Twilight of the clans III: the hunters

by Thomas S. Gressman

  "Hedger, wait ..." Timmons shouted, half a second too late.

  "Missiles away."

  As Harpool's cry rang across the commline, twenty Shigunga long-range missiles leapt from the rack beneath the Shilone's recessed nose. In the vacuum of space, there was no launch flare, as there would have been if the missiles were launched in an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Only a bright scarlet thread generated by the fighter's tracking system, projected onto Timmons' heads-up display, marked the missiles' flight path.

  Three hundred kilometers away, a computer-generated voice rang in the ears of Lieutenant Richard Norgan. "Missile launch. Take evasive action."

  An experienced combat pilot, Norgan needed no such prompting. He had noticed the missile track on his HUD a fraction of a second earlier, and was already standing hard on his right rudder pedal. Norgan slammed the stick right and forward with such force he was afraid he'd bend it. With his left hand, he shoved the throttle all the way forward, into the overthrust detente.

  Instantly, his 75-ton fighter responded, dropping away into a rolling dive to starboard.

  "Courtyard, Courtyard, Sierra Nine is taking fire!" Norgan shouted into his communicator. His desperate evasive maneuver had almost worked. Only three of the incoming missiles slammed into his Hammerhead's fuselage. Reversing his turn, Norgan brought the fighter's massive Imperator autocannon to bear on his attacker. The target was out of range, but it wouldn't be for long. A few more seconds at this speed, and he'd unleash a storm of high-explosive armor-piercing shells capable of disabling all but the heaviest of opponents in a single pass.

  Dimly, through his outrage at the unprovoked attack, Norgan heard the furious shouting of the aerospace controller. The Air Boss seemed to be ordering him to break off his attack.

  For a brief, confused moment, Norgan continued to close with the attacking fighter, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  "Dammit, Sierra Nine, I said break off your attack! Your target is a friendly, I say again; your target is a friendly. Acknowledge!"

  With a shake of his head, Norgan safed his ship's weapons.

  "Courtyard, Sierra Nine acknowledges, target is a friendly. Breaking off attack, but if that son of a buck fires one more blasted missile at me, I'm going to blow him straight to hell."

  The Air Boss didn't acknowledge Norgan's threat. He was too busy reading the riot act to Warrant Officer Harpool.

  "I don't give a bloody damn in hell what your sensors told you! You violated every rule of engagement in the bloody damn book! Now, you get your butt over here, and I mean right now!"

  Harpool tried to protest, but the Boss wasn't having any of it.

  "I don't give a rat if you're Light Horse, Com Guard, or the bloody king of Kashmir. You came within a red cat's hair of starting the biggest furball this side of Tukayyid. I gave you an order, Mister, and if you aren't in my office in the next half hour, you'll be lucky if they even let you think about flying a fighter again. Do you read me?"

  With a snort of disgust, Commander Frank Kazeva yanked off his headset and threw it on the communications console, cutting off Harpool's glum acknowledgment. "Danny, get me the bridge."

  * * *

  An hour later, Harpool and Timmons were standing at rigid attention in the Air Boss' office. Kazeva paced angrily back and forth before them. Seated in the hard, straight-backed chairs lining one side of the room were Ariana Winston, Commodore Beresick, and Morgan Hasek-Davion. The presence of the three flag-rank officers told the pilots they were in deep trouble.

  "All right, boys," Kazeva's voice was a threatening snarl. "Why don't you tell me how you came to fire on a Com Guard Hammerhead?"

  "Sir, it was my fault," Lieutenant Timmons began. "I was the flight leader. It was my responsibility to ascertain the nature of the contact before engaging."

  "That's a load of drek, Lieutenant, and you know it." Kazeva came to an abrupt halt, his face less than a decimeter from Timmons'. "This hero here was too quick on the trigger, too eager for his first kill. Isn't that right, Harpool?"

  "No, sir," Hedgehog answered, hardly daring to look at the Air Boss. "The Warbook gave us an eighty percent probability that the targets were Sabutais. There was no IFF response, and we were closing way too fast to take any chances of letting the enemy get the jump on us."

