Hatsumi laughed again to cover the chill that ran down his spine. "Fox Fives" was a common slang term for the agents of M15, the counter-insurgency branch of House Davion's Department of Military Intelligence. So far the Davion security agents had yet to develop a security net so tightly woven that Hatsumi or one of his comrades could not slip through. Still, no covert operative, no matter how well trained and proficient, could penetrate every safeguard, every time.
Picking up his carryall, Hatsumi headed for the terminal's main door. He hadn't gone three steps when the portmaster called out to him.
"Son? 'Less you like breathin' sulfur oxides, you'd better put on a respirator."
Hatsumi grinned sheepishly as he pulled a pyramidal device constructed mostly of rubber and metal from a pocket of his faded AFFC field jacket.
"I wasn't thinking. Thank you."
The portmaster waved once and turned back to the news-fax he'd been reading when Hatsumi entered the terminal.
Standing just inside the building's airlock-type double doors was a slightly built woman, wearing the stained jumpsuit and canvas jacket of a common laborer. Her plain appearance was relieved only by the slightly oriental cast to her features. A commercial-grade respirator mask hung by its neck strap below her chin. Her eyes flickered in recognition as Hatsumi approached.
"Ready?"
She jerked her head toward the doors. "What about your luggage?"
"This is it. The rest of our materials will be arriving in a few days."
Rumiko Fox shrugged, pulled her respirator over her nose and mouth, and stepped into the lock. Hatsumi followed her example.
It took only a few seconds for the outer doors to cycle open. Defiance suffered from a slight taint in her atmosphere, as the portmaster had warned, but the pressure was well within the so-called normal levels of human tolerance. Hatsumi was grateful for that. He was fully qualified in the use of pressure suits and other hostile environment equipment, but he loathed the restrictiveness of the suits.
A five-year old Gienah sedan sat next to the curb a few dozen meters from the door. Fox walked straight to the vehicle and climbed into the diver's seat without saying another word. Hatsumi followed silently. After tossing his carryall into the back seat, he settled down next to the silent woman.
Fox pressed the vehicle's starter, eliciting not the quiet roar of a well-tuned internal combustion engine, but a high-pitched, mechanical whine.
"It's the pollution," she said to the windshield, her voice muted by the mask. "The gunk in the air makes fuel-burners run rough. Most of the cars here are electric, even the heavy haulers."
Without another word, Fox put the vehicle in gear and pulled away from the curb.
* * *
The drive into Jerseyville took forty minutes. During that time, Fox never spoke again, leaving Hatsumi to stare at Defiance's scenery. As scenery went, it wasn't inspiring. The long stretch of macadam-paved highway ran, laser-straight, through rocky flatlands. Here and there, hardy bushes sprouted in clumps, giving refuge to whatever reptilian and avian life could tolerate the mephitic atmosphere.
From the datachips he'd reviewed while in transit, Hatsumi knew that the planet's main spaceport was located on the site of the original settlers' first landing. The flatlands wedged in between on the Pearce Sea to the east and the Devil's Backbone Mountains on the west would be some of the richest farming lands in the Inner Sphere, if not for the taint in the atmosphere. Though the sulfur content was not high enough to prevent plant life from growing, even flourishing, in the black, volcanic soil, it was sufficient to be absorbed into the crops, giving any foodstuff grown there an unpleasant, bitter taste. It was ironic that the volcanoes that provided the richness of the soil made it unusable.
That was not to say that Defiance was without economic value. The planet was rich in mineral wealth. The almost constant eruptions that had marked its early life had brought many rare earth elements up out of the young planet's core. Transuranic elements were especially common in the now mostly extinct volcanoes of the Devil's Backbone.
Jerseyville itself was only marginally more interesting to look at. A large cluster of small houses, shops, and office buildings huddled in the foothills of the Backbone range was the site of the first settlement, named for its founder, Malcolm Jersey. The settlers, most of them prospectors, had come to Defiance during the early days of the Star League. They came seeking mineral wealth. Many of them found it. Over the years, the hundreds of small, independent mines were acquired by large corporations, until eventually the greatest portion of the planet was owned outright by Solar Metals Limited, who sold it to the Davion family in 2748.
