Twilight of the clans III: the hunters

by Thomas S. Gressman

  Hatsumi required a few minutes to power down the machine, loosen the numerous safety straps, and dismount. By the time he reached the Officer of the Day's tiny station at the back of the cavernous ferrocrete structure, the call had been waiting for some time.

  The Com Guard Adept, a short wiry man with a scarred face, plainly regarded OOD duty as a waste of his valuable talents. He glared at Hatsumi, and pointed sharply at the phone.

  "Line four." The Adept's voice was tight and hard. "Voice only, so use the handset. You know you're not supposed to get personal calls here, don't you?"

  "Yes, sir." Hatsumi bowed his contrition. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

  The Com Guard officer harrumphed and turned back to his console.

  "Yes?"

  A haze of gray snow covered the viewscreen. Hatsumi saw a small red pilot light indicating that the video portion of the call had been blanked at the point of transmission. The handset must have been manufactured before the last Succession War. The audio-only carrier was laden with static, and hissed or crackled with every sibilant or plosive the caller uttered.

  "Hatsumi? Get your people ready. It is time to start your mission." The caller's voice was unrecognizable, but Hatsumi suspected he wanted it that way.

  "Yes?" The flatness in his voice did not betray the sudden tension writhing through his guts.

  "I also have a message from your friend on Peacock.

  He said to tell you 'He travels the fastest who travels alone.' "

  "I see." Hatsumi's tone was neutral and impassive. Before he had left his home on the Combine world of Peacock, his Jonin had given Hatsumi a simple code phrase, a line from an ancient poem by someone named Kipling. The verse, spoken as a message from a friend, served to authenticate the speaker as his contact. "Thank you for calling."

  Replacing the handset in its cradle, Hatsumi once again thanked the Adept, who didn't deign to reply. The nekekami walked at a leisurely pace across the 'Mech bay without a backward glance. His study of human nature told him that the Com Guard, so impressed with his own perceived importance, had already forgotten the presence of the low-level worker who had received an unauthorized call. If Hatsumi hurried or showed signs of furtiveness, he would attract unnecessary attention to himself. He strolled casually as though he was returning to his work station.

  As soon as he was out of sight of the OOD's office, he altered his course, heading for one of the hangar's numerous side entrances. Five hundred meters away was the Guards' primary communications shed. As Hatsumi entered, the communications adept on duty rose, opening his mouth.

  "I'm looking for Adept Kipling. I was told he'd be here." Hatsumi spoke first, preempting the man's challenge. The name was the one he'd been told to give.

  The duty officer's mouth snapped shut, and he stared blankly for a moment. "I'm sorry. I don't know anyone by that name.

  "Ah. Sorry to bother you." Hatsumi was gone again before the adept could speak. None of the four men in the communications center showed any reaction to the brief visit, save one. Honda Tan, wearing the triangular patch and silver Z of a Com Guard Acolyte Technician, betrayed himself only so far as to narrow his eyes at hearing the poet's name.

  Twice more, Hatsumi repeated the charade, once in the base infirmary, where Rumiko Fox was posing as a hospital corpsman, and again in the ammunition storage bunker for Keiji Sendai. Though he never spoke directly to his teammates, the message he had for each of them was clear.

  Twenty minutes after being called to the OOD's office, Hatsumi was struggling to strap himself once again into the hated exoskeleton.

  * * *

  Three hours later, Hatsumi was bending over a different pile of equipment. The base at Fort Defiance, though quite large, was strained almost to its limits by the presence of, not the three regiments it was originally designed to house, but nine. Still, the nekekami team had managed to find a disused storeroom in what used to be part of the aerospace fighter maintenance facility. Each of the "Spirit Cats" had staked out a corner of the room for himself, and was now busily engaged in checking over his or her own gear.

  As the team leader, Hatsumi had the least heavy equipment to deal with. He had his sneak suit and personal weapons, but little more. His role was to observe and direct the team's three specialists, rather than to engage in direct action. Still, as a nekekami, he was fully capable of assuming any of the others' posts, should one of them be killed or incapacitated. Hatsumi's only major piece of equipment was a palm-top data unit, similar to those carried by most field commanders. His was a bit different in that it boasted far more onboard memory than most note-puters. The unit's optical chips held data on each of the regiments attached to the task force and the officers commanding those regiments. The information had been supplied through agents of the Amber Crags Clan augmented by Hatsumi's own observations.