  "So you just threw out the ROEs, and made up your own, is that it?"

  "Well... no sir. You see . .. "

  "Did you even bother to read the posted ROEs, Mister Harpool? Did you read where it says that, in the case of an unidentified contact, CAP pilots will make visual contact with any unknowns before engaging?"

  "Yes sir, but. . . "

  "Then which are you, Harpool, a traitor, or stupid?" Kazeva glared at the young warrant officer, his face twisted into a mask of rage. When he spoke again, his voice was level, his emotions under control.

  "You gentlemen are grounded until further notice. In the meantime, I want each of you to provide me with a hand-written copy of the posted Rules of Engagement and a freehand drawing of each figfyer and DropShip type in this task force. When you finish with that, you can give me a set of freehand drawings of each type of Clan Omni-Fighter. Once I am satisfied that there will be no repeat of this 'unfortunate incident,' then maybe, just maybe, I'll consider putting you two yahoos back on flight status."

  Kazeva looked questioningly at the flag officers behind him, silently asking if any of them had something to add. Though none of the three replied, the Air Boss knew that General Winston would have some very special duties for the pilots when they got back aboard their own vessel.

  "All right, get out of my sight."

  Timmons and Harpool saluted smartly, executed crisp about-faces, and gratefully fled the office.

  Winston sat, gazing at the closed door. Then, with a snort of laughter, she got to her feet, shaking her head.

  "Thanks for not being too rough on them, Boss."

  "I'd have liked to let them off entirely," Kazeva said, sitting heavily on the corner of his desk. "Hammerheads look an awful lot like Clan Sabutais, even on scanners. They're about the same size, same mass, almost identical configuration. Then, when I got the maintenance report on Sierra Nine, I almost did let 'em go. Still, a busted transponder is no reason for violating the ROEs."

  When Sierra Nine returned to the Alkmarr, the astechs had discovered that the Hammerhead's transponder wasn't working. A fuse protecting the relatively delicate instrument had burned out sometime after launch. Without the benefit of that electronic identification tag, the Echo Flight had no way of identifying the unknown sensor trace, other than by making visual contact. In most cases, by the time a fighter could see another, the identity of the unknown had been established, either by gunfire or voice contact.

  "Well, I'm glad you didn't let them off," Winston answered. "We got lucky this time. Next time, I might have to buy the Com Guards a couple of new fighters."

  "I was thinking the same thing," the Air Boss grinned, "only it was me who had to buy the ships."

  * * *

  The next day, while Timmons and Harpool were still struggling over their freehand drawings, the ships of Task Force Serpent furled their sails and jumped.

  18

  Sweetwater Lake Basin

  Meribah System

  Deep Periphery

  16 November 3059 0815 Hours

  Captain Helen Lamus' eyes darted rapidly across the bewildering array of controls, gauges, and displays before her, shifting constantly between her attitude display, radar altimeter, and rate of descent indicator. Other displays told her that she was fighting a relatively mild fifteen-kph cross wind and a gravitational pull slightly greater than that of Terra. Despite the fact that she was an experienced Com Guard pilot, with over a thousand hours in the Mule Class DropShip, Lamus had to occasionally release the controls to swipe the palm of one hand, then the other, across the leg of her olive drab flight suit. By the time she returned her hands to the controls, a thin sheen of sweat was already begi
nning to reform. Landing a spherical DropShip on an unfamiliar planet, and without benefit of a landing beacon, was always a dicey proposition, one that caused her stomach to do somersaults.

  One of the greatest hindrances to a large operation such as Task Force Serpent was the need for fresh water. It had been a little over four months since the task force jumped beyond the border of the Outworlds Alliance. The long voyage had depleted the fleet's water supply to the point that Marshal Hasek-Davion had decided to, as he put it, "stop for a drink."

  Based on intelligence provided by ComStar and the Explorer Corps, they knew that there were a number of systems along the task force's projected route where fresh water could be found in abundance. Morgan and Beresick had decided that, whenever possible, a collection team would be dispatched to replenish the task force's water supply. To that end, a pair of Mule Class DropShips had been specially modified, with huge storage tanks, high-speed pumps, and filtration systems—everything needed to collect and purify water from local sources.