Eventually, Fox brought the car to a halt in front of a small single-family house in Jerseyville's northern suburbs. Indistinguishable from any of its neighbors, the house was a small, two-story structure, with plastic-coated metal siding manufactured to look like wood. The only thing that distinguished this house from its cousins on a thousand civilized worlds was the large pressure lock taking the place of its front door.
Hatsumi climbed out of the vehicle, retrieved his bag, and strode up the walk. At the door, he had to pause to allow Fox to tap in the proper access code.
As silently as ever, the woman punched a seemingly random series of buttons on the ten-digit keypad. The door rewarded her with a series of heavy thuds before swinging open.
It took a full minute for the residential model airlock to run through its cycle. It was the same story everywhere; bigger and faster meant more expensive. The designers of the house intended for it to be built cheaply. Thus, when the inner door began to swing open and Hatsumi removed his respirator mask, he could still smell the rotten-eggs odor of sulfur oxide.
"Kasugai!" The cry of greeting was laced with joy. Hatsumi looked up to see a small, powerfully built young man leaping out of an armchair. He, like Fox, was dressed in the clothing of a common laborer.
"Honda Tan. It is good to see you again."
"Stormcrow told me that I would be working with an old friend, but I had no idea he meant you." Tan threw his arms around Hatsumi in a crushing bear hug.
The man Tan called Stormcrow was the jonin, the clan leader of the Amber Crags nekekami. Hatsumi knew as much of Stormcrow's reputation as any other of his clan. During the days prior to the Fourth Succession War, as a field operative, Stormcrow had slipped into the HQ of the Fourth Skye Rangers, rifled that regiment's secure rooms, and escaped undetected, leaving behind only confusion and a small origami cat. Later, as a chunin, or cell-leader, he had ordered the assassination of a nosy reporter who had written an expose revealing the long-hidden secrets of the nekekami.
The nekekami. Hatsumi mused over the word, and what it had come to mean throughout the Inner Sphere. Roughly translated, the word meant "Spirit Cat." The nekekami were the indirect descendants of the ninja—the secret society of spies and assassins of feudal Japan. Like their predecessors, the nekekami had raised intelligence-gathering, sabotage, and assassination to an art-form. All their lives, the nekekami trained, studied, and practiced their skills. A warrior would work his whole life, honing himself into the perfect weapon, a weapon that might be expended in a single mission.
The legends about the Spirit Cats were many. It was said that they could walk through walls, breathe underwater, sink into the ground, and become invisible at will. Some of the more outrageous tales said the nekekami were apprenticed to Death himself, or to powerful necromancers who could kill with a glance.
When at last he released his grip, Tan nodded at Fox. "I see you've met our talkative Rumiko."
The woman glared at Tan, but spoke not a word.
Tan, unimpressed, flashed a toothy smile in return.
Hatsumi felt a certain relief at seeing Honda Tan again. The two had been together for a number of operations, including a few covert operations against the hated Smoke Jaguar Clan.
"You might as well get to know the whole team all at once." Tan took his friend by the arm and ushere
d him into the house's tiny kitchen. There, seated at the table, was a handsome young man who was bent over a bundle of wires and circuit boards, a soldering iron in his left hand. A small, plasticized paper-wrapped bundle rested in his lap. Just enough of the parcel was visible for Hatsumi to read the lettering: "Block, Explosive, M26A1."
"Is it safe for him to have that stuff around a soldering iron?" Hatsumi's training had included only limited instructions in the handling of explosives, and he treated anything with that much destructive capability with awe and respect.
"I don't know," Tan shrugged. "That's Kieji Sendai, our resident explosives expert. Kieji, this is Kasugai Hatsumi, our team leader."
Sendai looked up, nodded once, and went back to work.
"Is it safe for you to have explosives sitting in your lap while you're working with a soldering iron?" Hatsumi repeated his question for the demolitions man.
"Hai," Sendai answered. Finishing the joint he was working on, he sat back and tossed the explosive to Hatsumi. "That's Davion-issue C-8. It's mostly Cyclonite, with a few stabilizing agents. The stuff is completely stable until it is initiated by means of a blasting cap. Then, it gives you a good high-speed explosion, somewhere around sixty-eight thousand centimeters per second."
