A Bonfire of Worlds

by Steven Mohan Jr.

  The failure of interstellar communications threatens civilization across the breadth of the Inner Sphere. Risking everything on one last chance for survival, ComStar kidnaps engineering genius Tucker Harwell who unravels the Blackout’s greatest mystery. Among the Clans, Khan Malvina Hazen of the Jade Falcons hunts for the next enemy to crush beneath her brutal Mongol Doctrine, and the warrior Alaric Wolf makes his move into the halls of power.

  Plans years in the making come together across hundreds of star systems. Secrets hidden for decades will finally be revealed.

  While an empire goes up in flames.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products 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. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ rights is appreciated.

  A BONFIRE OF WORLDS

  Cover art by Michael Komarck. Cover design by Matt Heerdt. Maps by Øystein Tvedten.

  ©2010 The Topps Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. A Bonfire of Worlds, Classic BattleTech, BattleTech, ’Mech, BattleMech, MechWarrior and the Topps logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of the Topps Company, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. Catalyst Game Labs and the Catalyst Game Labs logo are trademarks of InMediaRes Productions LLC. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the Copyright Owner, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Published by Catalyst Game Labs,

  an imprint of InMediaRes Productions, LLC

  PMB 202 • 303 91st Ave NE • E502 • Lake Stevens, WA 98258

  ISBN: 978-1-934857-24-3

  http://www.battletech.com

  http://www.classicbattletech.com

  (official BattleTech web pages)

  http://www.battlecorps.com

  (BattleTech subscription fiction web pages)

  http://www.catalystgamelabs.com

  (Catalyst Game Labs’ web pages)

  http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog

  (online ordering)

  For my wife Jo Anne,

  who makes all good things possible.

  Table of Contents

  Lost in the Night

  PROLOGUE

  A Distant Howl

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Scent of Prey

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Effects of Predation

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lost in the Night

  Devlin Stone’s Republic was supposed to be humanity’s last, best hope to free itself from the scourge of never ending warfare. But as soon as the going got tough what happened? The verdammt Republic crawled down a rabbit hole and pulled the opening in after them.

  —Archon Melissa Steiner, TBC Interview, 14 March 3136

  PROLOGUE

  Scout-Class JumpShip Brigit

  Interstellar Space Near Yorii, Republic of the Sphere

  18 August 3136

  Of all the treasures in the universe, the only thing Dr. Elgin Sawyer really wanted was answers.

  Nothing else mattered. He was pushing ninety, his chocolate skin wrinkled and cracked from a lifetime spent beneath the sun of Lyons. The passing years had long ago banked the fires of his passion, arthritis kept him from his garden, and a growing silence stole the voices of his few surviving friends. He was old and alone.

  Answers were all that was left to him.

  So Sawyer stood in the small, darkened wardroom of the little starship Brigit, foot tucked into a steel loop welded to the deck, looking out at the stars. At Yorii.

  At ten trillion kilometers, Yorii’s sun was a diamond chip, scarcely brighter than the other stars sprinkled across the dark tapestry of space. But it was different, yes it was. It was still part of The Republic.

  Lyons was not.

  Yorii lay behind an invisible wall, a wall erected by The Republic’s Exarch, Jonah Levin. The building of walls had long been a human strategy, probably since the first Cro-Magnon realized you could stack one stone atop another. The Chinese had built the Great Wall to hold back the barbarian hordes. Hadrian had bisected Britannia with his wall. Walls had been used to stem unwanted immigration and deter terrorists.

  Sometimes they even worked

  If you didn’t think about what happened to the people trapped on the other side.

  A bitter smile twisted Sawyer’s lips. Who would have ever thought Lyons would be jealous of Yorii? Yorii had been ravaged during the Jihad, and her wounds were still healing. Much of the planet’s soil was cracked and poisoned, her riverbeds parched and clicking with radiation.

  But Yorii’s people were safe behind the wall.

  "Why, Exarch?" he whispered. "Why did you leave us outside?"

  It was the first of the questions he wanted answered.

  He heard the distant sound of a hatch open and a pair of reflections appeared in the ferroglass. Sawyer touched his hearing aid, turning up reality’s volume. "Yes?"

  "Hope’s drive and battery are charged," said the young man. "We can go as soon as you give the word." Derrick Carter was twenty-seven and handsome: black hair cut short, eyes blue, strong jaw, a bright smile. He wore gray slacks and a dark blue polo shirt emblazoned with the Carter crest.

  The woman standing next to him rolled her eyes.

  "Cassandra?" said Sawyer softly.

  Cassandra Holliman, Brigit’s captain, was a pretty woman in her forties, her auburn hair cut spacer short. She wore green coveralls. "The whole point in hanging out here was to monitor Yorii’s broadcasts, learn something about Levin’s wall. But we haven’t learned a damned thing. We still don’t know if—"

  "And we’ll never know," said Carter hotly, "if we never jump."

