Principles of Desolation

by Randall N Bills

  "Ta ma de!" Danai swore. "How long?"

  "They're a ways east. Maybe fifty kilometers. You've got an hour, maybe a little more."

  Danai and Sandra had talked earlier, when it was clear that reinforcements were coming, and they'd decided their best option was to push through the militia troops and get a defensive position inside the city. But they had less time than Danai wanted, and the reinforcements were larger in number than she'd hoped. The sooner they could get secured inside Jifang Po. the better.

  "Sang-wei Parks—how scattered are we?"

  "More by the minute," Clara said briskly, "but that's because the militia's scattering." The Aldebarian forces had fallen back inside the outskirts soon after the start of the battle, trying to gain concealment behind the low buildings of the suburbs while leaving Danai's forces out in the open. All it did was slow down the inevitable— the militia troops gained some shelter, but at the cost of ruining their own sight lines. They could do little more than wait for the Capellan troops to track them down and take them out. It had been a sloppy battle, filled with individual skirmishes, but Danai wasn't bothered because she was getting the results she wanted—her disciplined troops were easily outperforming the militia, and the Aldebarian casualties were much higher than her own.

  "Call off the chase," she told her XO. "We need to move into the city center. You and Bell lead a punch through the middle of the militia lines. Hold the hole open long enough to get the whole battalion through."

  "Yes, Sao-shao."

  "Sandra, come with me. We're going to head up the rear guard for this action."

  Sandra's Marauder was only a kilometer away, laying down heavy cover fire while faster units mounted their pursuit. She was tromping at Danai's side a bare minute later.

  For a time they had little to do besides watch the troops gather in front of them. Clara and Bell easily punched a hole in the militia line, and Bell in particular seemed to have fun holding the gap open practically single-handedly. Before long he began delivering a play- by-play of his actions over the comm.

  "Wait, wait, this could be trouble. Couple of Kelswas, cleverly coming at me from two different directions. But whoops, I've got a laser, that one's going to have to swerve for a minute, and hey, look at that, an autocan- non! I've got an autocannon too! And the Kelswa just isn't the best-armored vehicle in the universe, and it's taking it right on the chin. And the nose, ears, whatever. Shredding like paper in, well, a shredder."

  Danai was glad Bell couldn't see the small grin that kept tugging at one corner of her mouth against her will. "Bell!" she said, making her voice sound much harsher than she felt. "Can we keep this channel open for official business, please?"

  "This is official." Bell insisted. "I'm relaying my experiences for posterity. So when historians write about this battle, they'll know how a Locust tried to sneak up on me and, oh, took a PPC right up the guts! That's gotta hurt!"

  That stupid grin persisted, and now it seemed to be sneaking into her voice. "Bell, don't make me order you."

  "Wouldn't dream of it, Sao-shao. I'll conduct my heroic defense of this gap in noble silence."

  Danai rolled her eyes. At least his morale was good.

  The battalion had gathered itself promptly, and Danai was pleased at its discipline. That would be vital for the tougher opponents charging toward them.

  The last units were moving toward the gap. Sandra stomped forward, each step a minor tremor. Between her gauss rifles and her extended-range PPC, she was deadly at a distance, and she kept a steady stream of slugs and bolts flying toward anyone attempting to move on the rear of the battalion.

  While the Marauder moved forward in a more or less straight line, Danai took Yen-lo-wang on a darting course, back and forth through the occasionally winding streets of Jifang Po's outskirts. Her shoulder laser rose above most of the buildings in this part of town, and she fired a few shots over the rooftops. The Artemis system locked on to a few militia 'Mechs and a tank or two as she weaved back and forth. She launched volleys at the units that looked the most threatening. The sight of the missiles exploding upon impact and the excitement of intimidating units by her mere appearance was fun, but the whole time she kept her ax upright and unused. Plenty of units on the field had missiles and lasers, but she appeared to be the only one with an ax. She hated to keep it out of play for long.

