Principles of Desolation

by Randall N Bills

  The Blades were already peppering the buildings and street ahead with autocannon fire, their thick, awkward lower legs belying their considerable speed. They weren't hitting anything—no Triarii or militia units had been foolish enough to come out of hiding—but that wasn't the point. The point was to make noise, and they were doing plenty of that.

  She walked by broken windows and chipped facades where limestone cladding fell away and exposed the brick clinkers underneath. A few traffic lights remained in operation ahead of them, but the Blades finished them off by walking through the ones that overhung the street, tearing them off as if they were tall blades of grass in a meadow. Every little bit of destruction made Danai feel better about the planned retreat.

  She checked her sensors. They were getting in pretty deep now. The units directly to their west had backed up a little as Danai's group advanced, putting a small pucker in the defenders' lines. If they wanted to, they could collapse on Danai from three directions at once. Danai suspected they would want to do just that fairly quickly—in fact, her plan hinged on it.

  "Halt the advance," she told her group. "We get in any deeper, we'll have trouble getting out. Deng, Chow, I want you two stationed at the park we just passed. That should give you some open space to fire across when the attack comes. The rest of you, stay put and keep firing. If you actually hit something, so much the better."

  Lasers traced through the streets, autocannon rounds clattered everywhere and a few artillery rounds whined overhead. Danai didn't have much to do—firing her missiles without a target lock was pointless, and rapid, random firing of her heavy laser would lead to overheating in short order. She stayed put, wiggled her ax menacingly and fired an occasional laser blast to keep her heat up so that her triple-strength myomer would be ready when needed.

  The uniform gray of the sky blended well with the smoke and dust rising from the efforts of Danai's group. The tall buildings of downtown Jifang Po funneled the cold autumn breeze, blowing it directly into Yen-lo- wang's face. That's okay, Danai thought. If the wind cools me down enough, I can take an extra shot or two.

  Then the preliminaries were over.

  Klaxons sounded in her cockpit, lights flashed and movement on the sensors showed that the Triarii and the militia were on the move. Missiles snaked toward Danai's group, while gauss slugs flew in straight, terrify- ingly swift lines. The enemy was charging from all three directions. It was time to move.

  "Here they come!" Danai called. "Keep moving, but don't move back yet. They need to think we're on the offensive. We have to hold this line for a while."

  Danai turned and started north, stopping with a short skid as a single missile—either defective or jammed— passed right in front of her cockpit. It broke through a shattered third-floor window, hit an interior wall and exploded. Flames shot out of the building.

  Danai ran past, hoping the whole thing would burn enough to become a minor distraction. Her steps, faster and faster, punished the ferrocrete beneath her, opening cracks and enlarging existing divots. She glanced at her sensors to see what was coming at her, ran another block, then took another right. Two more blocks, then left, north again. As she passed through an intersection, several energy beams flew out, but the attacker hadn't judged her speed correctly. The weapons fire passed harmlessly behind her, and she continued north.

  One more block, then west again. Then south, and there were the 'Mechs that had fired at her. Two of them in the intersection, an Ocelot and a Cougar, waiting for her. They had five pulse lasers between them, and it looked to Danai like they'd let loose with at least four.

  She couldn't avoid them all. There wasn't enough room. She let the momentum of her turn carry her to the west side of the street, moving her clear of the Ocelot's fire, but not the Cougar's. She caught one beam on her shield, melting some of it away. Soon it would be about as effective a defense as Swiss cheese.

  The second beam from the Cougar caught her in the right leg, just below the knee. Her damage monitors showed the leg actuator to be singed but functional. It had better be—the last thing she could afford to lose was her legs.

  Because her enemies were using their lasers, Danai decided it was only fair to return the favor. The Cougar stood right in front of her, so she let it feel a full blast from her heavy gun.

  Her aim was a little off. She got the enemy 'Mech mostly in one of its extra-wide shoulders, cooking off its Triarii insignia but doing no significant damage.