  "Beware of brave nobles," Holliman shot back, "they’re great for getting commoners killed."

  "Enough," said Sawyer softly. It was his expedition and that made it his headache. He sighed. Why had he let Nancy Carter put him in charge? College professors shouldn’t be part of the grand sweep of history—they should read about the grand sweep of history. He was a damn fool to be out here. Becka would’ve talked him out of coming.

  But Becka was dead.

  And Felicia. And Trevor. And their kids. All killed in the last Falcon raid.

  Sawyer turned back to look at Yorii.

  As he watched, the JumpShip Orphan’s Hope occulted the star. Sawyer could see the rounded bulb of Hope’s bow and her long, narrow body finally ending in a radial display of fins. Unlike little Brigit, Hope was a giant, a massive Monolith, her outline distended by DropShips: Unions and Overlords and
Leopard CVs.

  Sawyer didn’t expect his expedition to make planetfall, but every contingency had been planned for. A great host was embarked aboard the Monolith and her daughters: aerospace fighters and battlesuit infantry, armor and BattleMechs. Lyons had questions.

  And they were going to insist on answers.

  And yet, Sawyer still couldn’t shake a feeling of doom. Since Levin had raised his terrible wall, no one who’d jumped into a Republic system had ever managed to jump back out again. Holliman’s people crewed both JumpShips. She begged him with her eyes not to send them in.

  Sawyer had no desire to send these people to their deaths. "Maybe—" he began.

  "Malvina Hazen isn’t going to stop," said Carter, his voice hard.

  Malvina Hazen. Clan Jade Falcon. Sawyer saw the face of his dear Becka, the kids, his grandbabies for God’s sake, all killed when a Jagatai had come down during the last Falcon raid, their deaths collateral to a monster’s ambition. Someone had to make Levin explain why he’d abandoned the worlds outside the wall.

  Someone had to make the man live up to his responsibilities.

  "One hour." There was steel in Sawyer’s voice. "And not a second longer."

  * * *

  One second Orphan’s Hope was there and the next she just wasn’t. A timer in the lower left corner of the Brigit’s main viewscreen started counting down from one hour. Sawyer waited, strapped into a jump seat, staring at the flickering green numbers set against the background of stars.

  For the entire hour, Sawyer and the bridge crew waited in silence, sweating, and staring at that screen. Until the numbers hit 0:00:00.0 and flickered from green to red. And started to count up. When the timer hit plus three minutes, Holliman cleared her throat. "Young Master Carter seems to be a bit tardy."

  "Knew that kid couldn’t tell time," said the navigator, and a titter of nervous laughter made its way around the bridge.

  Sawyer said nothing.

  The timer hit plus five minutes. Six. Seven.

  "What are we going to do?" said the captain in a low voice.

  "Whatever happened to the Hope," murmured Sawyer, "we owe Lyons answers."

  "What does that mean exactly?" asked the navigator.

  "What is the distance to the pirate point?" asked Sawyer.

  "The pirate point is the second gas giant’s L4. It’s four hundred forty-seven light hours from our present—" Holliman stopped. "Wait." Her voice was suddenly arctic. "You’re not proposing we jump after them?"

  "No," said Sawyer sadly. "I’m proposing we wait. For four hundred forty-seven hours."

  6 September 3136

  Eighteen point six days had passed since Hope had jumped into the Yorii system and Sawyer knew she wasn’t coming back. It had seemed like such a simple plan. Jump into the outer system, gather intel on the wall, broadcast his world’s plea for help, and then jump out again before they could be attacked.

  What possibly could have gone wrong?

  Lyons had to know. He had to know.

  So he found himself again on Brigit’s bridge, watching numbers flicker and dance as they chased their way down to zero.

  At minus two minutes, Holliman leaned towards him. "The timer accounts for the light speed lag between Hope’s theoretical insertion point and our position. There is always some jump variation so the true distance could vary by as much as—"

  "It’s fine," said Sawyer softly.

  Time drained away to nothing and again, the numbers flashed red. Everyone turned to the communications officer, a narrow-faced man named Hill, with a shaved head and dark eyes. He shrugged, shook his head.

  "Maybe Hope met with some kind of jump accident," said Holliman. "Pirate points can be . . ." Her voice trailed off.

  The counter hit plus one.

  Sawyer just stared at the diamond chip centered on the viewscreen.

  "How long do we wait?" asked Hill quietly, dragging a hand over his smooth skull.

  "As long as it takes," said Sawyer coldly.

  "Sir," said Holliman gently. "If we haven’t heard anything after an hour—"

  "No," said Sawyer sharply. "We have to report to Lyons."

  "Hope is lost," she shot back. "Isn’t that worth reporting?"

  "Listen—"Sawyer snarled, but he was interrupted by the crackle of static.

  "Incoming message," shouted Hill. He looked up. "Hope’s call sign."