  Finally, a tiny red indicator on the altimeter began flashing. The Mule was less than one hundred meters above ground level. Lamus licked her lips as she watched the numbers tick down. Seventy-five meters ... fifty... twenty-five ... ten ... the ship shuddered once as it came into contact with the ground. The four massive landing legs flexed within their housings, cushioning the effect of the 11,000-ton vessel coming to rest on the planet's surface. When the altimeter flashed zero, Lamus let out the breath she'd been holding in one long exhalation.

  "Facet, this is Barleycorn. Grounding now."

  As the flight controller aboard the Antrim acknowledged that Lamus' vessel had reached the planet's surface safely, the pilot began unstrapping herself from the vessel's command couch.

  Far beneath her feet, in the Mule's vast cargo bay, a ComStar technical crew was undoing a complex series of nylon harnesses. These were not intended to hold passengers in their seats. The bindings were too large for that. These tie-downs, along with magnetic clamps, secured three M-1537 prime movers. Each of these vehicles, capable of carrying ten tons of equipment, was loaded almost to capacity with a bewildering array of pumps, filters, hoses, and couplings. Each also sported a crane and winch powerful enough to lift twice the vehicle's cargo capacity.

  As large as these vehicles were, they occupied only a fraction of the Mule's cargo hold. The bulk of that cavernous space contained a titanic holding tank.

  At last free of the restraints, Captain Lamus looked out through the bridge viewport. The second Mule had grounded two hundred meters to the south of her position. To the west, stretching farther than she could see, was an expanse of blue water. The surveys said that this lake, the size of a sea on some worlds, was the largest source of fresh water to be found in this Deep Periphery star system. Named "Sweetwater" by the task force, the lake was bordered by a line of rough, rocky crags on the north. South and east, the terrain was more gentle, a series of low, rolling hills. The command staff had opted for a landing zone on the westernmost shore of the lake, due to the mostly level ground there, which stretched for some distance before giving way to a light, scrubby wood. Three kilometers further west, the scrawny hardwoods gave way to a denser forest of tall, majestic variform oak and maple.

  A few hundred meters north, south, and west of the landing zone, Lamus could barely make out the camouflaged shapes of BattleMechs. Pulling a pair of compact, seven-power binoculars from a cubbyhole next to her command console, Lamus scanned the combat machines. At nearly a kilometer, the details of the 'Mechs escaped her. She knew from her briefing that if she were to turn the Mule's visible light scanners toward them, she would see that the 'Mechs were painted with the prancing black horse and the blue moon of the Eridani Light Horse's Twenty-first Striker Regiment. The huge egg-shaped bulk of an Overlord Class DropShip loomed dark and ominous just a few thousand meters east of her much smaller Mule. Lamus knew that the massive vessel, like the 'Mechs, belonged to the Eridani Light Horse. The Overlord was capable of transporting a full battalion of BattleMechs along with their supporting infantry and fighters. The Light Horse troops had been detailed by Marshal Hasek-Davion to provide security for the watering party.

  The MechWarriors who were tapped to escort the foraging parties regarded the opportunity to leave the confines of their starships almost as a reward or favor bestowed upon them by their officers. As a measure of the frustration, if not outright claustrophobia faced by the MechWarriors cooped up for long months aboard a ship, it was rumored that among some regiments, a turn at guarding a foraging party could be bartered for almost anything a person could want. One of the more outrageous, and probably untrue, tales had a member of the Fourth Drakøns trading a brand new JagerMech for an older model Javelin and the chance to get real solid ground beneath him.

  * * *

  Even as Captain Lamus was focusing her glasses on the distant 'Mechs, Major Paul Calvin was entering a command that would bring the Matabushi Sentinel sensor and tracking system installed in the head of his Victor up to its full fifty-power visual light magnification. He could get more power out of the system's combined radar/ladar sensors, but the resolution of the image would suffer. The computers that converted the combined radio- and laser-gathered data into visible images couldn't pick out the fine details of a target. The result was a grainy representation rendered in shades of gray. With the vis-mag system, at least he could see colors.