  Honda Tan knelt on the floor in the midst of a bewildering array of electronic devices, night scopes, and recording equipment to support his station as an intelligence agent. This was the gear with which Hatsumi was most familiar, having used most of it during his long career as a field agent. The small, black plastic mushroom humming quietly by the storeroom's single door was one of Tan's toys. The device contained counter-surveillance equipment and a number of security sensors. Should someone approach the storeroom, the machine would let out a soft growl, giving the nekekami several seconds' warning—and several seconds would be more than enough for the trained agents to prepare a response. The device also generated a short-range electronic cloud that would scramble any sensors directed at the storeroom. As unlikely as surveillance of the team's hiding place might be, Hatsumi had lived long enough to develop a healthy dose of paranoia where security was concerned.

  Rumiko Fox, as silent and unsmiling as ever, sat at the storeroom's one table. Carefully, the assassin unpacked, inspected, and replaced numerous vials, bottles, and parcels. Each of these containers held one of the drugs or poisons she had come to favor in her career as a professional killer. Hatsumi knew that not all of the substances in those bottles were deadly. Some, like the compound called "dragon's tears," were powerful drugs. The "tears," for example, were a hideous psychoactive, which, when administered over the course of a few days, would cause permanent and irrevocable insanity in the victim. Hatsumi suppressed an internal shudder as he watched Fox work. The woman was quite lovely, beautiful even, but there was a cold emptiness in her eyes that reminded him of a viper.

  A large aluminum briefcase lying open on the floor beside her reminded Hatsumi that not all of Fox's assassinations were silent deaths brought about by subtle poisons. A disassembled Minolta 9000 advanced sniper system lay nestled in its foam cutouts. The flat black finish on the high-tech rifle seemed to absorb the diffused light of the room's illumination strips, giving the weapon a cold, evil look. Hatsumi knew that the rifle was, like all firearms, only a thing, a complex mechanism of steel and plastic, with no will of its own. Still, the very nature of the weapon gave him the distinct feeling that the rifle was watching him, waiting for the chance to snuff out any life that came beneath the cold, lifeless eye of its electronic sight.

  Hatsumi shivered again, as he noticed the similarity between the sight's objective lens and Fox's light brown eyes. Hatsumi bore no illusions as to who and what he was. He understood that the nekekami were viewed as ruthless spies and assassins, considered as something of an aberration by so-called "normal" society. He accepted that as having a strong basis in fact. But, there was something in Rumiko Fox that set her just that much more beyond the pale of civilization's mores.

  Forcibly, he tore his eyes away from the assassin and her deadly toys, turning them to the corner where the team's remaining member sat.

  Sendai leaned against the far wall of the room, smiling happily, humming a little tune as he stuffed breaching charges, booby traps, and a few directional mines into a large nylon duffel bag. The demolitions expert had packaged up explosives of every size and description, ranging from small
, lock-breaking charges, no bigger than a shot glass, to heavy destructive devices weighing as much as ten kilos. A separate aluminum case fitted with a thumbprint lock held the detonators.

  The case's lock was keyed to the right thumb print of each of the team members. No one else could open it without destroying the lock. Such an attempt would probably detonate one, or all, of the detonators, destroying the case, and likely the intruder as well. Sendai had carefully explained that the case and the kit-bag holding the explosives would be stored in separate compartments aboard whatever vessel to which the team would be assigned, making the likelihood of an accident remote.

  When each had finished inspecting his own gear, he switched with a teammate and repeated the examination. Though every one of them was a specialist in one field of operations, every nekekami received a degree of cross-training sufficient to familiarize him with the equipment used by his fellow agents.

  The rotation was executed twice more, until each operative had reviewed the equipment being carried by all of his partners. That finished, they began working on the team's common gear. Every weapon was broken down, cleaned, inspected, and reassembled. Every sneak suit was examined. Each communicator was tested.

  At last, predictably, it was Honda Tan who broke the silence.

  "Kasugai, who is our target?"