  Soon she and Sandra were passing through what had once been the militia's line. Clara and Bell fell in with them. Bell offering one final flourish.

  "And the battalion is through! History will debate whether this was a fantastic display of individual combat prowess, or a brilliant example of two 'Mechs exhibiting team tactics, but either way this battle will likely be a part of military academy texts for decades to come."

  Danai almost smiled again. Then, for no good reason, she thought of another MechWarrior she knew who clearly thought highly of his own abilities, and she spent the rest of the advance into the heart of JifangPoCity trying to resist the urge to fire her heavy laser into Bell's back.

  11

  Jifang PoCity, Aldebaran

  Republic of the Sphere

  28 November 3135

  The sheets had not been changed. Room service was not available. The holovid worked, but no signal came through—none of the channels in the city were functioning. Water flowed, but power was erratic, and Danai was calling in techs every few hours to keep as much juice flowing to her second-floor room as possible. Under normal circumstances she would have registered a firm complaint to management and refused to pay her bill until she received satisfaction. However, since management had fled and she wasn't paying anything for the room, she supposed it was acceptable.

  After her forces made it to the heart of JifangPoCity, Danai had stood ready and waiting for the militia and their reinforcements to push them out. The new arrivals had come just close enough for Danai to get a look at the insignia on the shoulders of their lead 'Mechs—a curved rectangle that looked like the front piece of a column with the Roman numeral III on it. They were Triarii Protectors. Not the most fearsome unit in the

  Inner Sphere by any means, but not one to be overlooked, either.

  The first part of the battle had gone fairly well for the Capellans, but they had still suffered losses. She had lost a little over ten percent of her 'Mechs and one of her three artillery pieces. Her infantry had suffered similar reductions, though some of the troopers were only wounded and would recover in time. All told, she'd come onto the planet with about two-thirds of a battalion, and she now had about half a battalion still functioning after three battles. Her reports had the Triarii at a full battalion, including air support, plus whatever was left of the militia. This meant Danai was sitting at two- to-one. maybe two-and-a-half-to-one odds. Odds much more suited to defending than to attacking. So she looked for a good position—including placing her surviving artillery units and many of her infantry troops in buildings with good views and decent protection—and waited for the attack to come.

  It didn't. Her troops got a few good shots at the Spider that led the Triarii pack, and it promptly turned around and headed out of downtown. A pair of Capellan Wasps ran out in pursuit, but cover fire from the bulk of the battalion discouraged them, and they returned to downtown JifangPoCity.

  Then, except for the occasional crash of artillery shells through skyscraper windows, there was silence. Silence for more than two days.

  If the Republic troops were trying to starve the Capellans out, they'd picked the wrong venue. Civilians fleeing from the city's interior had left behind a wealth of food, and Danai had no compunction about taking whatever her unit could find—and that included taking over the hotel kitchen and its cavernous walk-in freezer.

  Foraging for supplies kept the troops occupied for a time, but it was nothing like combat, and after two days they were getting restless. Especially Bell, who had already told everyone he could find about his heroics on the front lines. He was eager to write another chapter in his glor
ious biography.

  Danai wanted some distraction, any distraction, that could keep her from reviewing her unit's losses in her head. When she was young, she had played a game with her friends, an old, old game. Pieces moved around a circular board, buying properties and charging opposing players rent when others landed on your spaces. You won by bankrupting your opponents.

  One girl she had played with. Reenie, took losing particularly hard (and, because she tended to hoard her money rather than buy properties, she lost often). After one defeat, Reenie, near tears, had taken out her frustrations on the victorious Danai.

  "I hope you're happy," she had said. "You and all your money. Did you ever stop to think of the families you've ruined? The people who don't have a home to go to anymore? Just so you can have more money? You must be so proud."

  Danai was, in fact, quite proud of herself, and she said so, leading to a protracted argument. She had laughed off Reenie at the time, since it was only a game, but on further consideration (and much pushing by Reenie), she had been forced to admit that if it hadn't been a game, her actions would indeed have been particularly cruel.