  Swiftly, she assessed the situation. Street-level visibility remained good, and these two 'Mechs had a wider assortment of short-range weapons than she did. Dancing with them in a melee slugfest was asking for trouble. Better to use the skills she had available.

  She kept Yen-lo-wang running down the block, ax held high, shield covering her vitals. The two 'Mechs in front of her were preparing their next shots, but the sight of the tall, low-browed Capellan 'Mech bearing down on them caused a crucial moment of hesitation. As that moment ended, she was on them.

  She swept her ax down and to the side, carrying it almost perpendicular, with a slight downward cant to offset the lower height of her opposition. She let her speed do most of the work as she made a quick move to her right, placing her between the two 'Mechs. Her ax caught the Cougar firmly in the midsection as she passed, while she flung out her shield arm and smashed the Ocelot's chest-mounted laser. She didn't think the blow would break the laser, but it would at least knock the Ocelot off-balance.

  Her ax stuck in the Cougar as she passed, pulling on her right arm. She let her torso swivel, straining to stay upright, then held Yen-lo-wang on its right foot, letting the inertia on her right side and the momentum on her left swivel her around. While she turned, she brought her shield back in front of her, just in time to extend it and deliver a sharp blow to the Cougar.

  The Triarii 'Mech stumbled back. Danai fired her heavy laser again, this time catching the Cougar full in the torso. She saw no spike on her IR sensor—the Cougar's engine was damaged but still working.

  She wasn't in prime condition, either. Two heavy laser shots in rapid succession, combined with the effort of running and the hits she had taken, had spiked her own heat. The air in the cockpit felt oppressive, and Danai realized she was panting. Time to cut off this skirmish.

  She was already pointing north, so she ran in that direction. The Ocelot, which had been turning toward her when she caught it with her shield, was left to awkwardly stumble around and try for another shot. It succeeded, but again it underestimated Danai's speed. A beam clipped her back, but the shot had no effect other than slightly raising the already-high cockpit temperature and making her heat alarms whine even more insistently.

  She turned right at the next corner, checked to see if any opponents had a clear shot at her, then slowed a little when she saw they didn't. She could envision the waves of heat that Yen-lo-wang must have been trailing as she walked back east, then south, drawing closer again to her group.

  "How are we holding up?" she asked over the comm and got varying reports. The park, being one of the only open blocks in the immediate area, had attracted a lot of attention. Two pilots with her, Deng and Chow, had held their ground under swift and heavy pressure, then thrown the Triarii and Aldebarian troops back when the other 'Mechs from their lance came to lend a hand. Deng had borne the brunt of the initial assault and could barely move. Danai ordered him to fall back and get ready for what would be a very slow retreat—for him, at least.

  "Stay near Sang-wei Sung," Danai advised Deng as he fell back. "Now that you're crippled, you may be the only unit we've got that's as slow as she is."

  The group had also lost a strike tank, but other than that they seemed to be holding together. Even better, the first wave of the attack hadn't broken them, so the Triarii/Aldebarian force was calling for reinforcements from other sections of their line to drive off this menace. Just what was supposed to happen.

  That meant Danai had a little more time, but not much. She could check quickly
on the two 'Mechs she'd just met and see if they were ready to play a little more. She'd paid attention to the buildings on the street one block east of where she'd met the Ocelot and Cougar, and she had an idea.

  Both her opponents were moving south. She'd hit the Cougar with a pair of pretty good blows, but not enough to keep it down. Soon enough, she thought.

  She'd have to move quickly for this to work. She was now a block south and a block east of the pair of 'Mechs. She slowed her pace and headed west.

  She traveled about a quarter of the way down the block, then turned back east as her two opponents rounded the corner to the west. Seeing her, they sprinted forward and fired their lasers, but Danai was ready. Already on the move when they started their turn, she had gone around the next corner and headed north before they could get a clear shot.