The plastic explosive was stiff, gray-green putty, wrapped in olive drab paper. Hatsumi knew the stuff could be used for any number of applications. It could be used as is, or smoothed over the object to be destroyed. It could be molded into a shaped charge, or wrapped with chain to make an improvised fragmentation bomb. Rigged with a short fuse-type detonator, it could be bundled together in a satchel charge and stuffed into the vulnerable knee and ankle joints of a BattleMech. Only pentaglycerine was a more powerful blasting agent.
Returning the block to the table, he asked Sendai to be careful.
"It wouldn't do for us to get ourselves blown up before we started our mission.
"Pardon me for asking," Tan said, handed his team leader a cup of tea poured from the pot that had been warming on the stove ever since Hatsumi had arrived. "What is our mission?"
Hatsumi sampled the tea and nodded his thanks before answering.
"We are to link up with the Second Com Guards Division, posing as combat support personnel assigned to their second battalion.
"I have been assured that the Second will arrive on Defiance within the week. Places for us have already been established. When they arrive, we will report to the old Defiance Militia compound west of Jerseyville to take our places. We are to remain with the Second until our contact gets in touch with us. Once contact is made, we will receive all of our specific orders through this agent."
"That's all very good." Tan was unimpressed with the secrecy shrouding their mission. "What I want to know is, what is the specific nature of our mission?"
"I do not know, Tan-san. I have told you all I do know. The Amber Crags Clan was contacted indirectly, through a representative of our client. The client, who I have been told is very important, insists that there can be no connection between our team and himself. We are to hook up with the Second, and wait until contacted." Hatsumi took another sip of tea. "After all, waiting for our prey is a large part of being nekekami."
* * *
As Hatsumi was passing his instructions to his team, a pair of Overlord Class DropShips was touching down at the spaceport.
Before the smoke and steam of the landing jets drifted away, a small personnel ramp was lowered to the pavement. A tall, dark-haired man, wearing an AFFC officer's uniform, strode down the metal walkway, the dark blotch of the respirator over his face. No rank or unit insignia adorned his jacket. The large gear bag slung over his left shoulder was equally nondescript. Before his feet left the ramp, a battered green hover transport bearing the sun-and-fist logo of the Federated Commonwealth rolled to a stop at the edge of the landing stage. The driver was, like the new arrival, dressed in the green and brown fatigues of the Armed Forces of the Federated Commonwealth. The single, narrow white stripe on his gold epaulets indicated he was an aerospace fighter pilot holding the rank of captain.
Climbing out of the vehicle, the driver of the transport jogged up the ramp.
"Colonel Masters? I'm Robin Pennick, MHO." He pronounced the acronym for the Ministry of Information, Intelligence, and Operations, "mee-oh."
"I was sent to greet you and your staff. If you'll follow me, sir, we'll go over to the portmaster's office and make all the arrangements for off-loading your 'Mechs and equipment."
The Commander of the Knights of the Inner Sphere grunted in reply as they secured their respirators. Meanwhile, Masters' command staff and a number of his Mech-Warriors also filed down the ramp. Off to his right, he could hear the loud, high-pitched skree of heavily taxed hydraulics as the DropShip's 'Mech bay doors swung slowly open.
"All right, Mister Pennick," Masters said, gesturing at the hovercar. "After you."
Pennick climbed in, the Knights' officers piling into the vehicle after him. Then Pennick engaged the vehicle's fans and sped away from the landing stage. Pushing the car to its limit, he sent it careening across the tarmac, dodging small patches of melting, dirty ice. Just before the Knights' arrival, a nor-easter had hit Defiance's main spaceport. While the sudden snowstorm was unusual in Jerseyville's normally temperate winter, the thin layer of snow and ice that had blanketed much of the spaceport and nearby town was a dusting compared to the conditions the Knights had left on Atreus some weeks before.
During the ride to the portmaster's office, the Knights' officers glanced around suspiciously. Major Sir Gainard, one of Masters' battalion commanders, asked Pennick when the rest of the units would be arriving.
