“Sir!”
Doreen came upright, her eyes fixed on the repeater screens. Points of light were appearing, bracketed by numbers she could not read.
“What have we got?” she asked, not bothering to increase magnification on her repeaters. More points of light sprang into existence.
“Multiple jumps, pirate points…” The tech paused, double-checking his readings. “Every one we plotted and then some.”
Doreen nodded, aware she’d lost a bet. She’d been among those anticipating a few incursions of large-capacity JumpShips in tight formation; a massed attack to punch through Atreus’ defensive umbrella. The Halas raiders had evidently opted for the swarm assault, hoping to flow through the defenders’ net by presenting too many targets for them to engage at once.
In the end, of course, it didn’t matter.
“Transponder codes,” the second tech reported. “Every one broadcasting Free Worlds League Military.”
Doreen snorted.
On the repeater screens the light-point count seemed steady.
“All in?”
“Looks like it,” the senior tech confirmed.
“Compress all data for fast squirt,” Doreen ordered. “Mr. Orton, take us to Hellos Minor.”
Hunter-class JumpShip Renard
Pirate Point 34,000 kilometers above Zenith Jump Point
Atreus System
Free Worlds League
“Their forward observer has jumped.”
“Aitutaki.”
Alexander Plateau
Corin, Atreus
Regulan Fiefs
“Eyes to fist two,” the voice crackled in Andrika’s headset. “There’s a third aggressor unit, lance of heavies, bearing oh-four-seven relative, grid fourteen-twenty. Using the ridge for cover.”
“Grid fourteen-twenty,” she confirmed aloud, letting the forward observer know she’d heard him, and making sure her gunners heard her as well. “Let us know when they enter fourteen-eighteen.”
Taking their cue, the two gunners above and behind her elevated their matching turrets for indirect fire. Fourteen-twenty was just out of range, but it was right next door to fourteen-nineteen, within range of the thirty long-range missile tubes her JES III mounted. And next to fourteen-nineteen was fourteen-eighteen—the far kill zone for the mix of ballistics and missiles David Company’s Second Platoon could bring to bear. Even though she couldn’t see them, Andrika knew the other four fire support tanks of DC2 were targeting fourteen-eighteen right along with her. Dug in and camouflaged, the fifteen long-shooters of David Company were tasked with stopping any Halas raiders trying to take the Imperator Autoweapons plant from the south.
The huge ImpAuto manufacturing facility, crouching among the cliffs and ridges overlooking a few thousand square kilometers of wheat fields, was naturally defended to the north and west by cliffs of razor-edged crags even mountain goats avoided. The natural approach was east, where the plateau dropped steeply down a stony flat routinely used by DropShips. That’s where all the ’Mechs were pointed, waiting for someone stupid enough to use the front door.
To the south were ridges of soft limestone and narrow valleys of silt and bog. A few million years ago, she’d learned at her briefing, it had been a coral-filled bay surrounded by rock. Now it was about halfway through eroding down into a bog, which made it practically impassable for heavy ordnance. Which in turn meant somebody was bound to try it.
So far three somebodies had. Or maybe just the three lances of one company. First Platoon and Third Platoon had each turned back raider probes this morning. Two up and two down as fast as the defenders could fire.
Andrika and her crew sat in silence, waiting for DC2 to get its turn.
“Eyes to fist two.” She jumped at the sound of the spotter’s voice, then grinned at her own nerves. “Tally four hostile heavies, dead center grid fourteen-eighteen.”
“Fourteen-eighteen sweet spot,” Andrika confirmed. “All together on my mark, ladies and gentlemen. Three, two, one, shoot!”
Around her the JES III rocked as the missiles launched.
Without instructions her gunners worked the cycle, loading fresh missiles into the hot tubes while the first flight was still rising. Thirty seconds before safety protocols allowed, but Andrika had always believed the chance of a thermal trigger in the launcher was infinitely better than being caught with no birds ready to fly.