  Now she needed to move fast. She edged over to the right side of the street as she ran at full speed, battling to maintain her traction on the smooth ferrocrete. Before long the two pursuers rounded the corner behind her and tore after her. Danai went into an erratic run, heading northwest, then straight north, then northwest again, changing her direction at irregular intervals to throw off their fire. A number of their beams went astray, but not all of them. Her rear armor absorbed at least three shots. Luckily, her preference for charging meant her rear armor hadn't taken much damage in combat recently. Sensors flashed, alarms blared, but Yen-lo-wang held together.

  Then she was where she wanted to be. She'd opened up nearly a block and a half lead on her pursuers, which should be enough. She turned west, ran a quarter of a block, and turned south again.

  The building she approached had a tremendous glass atrium in front of it, with windows stretching thirty meters into the sky, slowly curving back until the glass formed a partial roof, then met with the gray granite office building behind it. The atrium sat at an angle, with one wall on the north-south street, another on the east-west.

  Danai crashed through the glass about as easily as the Blades had moved through the traffic signals. A few exotic trees fell in front of her, thanks in part to a sweeping blow with her ax—the king of the nine hells, she thought, is not above occasional work as a lumberjack—and then she was tearing across a white tile mosaic floor. Her passage left it unrecognizable.

  It was possible the two 'Mechs chasing her didn't realize what she was doing, didn't check their sensors to see what kind of turn she had taken. It was equally possible that they knew exactly what she was doing but, when it happened, the sheer spectacle of it overwhelmed them. Either way, the end result was the same.

  She barreled through the atrium and crashed through the glass wall on the other side. She held her shield in front of her, pushing plenty of glass forward as she burst through.

  The two 'Mechs still faced north, and she was coming from the northwest. The odd angle of her approach, bad visibility caused by flying glass and the surprise of her emergence threw them off balance. They turned on her, but too slowly, and she was on top of them. Her eyes stayed on the wounded Cougar the whole time. She swung; an uppercut. diagonal, under the left shoulder. Thirty-five tons of metal lifted three centimeters off the ground, then slammed down as Danai pulled the ax back. In a single, smooth motion, her arm wheeled around and came down hard on the off-balance Cougar's head. The cockpit shattered. Leaning to its right, with no pilot to stabilize it, the 'Mech went down.

  The Ocelot, meanwhile, had taken a few steps back. It let loose with its lasers as the Cougar fell, and Danai could not move her shield around quickly enough. Catching her full in the chest, the shots did more than melt away armor. Her chest missile launcher suffered a hit, and a few missiles detonated. The concussions shook her 'Mech, and status lights showed that her launcher was compromised. She'd have to do without it for the remainder of the battle.

  Luckily her engine was okay—the LRM was close to it, but the armor held. Still, she couldn't afford to take too many more hits in that area.

  The Ocelot was going to pay. She came at it in a flurry, her ax arm slashing an x in front of the retreating 'Mech. The Ocelot squeezed off a few more shots, but now Danai was ready, and her shield took the damage. She leaned forward harder, her ax moving menacingly, and the Ocelot hastened its retreat.

  But Danai's feet didn't move. She had them planted, set, ready. While the Ocelot panicked, she blasted it with her laser. A head shot. The Ocelot, like the Cougar before it, reeled.

  Danai waited, but it didn't go down. She'd made a mess of the cockpit, but the machinery still functioned and the pilot was alive. Pity.

  She plunged forward again as the Ocelot regained its footing, and once again it was time for the ax. Danai aimed a crossing blow at the machine's waist. She caught it, and the Ocelot stumbled again.

  Another ax chop, then another. The Ocelot kept feinting, as if waiting for another blow from the laser, but the blow didn't come. Instead, Danai kept her ax working on the enemy 'Mech's relatively thin waist.

  Metal groaned, then screamed. The top of the Ocelot fell over while its legs remained erect. The pilot extended the machine's arms to absorb the impact of the coming crash, but that was likely the last useful thing the arms would do for it.

  The comm crackled to life. "Sao-shao! The pressure is getting too heavy! We'll have to fall back."