Pennick half-turned as he replied, and it was all Masters could do not to lunge for the wheel. "You Knights are the first combat unit to get here, though Marshal Hasek-Davion and his personal staff have been here for some time now. He arrived shortly after the conclusion of the Whitting Conference." Pennick allowed a rueful chuckle to escape his lips. "It must be nice to have the Prince of the Federated Commonwealth as your cousin."
"How do you mean?" Masters asked. The hovercar's open passage forced him to squint his eyes against the wind. If he was going to drive like a maniac, Pennick might have chosen an enclosed vehicle, or at least provided crash helmets with face shields.
"How do I mean?" Pennick laughed again. "I mean he got here less than a week after the conference was over. I'm told that Prince Victor set up a command circuit of JumpShips to carry the Marshal straight here."
Masters nodded. JumpShips could travel instantly between star systems, but what slowed down travel was the fact that it took about a week to recharge the ship's Kearny-Fuchida jump drives. Sometimes, on rare occasions, a so-called "command circuit" would be established. This costly method of travel stationed JumpShips at each star system along the planned route of travel. Each ship would make a single jump, then the important passenger or cargo would be handed off, usually by the simple expedient of transferring a DropShip to the next starship in line.
"Anyway, we expect the DEST contingent to arrive in a couple of days. The Northwind Highlanders, the Fox Teams, and the Com Guards are in transit. I expect them to be in-system by the end of the week. Most of the others, including the Eridani Light Horse, won't be here for at least fourteen days."
"Are they all going to be arriving at Jerseyville?"
"Yes, sir. It's Defiance's only spaceport."
Masters turned his head to stare at the man. Pennick was leaning back in his seat as though he hadn't a thing to worry about.
"Are you sure it's wise to bring such a large number of troops through the planet's only port facility?"
"Of course, sir." Pennick sounded positively bored. "I've been here ever since the Whitting summit as part of the advance team. When they decided to use Defiance for a staging area, MHO went right to work. We've been using the rumor mill to spread it around that we're running joint military exercises here. It's been used for that before. That's
part of the reason they chose Defiance as a mustering point. That, and the fact that it's the back corner of nowhere. The rumor we're spreading is that ComStar, the AFFC, and a bunch of mercs are concocting a plan to recapture Terra from the Wobbies."
"Excuse me, who?" Masters had never heard the name before.
"The Wobbies. Word of Blake." Pennick laughed. "Anyhow, we've been telling the locals one story, and other agents have been spreading different rumors. The whole effect is that no one outside of Fort Defiance knows what the heck is going on. The more confusion there is, the better. In fact, that's why they've got you dressed as FedCom troops, to help feed the rumor mill."
"Yeah," Masters agreed sourly as the car came to a sudden stop in front of the portmaster's office. "As long as the confusion stays outside the fort."
8
Fort Defiance
Defiance, Crucis March
Federated Commonwealth
18 February 3059
1740 Hours
Where the devil are they? Colonel Edwin Amis searched the primary and secondary sensor monitors studding his ON1-M Orion's cockpit. He knew that somewhere out there in the vast cold hills of Fort Defiance's training ground lurked two Trinaries of the Com Guard's Invader Galaxy. Under the eye of Morgan Hasek-Davion, the widely disparate units of Task Force Serpent would now be engaged in several months of exercises to integrate them into a single, cohesive unit.
The Invader Galaxy was the perfect foil. Sometime after the Clans were stopped in Tukayyid, Anastasius Focht had established a special unit of Com Guards, equipped with captured Clan equipment and schooled in Clan tactics. Configured like a Clan unit of its size, it was named the Invader Galaxy. Its mission was to fight the Clans on their own terms, using their own weapons and tactics against them. As such, the Invader Galaxy made to order for training the individual units comprising the task force, and the task force as a whole.
That was how the Com Guards and the Light Horse came to be stalking each other through the low, rolling hills and flatlands aptly named the Plains of Sorrow. Amis squinted his eyes, peering through the squat, scrubby brush around him for signs of life.
Twilight of the clans III: the hunters Page 7