Lost destiny

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Phelan's mouth went dry as he saw the ComStar Exterminator rise up before him. He knew that 'Mech design had not been seen for centuries in the Inner Sphere, and for good reason. The Exterminator had been designed to seek out and destroy command 'Mechs. It had become so good at its task that special squads had been formed to hunt them down and destroy them.

  Phelan knew the 'Mech was after him.

  As the Exterminator's arms came up, Phelan saw twin flashes from an Elemental crouched near the lip of the hill. Both SRMs shot straight in at the ComStar 'Mech and lanced into the gaping hole in the Exterminator's chest. Phelan saw the 'Mech shudder as the short-range missiles detonated.

  The blasts provided Phelan a second or two to make an attempt to evade the Exterminator's attack. Phelan cut sharply to his left, sending him in the opposite direction of the Exterminator's involuntary movement. As the other 'Mech's arms began to track the Wolfhound, Phelan brought his own weapons to bear on his foe.

  The Exterminator convulsed with subsidiary explosions. A muffled whump and puff of blue-white smoke announced the destruction of a jump jet. Fire wreathed the anti-missile cannon nested in its chest as a full belt of shells shot off in all directions. Armor plates shattered as the anti-missile slugs cooked off and punched their way out of the Exterminator's torso.

  Phelan shivered as a hail of anti-missile projectiles burst free through the Exterminator's broken canopy. Smoke trailing from me hole, the 'Mech fell back as if it had been pole-axed. As Phelan shifted course again, driving in at the breach in the wall, another ComStar 'Mech stepped up to fill the hole.

  Phelan let the Sentinel have it with all of his forward weapons. The medium pulse laser at Grinner's right shoulder burned away armor on the Sentinel's left arm. The pulse laser mounted in the opposite shoulder slashed at the right arm while the center pulse laser shot low and melted rampart into glass without hitting the Sentinel.

  The Wolfhound's large laser capitalized on the damage done to the Sentinel's left arm and autocannon. Under the coherent light's hellish caress, the last of the armor vaporized and the autocannon flashed to a molten white heat before it melted clean away. The 'Mech, unbalanced by the loss of the limb, staggered but managed to stay upright.

  The ComStar pilot proved himself game by firing back. Two SRMs corkscrewed out from the Sentinel's chest and ripped armor from the right side of Grinner's torso. The small laser mounted just below the missile launcher shot a beam that bubbled paint and armor on the left side of the Wolfhound's broad chest, but neither attack did any real damage or anything to slow Phelan's charge.

  Up into the opening he thundered. With a kick to the left side of its torso, Phelan sent the Sentinel stumbling through the trench. It caught its heels on the Exterminator and toppled backward. It hit the trench's far wall and a shower of dirt buried it in a makeshift grave.

  Phelan knew better than to imagine it down, but he saw three Elementals descend on it to finish it. He turned to the left and took one step forward, clearing the breach to admit another of his Points into the ComStar position. As he did so, a ComStar Lancelot started to come around the corner lacing him.

  "Peace of Blake, indeed," he laughed to himself and dropped his crosshairs on the 'Mech's narrow silhouette. "Come on in, boys. We'll dispense all the peace you want. No waiting."

  * * *

  The Precentor Martial watched as Phelan's lance secured one section of the trench. While the zig-zag cut of it prevented the Clans from shooting down the trench's entire length, it made approaching the breached section of the trench extremely dangerous, especially for stiff-armed 'Mechs like the Lancelot. Before it finished negotiating the corner, Phelan had lased away armor from the 'Mech's chest and arms.

  He opened a radio channel. "Mr. Hettig, please coordinate a withdrawal of the 138th from Skupo. Precentor Jernberg is dead or incapacitated. Use their armor to slow the Cluster following them. Remember, most of those troops are green, so pulling them out is going to be close to announcing a rout."

  "Roger, Precentor Martial."

  Focht again scanned the battlefield and saw the rest of the Wolf Spiders running up the hill at full speed. It had taken them just under two minutes to close the gap between Phelan's Star and the main body of the group. Already some of the fastest 'Mechs in that group had exchanged fire with the 'Mechs of Bandit's Bane. He knew the 138th's losses would be hideous.

