eus, who had set the entrapment the way he saw fit rather than as Erik had directed. The operations manager had many hidden talents, and even more hidden loyalties, but military planning did not rate highly among them. He had tried to close the net with slower-moving, tracked vehicles, thinking that their heavier armor would mitigate any losses. Even a first-year cadet understood that one used fast-response craft to pin an enemy in place, then rolled in the heavy guns to obliterate them.

  Erik’s rage was short-lived, however, the heat draining from his face when he gained the city’s edge and found his forces holding off repeated attempts by the Legionnaire to regain the capital. Adding his own autocannon int
o the defensive enfilade, the young noble concentrated on the Legionnaire or one of the modified IndustrialMechs whenever possible. After he personally laid out the converted LoaderMech, his crosshairs found no other target than the Legionnaire.

  As that BattleMech pulled back from the city, joining the rest of the militia force on the outskirts of the San Marino landing field, Erik cautiously followed rather than be denied his due after the treacherous attempt. Between his Swordsworn’s carefully laid fire patterns and the brute-force cascade of firepower spreading out from the Steel Wolves, slowly they hammered the Republic’s wedge flat and then caved it in. Likely they could have continued on until little was left of the Achernar militia but memories and a ready garrison post for Swordsworn forces to occupy.

  Might have, in fact, except for a daring Shandra scout vehicle that shied too close onto Erik’s flank in trying to avoid a passing Yellow Jacket gunship.

  With casual need, Erik ordered up a pair of hoverbikes to birddog the Shandra, run it off. Light weapons fire stitched dark holes in its side armor, and was returned with interest as twin, ten-millimeter gatlings burned one driver from the hoverbike’s seat.

  Setting his jaw, teeth grinding together at the death of another Swordsworn warrior, Erik felt the warm flush return as he leveled his powerful Imperator autocannon at the Shandra and shattered its rear drive train with a long, deadly burst of hot metal.

  And Erik might have let it go at that. He had not wanted to waste a precious amount of his dwindling ammunition supply on the Shandra, except that it had demanded some response from him as their leader and—when necessary—avenger.

  He tensed when the alarms wailed their warning blast only seconds before the missiles hit all around his position. A half dozen smashed into the side of his Hatchetman’s elongated head, rocking it to one side like a prizefighter caught by a series of left hooks. The cockpit shook violently, body-checking Erik against his harness straps until a seam ripped and Erik slid half out of his command couch.