  The heat of battle was thousands, millions of times more exciting than that old game. It got her blood moving like nothing else in the world, and while she was fighting she wanted to be utterly triumphant, no matter the cost.

  But then it was over, and she was left with the dead and wounded Capellans who had suffered because of her orders, and it was like winning the game she'd played with Reenie and subsequently being forced to shake the hands of each and every victim of her heartless quest for money. Only the aftermath of battle was thousands, millions of times worse.

  She had been at this long enough to have a series of preconstructed arguments in her head, and she ran them in a constant stream in the days after a fight. This is war. It's harsh, it's brutal, people die. That's the way it is. People sign up for it, just like I did, knowing what they're getting into. They know the potential cost. It's not my job to baby them, to protect them. It's my job to use them. To further the glory of the Confederation, to secure our borders, to vanquish those who would conquer us. If I didn't do it, I'd be shirking my responsibility, or worse— I'd be a traitor.

  All those arguments helped somewhat, and she knew that time and activity would force her back to her normal self. But in the immediate silent aftermath of a battle, the voices of the people she had sent to their deaths were not easy to drown out.

  The distraction she sought finally came—a transmission into the Capellan comm center, with a code that the techs passed on to Danai. Danai put the code into the video comm in her commandeered hotel room and saw the image of an elaborately handsome man in full Triarii dress uniform. He had the kind of face normally seen on store-bought frames for holovid stills, the clean good looks to which everyone, according to retailers, was supposed to aspire. His dark brown hair was wavy, his chin slightly cleft, his nose strong but not too bold, and his eyes green and intelligent. For a moment. Danai was convinced the code she had received had dialed her into a Triarii recruiting ad.

  Then the ad spoke.

  "Good evening," he said. "I asked that this code be conveyed to the commander of the invading Capellan forces, so I assume you are she."

  "That I am."

  "Splendid. I'm Major Bennett Anderton, commander, Triarii Protectors Second Battalion. We have been dispatched to assist in the defense of Aldebaran."

  He fell silent, clearly expecting a reply from Danai. Not quite knowing what he wanted to hear, she said, "Good for you." Then there was another moment of awkward silence.

  Anderton sighed. "May I ask your name?"

  Danai shrugged, deciding it mattered little if this man knew who she was. "Sao-shao Danai Liao-Centrella."

  He showed no reaction to the name, remaining blankly composed. "A pleasure, Sao-shao Liao-Centrella. I wanted to arrange this meeting to take a measure of your intentions. May I ask what your plans are?"

  "Only if you'll be satisfied with vague, general statements."

  "Naturally," Anderton replied smoothly. "I wouldn't expect you to compromise your defenses."

  This man, Danai decided, had been Triarii for too long. He was like a human show pony.

  "My plans are to take and hold this planet for the Capellan Confederation," she said.

  Anderton nodded slightly. "As I thought. It's a pity, really. If you were here on a raiding mission of some sort, perhaps we might be able to come to some sort of agreement that would end this standoff peacefully. But it seems you want more than just a portion of Aldebaran's material wealth."

  "Yes, it seems," Danai said. "But you can still get out of this without any more fighting. If you and the militia surrender to me, everything's fine."

  "I'm afraid that's not one of our options," Anderton said, puckering his lips slightly. "In fact, I might suggest the reverse—with the way the forces are currently aligned, you may want to consider surrender."

  Danai put her index finger to her lips and looked up, as if concentrating. Then she looked back at the comm. "I considered it. No. We're not surrendering. Not now, not ever." She wasn't sure what had gotten into her— she usually wasn't this flip in diplomatic matters. But something about Anderton—maybe his formality, maybe his smugness, maybe just his maleness—made her want to needle him as much as possible, to get under his skin.

  Anderton shrugged, looking much like a wealthy patron of a tropical resort who has just been informed that his preferred vintage of wine is not in stock. "Very well. I expect to encounter you on the battlefield shortly, where hopefully our physical jousting will be more conclusive than our conversation. Good evening, Sao-shao Liao-Centrella."