  Right place, right tactics, but the wrong people. But there was no way I could devote a more seasoned division to fight so small a unit. He stared hard at Phelan's 'Mech. If I have to lose, better it be to warriors I can respect than those I cannot. This is not over, for one battle does not the war make. I know that and, worse yet, I know you know it.

  "Mr. Hettig, bring the reconstituted 282nd down from Brzo to take care of the Wolf Spiders."

  "It will take them a day or more to get down there. The 138th won't last that long."

  "I know, Mr. Hettig. I know." The Precentor Martial nodded grimly. "I don't want them to save the 138th, I just want them to slow the Wolf Spiders. If they can."

  35

  Teniente

  Nova Cat Occupation Zone

  6 May 3052 (Day 6 of Operation Scorpion)

  Victor Ian Davion looked at the chronometer on the command console of Prometheus, his Daishi. "Kama-ichi, where are they? They are running into our red zone."

  Shin's voice crackled through the speakers in his neuro-helmet. "They are coming, Highness, but they match their pace to the slowest of the 'Mechs."

  "Shin, I don't know if we have time for that sort of stuff." Victor punched up a tactical map of the area. Behind where his Daishi and lance stood, he saw the triangle of DropShips they'd used to make planetfall. The majority of his troops were arrayed in a crescent along the northwest perimeter of the DropShips' effective gunnery range as that was the direction from which they expected the Clans to arrive. A large square represented the furthest distance they estimated the Clans could have traveled and a smaller one marked their probable last location, given speed and heading.

  Both circles were far too close for Victor's ease of mind. "Shin, tell them to abandon the broken 'Mechs. We can send a chopper out from one of the ships to pick them up."

  "Highness, many of these 'Mechs have been in their families for decades."

  Victor cursed. "I hear you, Shin." The Prince expanded the tactical map's view to handle an area large enough to bring the Combine convoy onto the edge of it. The Clans looked to be closer and were certainly moving faster than the Combine troops. Here we sit in the only LZ sufficient to handle DropShips. The Clans know it and we know it. Feels like having one foot nailed to the floor in a bar fight.

  Victor switched his radio over to that of the DropShip Serene Foresight. "Captain Coir, do you have enough fuel to take a short hop?"

  "Affirmative. I'm good to go for one or two, but we'll light up the sky."

  "Stand by. I may need you to recover some of us."

  "Aye, sir. Standing by."

  The Prince flipped the radio back to his command frequency. "Shin, pull Kama lance back and recon Hohiro's path. I want you to bring them up as fast as you can, and ready to shoot as well. Galen, you Murphy, Hudson, and Cooper form up your lances on me. We'll swing wide and try to draw the Clans off to the west. Macles, you'll take command of the rest of the unit and remain here to catch what we don't scare off. On my orders, or cessation of same, you'll pull back into the Valiant Wisdom and get the hell out of here. Got it?"

  "Loud and clear, sir."

  Victor took a deep breath. "Good, let's get to it."

  The last solid sighting they'd had of the Clan unit heading their way made it a full Cluster. That put it at roughly twice the 'Mechs he was taking out after it. If the cloud had any silver lining, it was that the Clans had not left a line unit on Teniente, but had used only a garrison force. As a result, their equipment was not all OmniMechs.

  Something deep down inside Victor screamed at him that he was committing suic
ide. He recalled at the Nagelring that certain very bad chess players were known as having mastered the "kamikaze" or "Custer" defense. That label became modified to "the Custer plan" when certain cadets proved incapable of thinking in acceptable or successful terms during tactical exercises.

  Splitting one's force in the face of a superior enemy definitely had the ring of a Custer plan to it, and Victor dreaded that idea. By the same token, he knew the Clan commander could not be concentrating fully on him because of a possible ComStar offensive. If he's distracted enough, we might be able to draw him off and get back out again. Victor opened a line to Foresight. "Captain Coir, head out and pick up the Kurita stragglers."

  "Aye, sir."

  Back behind him, lighting the landscape with a silvery ion torch the Foresight burned up through the night sky. All of the Revenants' black 'Mechs cast long shadows ahead of themselves. As the DropShip climbed upward, darkness again cloaked the 'Mechs.

  Victor glanced at his tactical map. "Let's pick up the pace. They can't be closer than ten kilometers by this tactical map, but I've got a bad feeling about this."