“Hits, hits,” the forward observer reported. “They are turning tail. Repeat, hostiles withdrawing at speed.”
“That’s three,” Andrika said.
Alexander Plateau
Corin, Atreus
Free Worlds League
“That’s three,” Edith Byers said, watching the mixed contrails arch over her head. “We owe the Angel II militia a round of drinks for drawing that kind of fire.”
“Tally is fifteen tanks,” Lieutenant Evergreen reported, turning a field noteputer so she could see the tac display. “Except for these two outriders here and here, their formation is pretty standard. Arcs give lots of mutual cover.”
“But it’s all long range.” Lieutenant Lude frowned at the data tags. “What have they have for close in?”
“Most likely nothing.” Evergreen traced arcs on the screen. “They’re set up for a fast pullback into the plant. Odds are the heavy defenses are inside the facility perimeter, where they can bottle up aggressor ’Mechs.”
“Too bad we left all our ’Mechs on New Hope,” Byers said solemnly. “Looks like we’ll have to skip the trap demonstration and blow the tanks in place.
“Tell off satchel details.”
For a moment she was tempted to assign herself one of the targets, but wisdom prevailed. She still felt like a teenager, but she moved like a middle-aged woman. Which was good for an old girl, especially in the heavier pull of local gravity, but not good enough for sneaking up on an emplaced tank. Either she’d get killed or some kid would get killed covering for her. Either way, the tank crews would know what was up before all the satchels could be placed. The whole company could get away clean if she screwed up early enough.
Speaking of which…
“Tell the snipers to go ahead and take out the forward observers,” she ordered. “Before one of them observes us and decides to tell somebody.”
Hampstead Refining and Machining
Imstar Aero space
Lanan, Atreus
Aletha Chowla stomped her jump jets, launching her seventy-five-ton Thanatos over the building. As her BattleMech cleared the roofline, she launched medium-range missiles, widest spread. Twenty missiles blanketed the courtyard, two vehicles dissolving into fireballs before her targeting computer could identify them.
Trucks or APCs, she guessed, basing her assumption more on their total destruction than anything else.
She swung her ’Mech’s left arm wide as she landed, sweeping the extended-range large laser and medium pulse laser over as wide an arc as possible. Finger on the trigger, she searched for a target while her missile launcher reloaded itself.
Nothing moved. Sensors gave back mountains of hardened armor in every direction.
The problem with clearing an aerospace fighter plant is everything is heavy metal.
The problem was, some of the heavy metal was the First Regulan Hussars—a tougher unit than the pirate bands the Rim Guards usually faced. She’d lost a lance of good people learning to respect the Hussars’ discipline and tactics.
“Don’t shoot, it’s me.” Marcus Green III’s Raijin stalked from the mouth of an alley opposite the building Alethea had jumped. The main entrance to the courtyard was to her left, east, opening onto the main thoroughfare.
“Our trap netted two trucks, Marc Three,” Alethea warned. “We may be the trappees instead of the trappers here.”
Sensor readings were jumpy in a factory the size of a medium town packed to bursting with ordnance waiting to be assembled, but at long range they had thought something big had dodged into this parking area. Noth
ing had jumped. The alley was too narrow for anything bigger than Marc’s machine; all of the doors big enough for a ’Mech were shut and none of the buildings had new holes.
So either nothing was here, or one of those big doors had been open seconds ago. She knew what Marc was thinking: the twin turrets above and behind his cockpit rotated through their arcs independently—covering as much area as possible with the particle-projection cannon and clustered medium-pulse lasers.
“Out the front,” Alethea ordered. “We’re too boxed in here.”
Marc altered course without a word.
Considering the ranges around her, Alethea primed the missiles in their tubes before moving to follow. An armful of twenty “hot loads” was potentially volatile, but she suspected anything that came at her would be inside her medium-range missiles’ minimum range before she could shoot.