  The image of Yorii was gone from the viewscreen, replaced by an electronic blizzard. Still, the picture was clear enough for Sawyer to see that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

  Through the static he made out a bridge, Hope’s bridge. The right side had been smashed; chairs crushed flat, panels twisted into bizarre geometries, a shower of blue sparks spitting from a naked power coupling. Someone had splashed scarlet paint across the bridge, except Sawyer knew at once that it wasn’t paint, it wasn’t paint at all.

  Despite all the damage done to the starboard half of the bridge, the port side was pristine. Untouched. It was as if some terrible line had cut through the Hope’s bridge, separating life from death.

  And Derrick Carter had been standing in the bridge’s center when it had hit.

  Both sides of him looked fine, looked whole. But his two halves weren’t quite . . . aligned. The right side of his face, it was lower, a centimeter lower than the left. His eyes were offset, his mouth a pair of gashes not quite touching, there was a jog in his skull.

  "Derrick," Sawyer whispered, though of course the boy couldn’t hear him.

  "Doh not," croaked Carter with his two half-mouths, struggling to form the words, his grotesque face twisting with the effort. "Fall. Oh. Do not. Follow." He shook his funhouse-mirror head. "Don’t. Know. How. But." He closed his mismatched eyes.

  "Is. Hell."

  And then the message cut out, replaced by a serene star field, Yorii at its center.

  The shocked silence on the bridge of Brigit was absolutely complete.

  In that moment, Dr. Elgin Sawyer realized that The Republic was simply gone, as surely as if God Himself had reached down and plucked it from the Inner Sphere.

  And there would be no answers.

  A Distant Howl

  Yesterday, AFNN received ComStar’s First Quarter results via JumpShip. The communications giant reported its twenty-sixth consecutive quarter of red ink. Perhaps even more troubling, the company reported a seventy-eight percent spike in non-operating income from the sale of capital assets. The markets interpreted this fire sale as a sign ComStar can’t fix the HPG blackout. Our analysts predict stock prices will plummet across the Inner Sphere as the news radiates outward.

  —Atreus Financial News Network, 25 April 3139

  CHAPTER ONE

  ComStar Secret Research Facility Omega One

  Luyten 68-28, Exact Coordinates Unknown

  Prefecture X

  23 September 3139

  Tucker Harwell worked alone in the small laboratory that was both his home and his cell. There wasn’t much to the room: work bench, cot, a small, enclosed bathroom. The far wall was a mirror—so his captors could look in on him whenever they wanted. He didn’t even have a light switch. For Tucker, it was always day.

  His captors hadn’t told him much about Luyten, the mysterious world that had become his prison, but it was clear that ComStar had once maintained a base here.

  ComStar . . . or Word of Blake.

  There had been some kind of battle, a battle that had scarred the world’s face and smashed the network of satellites and habitats in low planetary orbit. No one had told Tucker this—but he’d surmised it. Adepts kept bringing him damaged devices—recorders, circuit boards, data cubes—a distressing percentage of them radioactive. The radiac on his workbench clicked merrily to itself as he worked, this time on an old, battered memory core.

  ComStar had grown desperate, desperate enough to look for answers from its violent past.

  The core was a small box, its black paint peeling, the screws holding the cas
ing to the base plate rusted solid. He plugged the core into a power supply and inserted a probe in the dataport. He worked quickly and without hope. Whatever data the core had once held, it likely had been washed clean by decades of radiation exposure. He glanced at his noteputer and sighed. More wasted effort.

  Unaccountably, the ‘puter beeped.

  Startled, Tucker glanced at the characters scrolling across the small screen:

  CLARION C&+% PROTOX)MS WILL BE GNT+IATED ONLY ON 4#W #FCXERS OF GFD PRYK%NTOR MX*TIAL. MA@ T!E PR5CE OF %*AKE BE WITH YOU.

  He blinked. Clarion? What the hell was Clarion? The first sentence was cryptic, but the second was clear enough. May the peace of Blake be with you. He shuddered.

  "Problem, Tuck?"

  Tucker jumped and wheeled around.

  His sister leaned against the frame of his open door, arms folded across her chest. Her words were cheery, but there was no hint of good will on her face. There was nothing on her face. She wore the frozen expression of a mannequin.

  Like Tucker, Patricia Harwell was slender and she had the same black hair, though hers was straight and shoulder-length, while his was unruly and short. She was a couple centimeters shorter than he and more attractive, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

  And they wore identical white uniforms.

  But for all that, they weren’t the same. Patricia was an advocate of old ComStar, what Tucker had come to think of as fundamentalist ComStar, the branch of the organization that had once metastasized into Word of Blake.

  The Blakists believed the technical workings of interstellar communications were infused with mystical meaning and they worshiped ComStar’s founder, Jerome Blake, as if he were a God. It was crazy—and scary. Scary because the Blakists believed so fervently in their cause that in its service they were willing to undertake any measure to spread their beliefs.