  "Ditto," commented Galen. "I don't trust spy reports, especially when we get them from ComStar."

  Bringing the Daishi up to its top speed, Victor started it on a course to the west that he intended to have loop back toward the east just before they hit the Clans. At his current pace, with their supposed distance, he had nearly ten minutes until the units should run into each other. Just six minutes out, a line of hills running north and south cut across Victor's line of march.

  "Galen, just over that line of hills, we'll head north for a bit, then feint east." He glanced at his tactical map and saw the Clans still three kilometers away. "We'll surprise them."

  "Roger. Heads up, boys and girls. We're in the danger zone now."

  Galen's words still ringing in his ears. Victor crested the hills, then plunged down the other side. Danger zone? No, this is hell itself.

  The relative safety of the ridgeline's western side had suggested itself to the Clan commander as well. As Victor came over the top, he saw two dozen 'Mechs running full-out through the night. His computers tagged each with an ID number and a model. In a second, he realized the Clan commander had sent his smallest and fastest 'Mechs out in a quick march to cut them off from the 'Mechs coming up to reinforce their position. The Clan commander had no way of knowing the reinforcements were a ragged group of Kurita 'Mechs that were in poor shape for any sort of serious battle.

  "At them, Revenants!" Victor sent two swarms of Streak SRMs out at a Clan Hornet sprinting by. His Daishi's hard lock on the target brought the dozen missiles in on target. The missiles repeatedly hammered the Hornet, stripping armor from its chest and right leg. The pilot fought against the force of the explosions, but the unbalanced 'Mech tumbled and rolled.

  Victor saw a Clan Centurion launch a flight of LRMs at him from the center of its chest. Before he could even think about putting Prometheus through evasive maneuvers, he heard a piercing whine from the right breast of his Daishi. Of the ten missiles heading toward him, only six got a target-lock. Those missiles disappeared as the anti-missile system built into the Daishi spit out a hail of slugs and shredded the missiles in mid-flight.

  The Prince dropped his crosshairs onto the Centurion's outline. His thumb punched down, sending a silvery Gauss rifle projectile arcing out from the rifle mounted in the left arm. Victor lost sight of the ball, then saw the Centurion jerk as the ball all but took its left arm off. The Gauss rifle's sidecar large laser boiled away armor on the Clan 'Mech's chest, but his other two large laser beams missed the target entirely.

  Held aloft by the silver jump jet spears at the back of his 'Mech, Galen's Crusader soared over the battlefield. He loosed flights of LRMs from the shoulder launchers to strike at distant targets, while the Streak SRMs from the Crusader's legs slashed out at anyone who got too close. When he grounded himself again, a double-flight of LRMs struck down a fleeing Clan Firestarter.

  "Victor, break left!"

  Without thinking, the Prince spun his OmniMech away to the left. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a Clan Vulcan shoot a large and medium pulse laser through the space he had just left. In the confusion, he almost could have sworn the voice that warned him was Kai's. Not possible. Kai is dead. Who then?

  A barrel-chested Hunchback planted its feet and turned to face off with the Vulcan. The boxy Kali-Yama Autocannon mounted on its shoulder spit fire and thunder. The stream of depleted-uranium shells hit the Vulcan just to the right of its centerline, then sawed back through its torso as if the Clan 'Mech were made of soft cheese. Shards of armor mixed with fragments of endo-steel skeleton littered the ground while the Vulcan listed badly as if to protect its shattered side. It took one half-step forward, then the upper torso twisted and sheered off at the line the Hunchback had scored on it.

  "Thanks for the help," Victor beamed at his savior. Renny Sanderlin laughed easily, "Thanks for your faith, Victor."

  All along the line, the Revenants poured fire and missiles into the Clan 'Mechs. Part of Victor hated watching the Clan's small 'Mechs get battered and pulverized by his own grossly superior forces. That hatred died quickly, however, when Victor remembered how the Twelfth Donegal Guards had been chopped to pieces by superior Clan forces. They overmatched us even on Alynia when we knew what to expect. This is payback.