  Danai glanced at the bisected Ocelot, mentally chalking it up as a kill even though the arms were still scrambling. She turned and ran back to her group.

  By the time she crossed the few blocks to join with them, they were gathered and ready to move. They had taken more losses—a tank and a Phoenix Hawk were gone. But it sounded like the Triarii/Aldebarian losses had been worse. If the rest of the plan worked, that imbalance should only increase.

  Danai took her group back east, toward the bulk of her battalion. Now they needed their speed.

  The enemy had gathered an impressive pursuit, with light tanks running ahead of more Ghosts, Spiders and other light 'Mechs. They moved well, but Danai's hand- picked group moved faster. They made north/south shifts when needed to avoid rear fire, though that brought the risk of running into another group as they shifted streets. But their speed served them well, and they soon approached the spot Danai had made sure they would all remember.

  They were about two blocks ahead of their nearest pursuers when they reached it, and they had strict instructions to keep their course straight for at least a kilometer afterward. That meant they had to endure a steady stream of Triarii fire for a block or so, and Danai took more damage to her rear. But then the ambush opened up, and the pursuers had a whole new set of problems to worry about.

  Infantry troops positioned in high windows, tanks hidden in underground garages and spotters on low roofs directing artillery fire turned a single block into a blaze of gunfire and energy. Explosions flared here and there, but it was impossible to tell in the fast-appearing cloud of dust and smoke how much damage was critical and how much merely annoying.

  The ambush stopped the militia and the Triarii in their tracks, making them fall back and regroup for a moment. They had more than enough numbers to blast away the Capellan forces on the block, which was why Sandra's plan called for a second wave to counter them.

  After traveling a kilometer, Danai and her group veered south to make way for the force moving west toward the ambush site. Led by Bell and Sandra, the heaviest 'Mechs in the battalion were moving forward to make life miserable for the ambushed opponents. Bell was laying down PPC fire while Sandra kept a steady stream of gauss rounds flying through the block. These hit the Triarii-militia forces just as they were trying to regroup, throwing them into more disarray.

  Bell and Sandra planted themselves a few blocks away from the ambush site. Together with the other 'Mechs in their groups, they provided cover fire to let the ambushing units withdraw.

  Everything moved quickly, as Danai had known the ambush wouldn't hold for long. Once the planet's defenders got over their stubborn desire to overwhelm any units they encountered wit
h numbers, they would realize it made more sense to go around the ambush, and all the units on that block would no longer be much use.

  The artillery units were positioned so that they could put some cover fire onto nearby blocks, but they alone couldn't hold off the wave. Plus, they were under orders to move out with the rest of the ambuscade. Their firing soon died down, leaving Bell and Sandra's group to hold off the Republic troopers' advance as long as they could.

  They managed to keep the enemy at bay for a good half hour, launching shells and bolts over and through buildings to keep the advancing units off guard. The Tri- arii and Aldebarians kept pouring more units into the contested area, and finally they reached critical mass. The fire from the Capellan 'Mechs was not enough to fend off the advance, and they were forced to retreat.

  That had been the plan from the beginning. Bell gave the signal by saying, "We're moving south," an unusually brief comment for him. Then he and Sandra led their group away as quickly as they could.

  Once sheltered from enemy fire by a few buildings, they turned back east. A few blocks ahead of them was a street Sandra had pointed to during the planning yesterday, jabbing at it repeatedly, saying, "Here. That's how we get out of here."

  She couldn't have designed a better street for their escape if she'd tried. It started just southeast of downtown, meaning any units on the other side of downtown, or even in the heart of it, wouldn't have a clear shot at the Capellan battalion. About three kilometers away from downtown, the street bent to the south, once again making life difficult for pursuers looking for a good shot. The only problem Sandra anticipated was breaking through the enemy lines on the way out, which was why she had designed the whole rest of the plan. The concentration of forces to the west after her feint should have thinned the other lines, making them easier to break through. Or so Sandra had hoped.