  "I'm sorry, Honda, I don't know yet." Hatsumi spread his hands in a gesture of innocence as he confessed his ignorance of the team's objective. "I was told we would be contacted on a step-by-step basis. This step is to prepare to move aboard our DropShips.

  "Remember, we must blend in, stay out of trouble, and be ready to strike when the time comes."

  For a moment, Tan chewed on his leader's reply. "That's it?"

  "That's it." Hatsumi noticed that Fox and Sendai had stopped working to listen to the exchange. Each of the nekekami agents, including Hatsumi himself, were naturally curious about their mission. Unfortunately, the team leader had no more indication as to the team's objective than any of the others. "I won't speculate on the nature of our task. What I will say is the target must be very important, and the client very powerful, for such a veil of secrecy to have been drawn across our mission."

  * * *

  "All right, Colonel, I'm here." Morgan Hasek-Davion returned the Northwind Highlanders' commanding officer's salute as he stepped from his command car. "What was it you wanted me to see?"

  Following the final pre-mission planning session, Colonel William MacLeod had sent a message to Morgan's quarters personally inviting him to be present for a little ceremony scheduled to take place in the Highlanders' assigned section of the Fort. MacLeod's invitation had specifically stated that Morgan should meet him in front of the Highlanders' main BattleMech bay at seventeen hundred hours. By the time Morgan arrived, Defiance's yellow sun had sunk low enough to the horizon that it was shining almost directly on the 'Mech bay's main door, washing the plain gray concrete with a pale orange-gold light caused by the taint in Defiance's atmosphere.

  "A grand sight indeed, sir," MacLeod said.

  Though Morgan knew MacLeod could not see beneath the ugly black respirator mask covering his face, he was sure the Highlander commander recognized the expression in his eyes for he returned Morgan's grin with one of his own. Lifting a small, hand-held communicator to his mask's speaker grille, MacLeod then spoke a few quick words that sounded to Morgan something like, "Alba gu bragh." MacLeod turned to Morgan and translated, "Scotland forever."

  Moments later, there came a deep scraping rumble that was so familiar to Morgan that he didn't need to see the fifteen-meter-tall bay doors sliding ponderously open to identify the sound. At twenty-five meters, the movement of the massive doors could be perceived through the soles of the feet as a faint trembling in the ferrocrete beneath them.

  There was nothing faint about the sensation that followed. At that long stone's throw distance, the whine of servos and actuator packages pierced the sulfur-laden air and stirred Morgan's heart like a bugle call. The heavy thudding of marching BattleMechs shook the ground.

  Sunlight glinted off armor as a monstrous humanoid figure moved from the shadowed interior of the bay onto the ferrocrete apron.

  That's a Highlander. The thought flashed across Morgan's mind like a laser bolt.

  The huge, barrel-chested, square-headed assault 'Mech had originally been designed for the Star League Defense Force. With its wrist-mounted Gauss rifle, lasers, and missile launchers, the Highlander had been one of the most popular designs of a long gone era. The 90-ton monster was also one of the few assault class 'Mechs capable of bounding into the air on jump jets, covering ninety meters in a single leap. Sadly, the design had been lost in the chaos following the fall of the Star League and the Exodus of Kerensky's armada. Only recently, with the discovery of the Gray Death memory core and the unveiling of ComStar's military arm, had the Highlander had its rebirth.

  Even more shocking to Morgan was the complex checked pattern of green and blue bands decorating the 'Mech's armored hide. At times called plaid, at others tartan, the pattern was one as old as the term Highlander. The crest on the 'Mech's right shoulder dispelled whatever doubts Morgan may have had about its unit affiliation. The green and blue plaid and the silver crest had only ever belonged to one unit, the Royal Black Watch.

  Following the Highlander was a company's worth of heavy and assault 'Mechs, each painted in the same green and blue tartan. Most of the battle machines were standard Inner Sphere 'Mechs, but a few were recreations of older models whose original design stretched back to the time of the Star League. Morgan recognized the ugly hunch-shouldered outline of a PPC-armed Thug as well as a gangly Black Knight.

  "Aye," MacLeod answered Morgan's questioning look. "They're the Royal Black Watch. Or at least what's left of 'em."