  His image disappeared before she could respond.

  His confidence unnerved her a little. He seemed sure that his force could subdue hers—but if that was the case, why had he waited two days? It was time to check in with Cheung.

  "Yes, Sao-shao?" Cheung said promptly when Danai hailed her over the comm.

  "Is anvthing going on out there I should know about?"

  "Funny you should ask," Cheung said. "We've been picking up some vehicle activity on the edge of our sensor range—support vehicles, looks like a column. No 'Mechs yet. They get close enough to get in sensor range, then dart back out. We've picked them up three or four times now. They were north of us, heading west, first time we saw them. They seem to be circling—last time we saw them, they'd shifted their direction to southwest."

  Danai instinctively knew what was going on, but she needed proof—and a definite head count of the opposition. "Push your vehicles a little farther out," she said. "Try to get a complete picture of what's out there and let me know as soon as you do."

  "Yes, Sao-shao."

  It had to be more reinforcements, coming in on a roundabout path, avoiding Capellan sensors as long as they could. This was not good. She didn't figure the amount of militia forces coming in would be huge, but it could easily worsen the imbalance of the situation— make it three to one, maybe even three and a half to one. While the general consensus among Capellan warriors held that one Capellan was worth five or even ten troops of any other given army, Danai didn't wish to put that notion to the test, especially when she was hemmed in on enemy ground. Nothing would be improved by sitting here in the city. The longer she waited in her commandeered hotel room, the more likely that a sizeable Triarii/militia force would come in to make her life miserable.

  She was already feeling pretty miserable. Her big gambit, spreading out her forces across three planets to confuse the troops of Prefecture VI, seemed to have gotten her nothing. That didn't make her happy, but it wouldn't have mattered much if she had succeeded on Aldebaran. Unfortunately, the situation here was looking grim, and she found herself wishing she had aerial support to help her take the planet. She never liked being wrong, especially when the stakes were so high.

  But the fight wasn't lost yet. She summoned her command lance to her room. If the Capellan forces meant
to take the planet, they first needed to get safely out of Jifang Po. Then they could regroup, and give that smug Triarii what he had coming.

  29 November 3135

  It had been worse than Danai expected. The militia, with good reason, seemed to have decided that there was little point to guarding the rest of Aldebaran at the moment. If Jifang Po fell, whatever happened elsewhere would be largely irrelevant. So they had stripped most of their garrisons and brought the bulk of their forces to the capital. When Cheung finally tallied up all the arriving forces, it came to two full battalions of reinforcements. The actual worth of a Capellan soldier compared to a Republican trooper seemed likely to be tested.

  The planning meeting for the upcoming battle had gone against most of Danai's instincts. She was no stranger to improvising a retreat when the situation called for it—New Hessen had been good for that, at least—but sitting down and planning an entire battle whose only goal was retreat was a new and unpleasant experience. She tried to assuage the discomfort by referring to the action as a "retrograde movement" throughout the planning meeting, but in the end the effect was similar to saying someone had passed away instead of saying they had died—it sounded more pleasant, but the choice of words did nothing to bring the individual in question back to life.

  She comforted herself that this movement did not mean defeat—they were merely regrouping, buying more time to make a stronger assault. She wasn't giving anything up yet.

  It also helped that Sandra's plan for the movement gave her a plum assignment due to Yen-lo-wang's speed. Kuang Nu Company held the fastest 'Mechs in her command, so Sandra had plucked the two quickest lances, thrown in a few Enyo strike tanks for good measure, and put Danai at the head of this group. It was the only reasonable choice—none of the others in her command lance could hope to keep up, and they had other assignments anyway.

  She was in the heart of the movement, walking down a broad avenue behind a pair of Blades. With their speed and smaller lasers, she was counting on them to do a lot of the heavy lifting on this part of the battle plan. But she'd pick up a little weight of her own as well.