  Calvin's Battalion, nicknamed "The Dragonslayers," had been detailed to provide security for the water party. With three companies under his command, the Seventh and Fourth 'Mech and the Twenty-fifth Heavy Assault, protecting the DropShips from anything less than a full heavy BattleMech battalion would be an easy job. It was a pretty standard assignment, with his light recon elements deployed a couple of kilometers away from the landing zone, while the rest of the units formed the main line of defense. His two air lances remained aboard the Overlord DropShip that had brought them to the planet's surface.

  As the sensor monitor cleared, Calvin could see the low-slung shapes of the detachment's prime movers making their way to the water's edge. General Winston said it would probably take twelve to sixteen hours to purify enough water to fill each of the Mules. That was a long time—too long for a Mech Warrior to sit in the hot, cramped confines of his cockpit.

  Major Calvin was a life-long Light Horseman, having been "raised in the saddle," as the aphorism for someone born into the mercenary company had it. Though the Twenty-first Striker Regiment, the parent unit of Calvin's Dragonslayers, was still part of the Eridani Light Horse, and still received its orders from General Winston, he had a few reservations about this so-called renewed Star League. The Light Horse rank structure and chain-of-command remained intact, with orders coming down from Marshal Hasek-Davion through General Winston. There was just something different about this mission, something of a permanence that made Major Calvin a little distrustful, almost as though the Eridani Light Horse might lose its unique character under the covering of the Star League banner.

  "Lieutenant Vitina," Calvin called to his adjutant. "As soon as the techs have their gear up and running, we'll start spelling the troops. It's going to be a long time until they get those tanks filled, and I don't want anybody going down with the heat."

  "Yessir," Vitina answered, turning his Apollo to face his commander's 'Mech, in a very human gesture. "I'll see it gets done."

  "Thanks, Tony."

  * * *

  As the lead M-1537 ground to a halt in the pebbly sand of the lake shore, ComStar Tech Ferro Machak jumped out of the cab, sinking to his ankles in the loose soil. Machak, a bear of a man, vaulted easily into the bed of the transporter, using the lugs of one huge, knobby tire as a kind of short ladder.

  Grabbing the meter-long stage-one filter-head, Machak gently lowered the device to the ground beside the transporter. Other adepts and acolytes swarmed over the truck unloading hoses, hooking up pumps, moving like a well-oiled machine.

  Dropping lightl
y to the ground, Machak lifted the seventy-kilo filter head with ease and carried it to the water's edge. Another pair of techs dragged a twelve-centimeter hose from the bed of the transporter, while a third group used the powered hoist to offload the booster pump.

  The theory was simple enough. The filter head, and about twenty meters of its attached hose, went into the lake. From there, the line ran to a booster pump on shore, and eventually, to the DropShip, where the main purification unit was now being deployed. Even with the highspeed pumps and filters, it would take most of the day to collect enough water to fill the huge storage tanks.

  Machak sighed with pleasure as the pumps started their rapid thudding. The sun was warm, and the air was fresh and clean. Best of all, he got to spend a whole day on a planet with real, honest-to-Blake gravity, instead of the couple of hours a week he was allowed in the odd, rotating environment of a ship's grav deck to combat the effects of prolonged freefall exposure. As far as Adept Machak was concerned, all was, right with the world.

  * * *

  Ten kilometers away, Trooper Alan Vaux was laboring under a different opinion than Adept Machak. Vaux had been a member of the 1172nd training company. He had signed on with the Eridani Light Horse right out of high school. Far from the typical Light Horse cadet, Vaux had squeaked through basic training with grades barely good enough to qualify him as a 'Mech pilot. His marks came up during his A-School, where he exhibited a budding talent for reconnaissance work. Unfortunately, as soon as he graduated, his old lackluster ways returned. Twice, Captain Holmes had put him in hack for goofing off while on duty. The last time, Regimental Sergeant-Major Young had a few quiet words with Vaux, which seemed to straighten him out again. Unfortunately, Task Force Serpent came up before the Light Horse officers had any real time to evaluate the young trooper's performance.