  "I thought they were wiped out when Stefan Amaris seized the Star League throne."

  "They were, laddie. They were." A note of maudlin anger crept into MacLeod's voice as he told the tale. "Most of 'em were cut down in the palace by the Usurper's guards. Them as made it out of that trap, tried to hold off the Amaris Dragoons, hopin' to let Richard Cameron, the First Lord escape. Poor bastards didna know he was already dead at the hand of the Usurper. In the end, Amaris used a nuclear weapon on 'em. T' my knowledge, no Black Watch warrior survived that day."

  "Then how. . . ?"

  "Well, a long time later, a couple of the Highlanders came t' believe that they were still a part o' the Star League army. Understand that all of the Highlanders consider themselves t'be upholders of the ideals of the Star League. These folks believed they were part of the SLDF. It became an obsession wi' them. They formed what they called an 'order' within the Highlanders, considerin' themselves t' be the Royal Black Watch. Most of the Highlanders officers have known about this secret society among our ranks. A few of 'em were even members of the Black Watch.

  "Their goal all along has been the rebirth of the Star League. Now that it's happened, they've decided t' reveal themselves. I understand Neil Campbell, their leader, who ye'll be meetin' in a bit, had something of a dilemma on his hands. Some of the Watch wanted t' go right off t' Sian and swear allegiance t' Sun Tzu the moment they heard the Star League charter had been signed. After all, the Royal Black Watch was the First Lord's personal bodyguard, and Chancellor Liao is the new First Lord. Captain Campbell did some fast talkin' and persuaded them t' stay with the Highlanders until this mission is over an' done, then they'll have something t' show the First Lord."

  As MacLeod recounted the history of the Black Watch, Morgan felt an odd sense of pride welling up in his heart. He knew the history of the Black Watch—every Mech-Warrior who'd ever attended a military academy did. Oddly perhaps, the pride came not from the knowledge that he was taking such a prestigious unit as the Black Watch into battle, but from the honor Colonel MacLeod was affording him. Morgan was the first non-Highlander officer to learn of the existence of yet another link to the long-gone golden age of the Star League.
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  The tartan-clad 'Mechs had fallen into a line abreast, with the Highlander in the center. As Morgan watched, a small ingress/egress hatch in the side of the 'Mech's boxy head swung open and a powerfully built young man wriggled out onto the machine's armored shoulder. With speed and agility he swarmed down a narrow chain ladder that he had released from a compartment in the 'Mech's shoulder. As he strode across the pavement, Morgan noted that the Highlander was a bit snorter than his own good height, although the solid, corded muscles of the younger man's physique made him seem somewhat taller.

  "Marshal Hasek-Davion," MacLeod intoned formally. "May I present, Captain Neil Campbell, company commander of the Royal Black Watch?"

  Campbell snapped off a smart salute, which Morgan returned with no less formality.

  "Captain, I'm proud to have you with us," he said. "With the Eridani Light Horse, the Northwind Highlanders, and now your Royal Black Watch, the Star League Defense Force is truly here."

  14

  Battle Cruiser ISS Invisible Truth

  Zenith Jump Point, Defiance

  Crucis March

  Federated Commonwealth

  01 May 3059

  O800 Hours

  "Commander on deck."

  The phrase dated back to the first organized blue-water navies of Terra's distant past. Instinctively, Morgan hesitated and glanced around the bridge, looking for the officer whose entrance had been heralded. Then, feeling a little foolish, he realized that the Com Guard petty officer who had barked out the announcement was referring to him.

  As commander of Task Force Serpent, a force that was part of the newly reformed Star League Defense Force, Morgan had retained his title of Marshal rather than assuming the old SLDF rank of Commanding General. All the units under him also retained their original command structure, with Morgan generating all operational-level orders. The orders went from his office to the commanders of the individual units, and on down their chain of command. Morgan knew that truly integrating the task force into a single army would take far more than an edict from the crowned heads of the Successor States, however. Many of the officers and men of the various units still viewed themselves as part of their own Successor State's military. It would take still more work, arguments, compromise, and patience for them to become one army. Without integration, the task force would fall apart under the strain of combat, and the Jaguars would eat them alive.