  The Revenants swept forward as the Clans slowed and started to turn back. As his troops pressed the Clans more, they concentrated their fire and took down 'Mech after 'Mech. Individual war machines looked, in the darkness, like the focus of a hundred lasers and missiles. Explosions would illuminate them and trip them while energy beams washed their armor away into clouds of ferro-fibrous vapor. Flayed alive, the 'Mechs kept running until more lasers and more missiles tore myomer muscles apart and crushed metallic bones.

  "Revenants, pull back." Victor shook himself as he saw their line begin to drift back along the Clans' line of retreat.

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but we have them on the run."

  Galen's voice cut into the line. "Can it, Murphy. The Clan commander is likely to be waiting to welcome us if we get too close."

  "We can take him."

  In Murphy's voice, Victor heard the hopes and desires of the rest of the Revenants. He understood their desire to go after the Clans. Free of the fear of their tormentors, free of the terror that had haunted them since the first time the Clans struck into the Inner Sphere, his people wanted to make the Clans fear them.

  He understood that idea because he shared it.

  "Pull back. We're not retaking this rock, we're just stripping it of its valuable resources." He glanced at his tactical map, and even though he could not see the Clan's main body, he knew it had to be moving closer to the DropShips. I had not expected Clan 'Mechs this far now. How much further along than my main body would I let scout Stars go?

  Victor keyed the radio. "Galen, use those jump jets and pop up for a look on our back-trail. The main Clan body has to be somewhere nearby."

  "Roger." Static sliced through the frequency as the Crusader's ion jets lifted it high into the air. "Victor, I have a large Clan force moving toward our DropShips. They have detached 'Mechs in our direction."

  As the Crusader descended again, Victor switched over to broadbeam frequency and addressed all his people. "Heads up. Nova Cats are between us and our ride home. Let's move."

  * * *

  Coming up over the hills that had hidden them from the scout Stars they ambushed, Victor saw the plains of Teniente become a circle of hell. Using spotting telemetry from two of the Revenants' smaller 'Mechs, the fire-support lances arced LRMs up over the hills and rained them down on the Nova Cats. The explosions made the ground shake and lit the night with eye-burning fireballs.

  At the lead of a sprint lance, Victor's Daishi plunged down the hillside. He slammed into a Clan Dasher, dumping the smaller 'Mech on its back in a cloud of shattered armor. Half-twisting, he pumped
a Gauss rifle round through its chest and left it lying on the ground with short-range missiles pouring from the hole.

  A Clan Loki, black except for the blue blaze on the center of its torso, stepped through the missile fire and leveled its guns at Prometheus. The autocannon in its left arm lipped flame as it hammered the Daishi's right leg with a burst of slugs. The Gauss rifle in its right arm sent a silver ball streaking straight into the right side of Victor's 'Mech, spinning it around and sending it crashing to the ground.

  The Prince braced for the crash and smiled when no sparks shot through his cockpit at the impact. Pushing off with Prometheus' left arm, he levered himself up enough to point his 'Mech's right arm at the Loki. He dropped his targeting crosshairs onto the OmniMech's outline, but before he could trigger his large pulse lasers, a 'Mech moved up on his right side and engaged the Loki.

  Renny Sanderlin's Hunchback let go a salvo from its Kali-Yama autocannon. The line of destruction traced from right to left, starting at one shoulder and ending at the other. Along the way, it blew through the Loki's head and cockpit, decapitating the enemy war machine. Recoiling from the attack, the Loki pitched backward and landed in a tangled, misshapen heap.

  Victor started to radio Renny another thank you, but fire blossomed on the Hunchback's right flank. The FedCom reeled wildly to the left, armor shards spinning into the air. A laser cut through the resulting cloud of smoke and the Hunchback stumbled across the Daishi's legs, slewing Victor around, as Renny crashed to the ground.

  Twisted away from facing the direction of the attack, Victor still saw the Thor that had blown Renny's 'Mech to scrap. Facing the wrong way! As the Thor stalked forward, Victor tried to crank his 'Mech's right arm around to target it. Out of my arc! I'm dead!

  The Thor pointed its left-arm autocannon at Victor. The pilot swung it into line with the back of Prometheus' head, as if to dispatch a wounded animal. It took one step closer, guaranteeing a kill, then jerked as if that last step had landed it on a live wire. As Victor watched, its center-torso armor went from black to red and then white. It melted over a round hole at the Thor's heart, then the last vestiges of four large laser beams flashed through the opening.