Jumping would have been the fastest way out; both her Thanatos and Marc’s Raijin could clear the surrounding buildings easily. And be easy targets for anyone set up to shoot them down. The fact that she’d jumped in without incident meant nothing. Nobody ever got hurt falling for a trap—it was when you tried to break out that things got bad.
When they were between the buildings, halfway to the street and the courtyard, the wall to her left began to lose shape.
“Run!”
Marc’s Raijin leapt for the open street as Alethea pivoted to face the bulging wall. A cloud of powdered mortar and stone washed over her Thanatos, blotting out the light. She figured she’d have a microsecond between the falling debris being too thick for missiles to pass and whatever was smashing through the wall smashing her. If she saw what she was shooting at, it would be too late.
Sunlight on metal high above—
She fired a narrow spread into the darkness directly ahead.
Shrapnel pinged off her canopy as all twenty birds exploded against something so close she could almost—
Her head snapped back as her BattleMech jerked forward, twisting to the left. Damage alarms hooted. Vibration rose through her command couch as the gyro below her suddenly altered rotation.
Instinctively Alethea hauled back on the yokes, fighting to stay upright. Her machine overbalanced and she staggered back against the far building.
Something swung upward through the billowing dust. She brought up her right arm—
There was no right arm. Her gyro was screaming because seven tons of missile launcher had disappeared.
The shape—
She threw herself left, staggering to keep her machine upright. Making the courtyard, she hauled her ’Mech around to face her attacker. The dust was thinning. The hulking shape of the one-hundred-ton Berserker in First Hussar two-tone green was clearly visible, pulling its axe out of the wall she’d been braced against.
Only twenty-five more tons than your Thanatos, she told herself. But every one of those tons is mean.
The huge machine turned toward her.
Alethea unleashed a full salvo of her remaining weapons. The paired large-and medium-pulse lasers on her left arm went true, further savaging the missile damage spread across the Hussar’s torso, but the twin medium lasers flanking her cockpit wasted themselves against the pristine armor of the Berserker’s right shoulder.
A brace of large-pulse lasers answered. Her damage alarm squealed as armor peeled away from her ’Mech’s right leg and side. The actuators still read green. She couldn’t jump with the missing arm confusing her gyro, but she could outrun the bigger machine. If she could make the alley before it hit her in the back.
The Berserker’s left arm swung toward her.
She fired again before he could bring his PPC to bear. All four beams went true, carving deep into the holes blasted by her last flight of missiles. A spray of gray-green told her she’d taken out a heat sink, and the black, oily smoke of burning myomer curled out of the rents. But it wasn’t much, and it surely wasn’t enough.
Alethea shuffled left, the motion rocking her torso so she could fire only her arm weapons with accuracy. She fired. Again. Using only two lasers meant heat wasn’t a problem. But it also meant she wasn’t doing a hell of a lot of damage. A poor compromise between running for her life and trying to keep the Berserker pilot too wary of her weapons to aim properly, but it was the best she could do.
Suddenly the larger machine was haloed in blue lightning.
For a frozen second she thought its PPC had malfunctioned. Then she realized Marc had hit the assault ’Mech from behind. A fireball enveloped the Berserker’s head. Six hits from the Raijin’s short-range missile launcher.
The Hussar turned to face the new threat and Alethea reversed her course. Running now toward the enemy, she unleashed the combined lasers of her left arm, gouging away armor broken by Marc’s missiles.
The Berserker ignored her. Standing square to Marc, he fired at the Raijin, content to let her minimal weapons do what damage they could while he dealt with the more deadly adversary.
Alethea realized that was sound tactics. She had no idea where the vital internal systems were on a Berserker, and with the amount of armor it carried it was going to take her a long time to find out.
However, there was one bit of damage she could do.
Bringing her ’Mech to a halt, she focused all four of her lasers on the back of the assault ’Mech’s left knee. Alpha strike; alpha strike; alpha strike: she fired as fast as the capacitors would recharge.
By the time the Berserker pilot realized he was in trouble, it was too late.
The ruined left knee hinged sideways, hitting the right, and the BattleMech twisted as it went down. With the machine sprawled on its back, its torso lasers were pointed uselessly at the sky.
Alethea edged closer, scanning the building that had birthed the Hussar even as she moved to examine the fallen machine.
With the assault ’Mech down, she could see Marc’s Raijin was a ruin. Armor had been scoured away from its entire torso; one turret was missing. As she watched, the birdlike machine staggered sideways a half step. A sure tell the pilot was injured.
The muzzle of the PPC on the Berserker’s left arm rose. Not much, not a meter, not enough to be seen if Alethea hadn’t been looking right at it when it lifted. But with that tiny change the weapon was focused on Marc’s stricken ’Mech.
Alethea leveled her large laser at the Hussar cockpit and blasted it to vapor.
Zenith Jump Point
Hellos Minor
Regulan Fiefs
“What is our status, Captain Flynn?” Lester asked.
“All DropShips secure,” the flag captain responded, her voice edged with anticipation. “All JumpShips charged and ready, General.”
Lester nodded, smiling slightly at the truncated title.
Aboard any ship there was only one captain—a tradition even captains-general knew enough to respect.
His chair had been bolted to the deck above and behind the captain’s. Standard position for an admiral. Or captain-general of the Regulan Fiefs. He did not like JumpShip travel, but when he had to travel, doing so in command of a fleet was by far the most satisfying way to do it.
The Halas horde had attacked Atreus as he’d imagined they would. Risking lives and ships on dangerous pirate points for the sake of shaving a few days or hours off their assault. And while bypassing the jump points may have saved them an engagement with Regulan pickets, it meant they did not hold the jump points—leaving them open for Regulan reinforcements.
Regulan reinforcements that had been in place weeks before their assault began.
Lester shook his head. Halas in her hubris had thought her token “Atreus campaign” had held him in check. The thin bulwark of forces she could spare from her invasion of Andurien had done nothing but tax her resources.
Lester had known she would try to take Atreus away from him: her rape of the Free Worlds League would not be complete without the capital planet. And he’d known she’d use every asset at her disposal to get it. He’d deliberately sta
tioned the First Regulan Hussars permanently on Atreus, publicly making it their homeworld, to ensure that she would throw every regular, reservist and recruit she had into the battle.
But the First were not the only Hussars to have a new home. When the First had moved to Atreus, the Fifth Regulan Hussars had moved from their native Olfsvik to Hellos Minor. And, as the Halas horde had gathered on Tongatapu and Loyalty, they had boarded DropShips and moved into position. Ready.
Lester had waited three days after receiving word Halas had attacked Atreus. He wanted to give the rabble time to mire themselves on the surface before the Fifth Hussar Regiment arrived in-system.
Lester and his forces would appear at the zenith jump point, like the rightful owners they were, and descend on the planet in an armada of DropShips. He wanted Halas’ dupes to realize how much trouble the witch had gotten them into before his forces landed. He expected most to flee. He expected a few to turn coats and pretend to welcome him. He did not expect those who chose to fight to last long.
“Whenever you are ready, Captain Flynn,” Lester ordered. “Take us to Atreus.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” she acknowledged. “Mr. Satchel, if you please.”
The bridge distorted, seeming to stretch away in impossible directions as the jump field folded the vessel into something or someplace. Lester had no idea how it worked. But he knew it did work. And in the time it took him to remember yet again why he hated the sensation of JumpShip travel, they were in the Atreus system.
Around him the bridge crew moved with quick confidence. Checking screens and comparing numbers and murmuring into headsets as they confirmed that the JumpShips and their attendant DropShips had indeed made it safely to their destination.
Lester grinned as he imagined the consternation of the Halas ship captains as the jump signatures registered. Consternation that would turn to alarm when they realized three Star Lords and fifteen DropShips filled with aerospace fighters and BattleMechs had just irrevocably changed the balance of power in Atreus system.
How long before the first offer to surrender?
To Ride the Chimera Page 32
